If I could tell everyone the inadequacies

cgoneal · November 15

if I could tell everyone not to use this application I would! Just take a look at all the bank connectivity issues, really?

I myself have had four institutions that constantly break and the folks at Simplifi just don’t give a [removed - profanity].

Get a connection service that works people. Other companies work just fine!!

RobWilk · November 15

Connectivity wise i can only complain that TD Bank is currently not working for me (I don't use that account anyway). For me, the other bank connections are reliable and better than other Software(aaS) I've tried.

There are other things i can complain about though, but the biggest complaint i have was only officially reported and acknowledged about 3 days ago. That's where balances can be wrong for 2 refresh cycles.

dsfreddy · November 15

[removed - accuracy]. They have an inherent conflict of interest posting as users about the product they use for free. In the interest of transparency, that should be disclosed with every superuser post and like/dislike.

RobWilk · November 15

We are more like volunteers that are incentivized to participate. We're not required to have any particular opinion, and relative to the time i voluntarily spend here, my "compensation" value is well below minimum wage, so my opinions are not really paid opinions. Admittedly, my opinion on the price of the product may be affected, I also know in the last month I tried 3 different products which were -more- expensive than the new price, and if they were better, I would've switched. There's not a lot of great online "SaaS" web apps for managing finances, they all have positives and negatives. Ultimately, I prefer the features and bank support here.

EDIT: I really became a superuser because I complained a lot, which is why i was in the forum so much participating. You don't "generally" hang out in a support forum if the app is working as expected. Complaints are useful for a company because it tells them what they're doing wrong so they can correct them. Quicken, Inc. addresses most bugs in a reasonable time frame (few weeks to a few months depending on the difficulty), but for example, there are probably 1,000s of supported banks (most of which i never heard of, what's an "LPL" for example?, to me that is Levittown public library), and every time the bank changes something on their website those connections can break, and the companies managing those connections (intuit, plaid, fincity, whatever) give their own priorities on which to fix (or whether they can be fixed).

UrsulaA · November 15

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/43438#Comment_43438

As another superuser, the only compensation I get is a free subscription and some swag (tumblers, merch). We are volunteers indeed and spend time in the support forum reporting issues to coaches and reporting issues in the app. We are required to be in Early Access so we review new features first and help clean out bugs.

We are free to leave the app and quit as superusers, in fact one superuser did so in March as Simplifi was not a fit for him. Our opinions are just as valid as any other user in the community.

UrsulaA · November 15

Also, superuser appears next to our names when we post.

dsfreddy · November 15

My original comment keeps getting moderated down by someone. A free subscription is all I meant when mentioning any sort of compensation. That is a fact. As is the inherent conflict of interest. From the Simplifi posting about superusers: "Some privileges would include having access to the Community Lounge, having limited moderation abilities, as well as an annual Simplifi Subscription on us!"

UrsulaA · November 15

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/43487#Comment_43487

Your comment was edited by Coach Natalie. If you hover over the edited time, the tag will show you who edited the comment.

RobWilk · November 15

@dsfreddy I have no moderation abilities, I can report posts like any other user, but they don't (perhaps wisely) trust us to moderate things.

UrsulaA · November 15

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/43492#Comment_43492

This is correct, we could only edit comments from other users on the private community lounge, limited to superusers and coaches. This ability is seldom used. We cannot moderate comments in the general forum.

UrsulaA · November 15

Superuser list

RobWilk · November 15

@UrsulaA is the quickest growing super user - I had superuser status 6 months or so before she even joined the app/community — and she's almost up to my point level.

I personally go through weeks or months where i'm not active, then usually because i have an issue to report I start partcipating more.

dsfreddy · November 16

Thanks for all the feedback. As noted before, superusers are given a free annual subscription. I don't consider the term "volunteer" an apt descriptor.

RobWilk · November 16

Where I come from, Volunteer firefighters also get freebies (free beer, for example, at the firehouse bar, free use of the firehouse gym, or free uniforms). There are always perks to volunteering. There are also minimum participation requirements for firefighters and superusers here. Firefighters, however, are far more important than us.

SRC54 · November 16

What, some of y'all get a free subscription!?! I pay for both Classic and Simplifi! 😂

But I do understand the frustrations, and I suppose it worries me less because I have so much experience with other apps. Simplifi is a very dynamic app. Unlike Quicken, which is pretty much set with refinements every few months. Simplifi is adding things almost every week. Most of us have the toggle ON (I assume for new users this is OFF by default) to try out the new features, which are usually buggy so we willingly take those risks. As a result, I hardly ever comment on the Quicken Classic forums but I am here practically every day.

Most of the connectivity issues that affect Simplifi also affect Quicken Classic. And they are usually fixed within a couple of days. A lot of the time, one can fix them himself if he just disconnects the account and reconnects. I admit it isn't an ideal solution. Then there are some connectivity issues that do last, mainly because the bank has changed things on their end.

