Bill Connect for Credit Cards: Share your feedback here!

After using this a bit, below is a simplification of a prior statement, that will prevent understatement of cash flow (which is really important on checking accounts…) and should be super easy to implement

1. Add an option under 'amount' below - 'Statement balance, when it exceeds the Reminder amount'
2. When this option selected, update the logic from 'reminder amount = statement amount' to 'if statement amount > reminder amount then reminder amount=statement amount'

This way someone could say 'I'm gonna assume this is $800 on average but adjust if I end up with an unexpected cost', or 'this is 800 on average but I want to reserve 600 until I get closer to close date'

This is a fantastic feature with this one tweak 😉

Yes, it is set up as a linked transfer.
There is a bill connect tab.
Bill Connect is toggled on.
The statement closing date and due date are missing as is the chain link icon indicating that the account is connected.

First, thanks to the Simplifi dev team for implementing this feature. I love that I can now set up Bill Connect to automatically to update a future reminder with the final bill amount and payment date from the credit card statement. This eliminates a manual step that I was doing for each credit card, each month. So, much appreciated!

I am having a similar problem to @KB2014, @flintster_99, and others. The default behavior appears to be that the amount for the “next” reminder either

1. Goes to $0, or
2. Defaults to the amount from your previous month’s bill

In both of these cases, it is negatively impacting my future Cash Flow view

1. If $0, and then gradually updating as the billing period goes along, then it is UNDER representing the future cash need
2. If defaulting to prior billing cycle amount, then it is either UNDER representing future cash need (if prior cycle was less than average) or OVER representing the future cash need (if prior cycle was more than average)

My monthly spending is variable, but it does tend to average out to a ballpark within a few hundred dollars of the “Recurring Amount” that I estimate on the Basic Details of the Series.

I agree with @flintster_99 ideas

What would be great is if in the setup you could say 'start auto updating balances X days before statement close date' - that way the placeholder would still be used as the balance accumulates but then update.
In addition to that, would be great to have a 'start updating as soon as balance exceeds reminder' so that it would never be understated, even if the 'start updating' date has not been reached.

Either one of these ideas would solve the current challenge I’m having with projecting future cash flow. It would be great to project my “average” spending on the credit card for the next payment, and then only start auto-updating, either

1. Close to the end of the billing cycle, or
2. When the actual amount from the billing cycle exceeds the estimated “Recurring Amount” configured for the series

Hopefully, that all makes sense.

@Coach Natalie - thanks for following up. @DryHeat thanks for the explanation of your setup, and how the system is supposed to work.

I think I am seeing two issues. 1) a bug that I initially saw after the first billing cycle combined with inaccurate info from support, and 2) the currently intended behavior of the system is causing me challenges with cash flow projections.

1. Bug
   1. A few days after my billing cycle closed, say May 12th, the state of the system was
      1. May 8th reminder = paid and linked to transactions in both bank and credit card account
      2. June 8th reminder = May cycle balance
      3. July 8th reminder = $0
   2. I contacted Simplifi support via chat and the support rep told me "the next month reminder defaults to the prior month's bill".
      1. Sounds like that was not correct.
      2. I thought that was a little weird, but maybe made sense for some scenarios.
      3. Reading through these threads, I realize that my experience was unique, not intended, so therefore probably a bug.
   3. NOTE: At the time I had the bug, the "Frequency & Occurrence" was set to pay off the full balance a few days before the "due date" of the billing. This may have negatively impacted my situation. I have subsequently changed these settings on the Series to "due date".
      
2. Feedback on "intended behavior"
   1. Let's pretend I never had the bug in item 1. I now understand how the system is supposed to work, but would like for it to work a little different. I'll be repeating myself from my prior post now, but …
   2. I have a recurring series for my monthly credit card bill.
      1. Recurring Amount = {average monthly CC bill, e.g. $3,000}
      2. Bill Connect Enabled
      3. Amount = Statement Balance
      4. Date = Due Date
   3. Prior to the new Bill Connect feature, I would sometimes adjust future reminders for this series up or down over the next few months. When I know there are major expenditures in a coming month, I edit that specific reminder. For example, edit the reminder for July to be $4,000 because I know we have a big expense planned for the applicable billing cycle.
   4. Problem scenario
      1. June 8 credit card billing cycle closes
      2. Make payment for June 8, the full statement balance on the due date. Quicken system links the payment transactions on both sides to the reminder in the series. Super cool.
      3. A couple days go by … it is now June 10
      4. The July 8 reminder (almost 4 weeks away) drops close to $0
         1. Per DryHeat, "it shows me what I will owe on Jul 8 if I (1) stop charging right now and (2) actually pay the Jun 8 statement balance as planned"
      5. Now, go look at Bills & Income > Cash Flow
      6. Problem: I am projected to have way more cash on July 9th than I will actually have. It