I admit that the account summation errors drive me a bit crazy. I had them in Quicken Classic years ago when there would be a missing transaction or duplicate transactions, and running them down was time consuming and frustrating. With Simplifi, those won't matter since it works backwards from the balance and subtracts pending transactions. But that has inherent risks as well.

The summation errors that we are getting lately seem to be an internal Simplifi problem (it's been reported and they are working on it). I recently discovered (now that I am getting used to clicking on the Balance with Pending icon) that manual accounts treat all transactions as pending and simply sums them. This makes sense when you think about it since the default balance has to be $0.00. You can clear these transactions for your own use but it has to be that way. The fact that the balances sometimes goes off is that Simplifi is sometimes counting a transaction twice, which is what is happening now in my connected checking account. These discrepancies get fixed within a few hours when Simplifi updates and apparently forces a recalculation in the manual accounts as well as the connected accounts.

I don't know what the solution is for the frustration of all the new users, and several have been vocal. I think the 30 day window to get everything set up and working may not be enough. Maybe Simplifi should give them a 60 day trial. Simplifi also needs to prioritize making the basics work, which includes correct balances and downloads. The downloads may be easier said than done. Banking is so fractured now and there are so many different kinds of financial institutions and Microsoft and Intuit had more clout back in the day when they ran the show. They wrote the rules and banks willingly obliged.

Every user has to decide for himself whether his time and effort is worth it. It does seem to me that currently we are seeing more problems than usual with Simplifi. I assume that this bad patch will soon be over, that it's just a growing pain as Simplifi responds to the requests of its user base. So I guess I am urging everyone to hang in there if you can.

RobWilk · November 16

@SRC54 Back in the day, when I first joined, if there were major technical support problems (something wasn't working right), they would either add 30-60 days to the subscription or extend the free trial of the affected (complaining) users. I benefited from that more than once, and it helped me decide to stick around longer. I haven't seen that kind of thing in over a year, though, and it's unclear if they ended that policy or people just aren't complaining as loudly as they were then (the app is a lot better than it was, mostly).

Also, I would nominate you as a Superuser if I could - you frequently answer my tech support questions when I should be able to answer them myself.

SRC54 · November 16

@RobWilk I think it might be worth reinstituting that extension of trial for some of them. Thanks for the kind words, and I hope some of my musings, suggestions, etc. are helpful. I enjoy doing it.

As I say I am retired so this is a hobby for me. I spend a lot of time doing surveys, finding rebates, signing up for class action suits. It does supplement the income a little. 😁

I've been thinking of not renewing Classic for years. I actually dropped it for 2 years back around 2018 and then ended up going back to it. Getting my data imported and fixed was such a pain that I just fear dropping it again. It was around that time I signed up for Simplifi. It seems silly to do everything twice. Classic comes up for renewal in January but I probably will renew it again! LOL

UrsulaA · November 16

@SRC54 - to be a super user you need 501 points minimum. You are close with 462 points.

Requirements for super user below, which is called Ultimate Simplifier.

Your Guide to Community Ranks — Simplifi

DannyB · November 16

I've resisted getting involved with this conversation due to the dead-end nature of the original post, "If I could tell everyone not to use this application I would." OK, thanks for your input.

I'm just the opposite, I do recommend Quicken Simplifi to family, friends and strangers quite often because I think it's a great product and a great tool.

Do I make these recommendations because I'm a "superuser" in this forum or am I a "superuser" because I have no problem making these recommendations. Something to ponder. But if you do ponder this, just keep in mind the whole "superuser" thing has nothing to do with the use of the product, it is strictly confined to this particular forum and one's activity level herein.

I personally don't care at all if you want to subscribe to QS or not. If you like the product and it works for you, great. If not… great, move on. But this forum exists to provide a support and is provided to you by QS as part of their customer support and Quicken employees actively monitor and provide support here. The rest of us are here by choice to also support each other in our use of QS.

RobWilk · November 16

@DannyB The voice of reason, thanks.

RobWilk · November 16

By the way, I will add that I do not recommend this app to friends or family -yet-. There are problems it runs into from time to time that, quite honestly, I know how to deal with but someone less patient or less tech savvy might not be able to figure out and could cause major problems (for example, having the wrong balance from time to time). Some people here have recently said that due to a wrong balance they overdrew their accounts, and I believe that happened to me in the distant past too — but because of that error, I avoided trusting the balance and still don't really. I use it more to track spending and love the spending plan, but the balance issues just aren't great for fully trusting this app yet.

EDIT: For example, Chase on weekends if i manually enter transactions is often wrong. If I don't manually enter transactions, it's "only wrong for 4-6 hours."

SRC54 · November 16

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/43546#Comment_43546

I think I would be the same though most of my friends and family think I'm crazy to keep up with all this. They just check their bank balance and move on and if their balance gets low, they are real careful. LOL. I literally know no one personally who uses one of these financial apps. I think we are a rare breed.

But I enjoy the apps, and I enjoy reading all the posts and adding my two cents if and when I have them to add. Looking forward to what next week and version 4.35 will bring!

If I could tell everyone the inadequacies

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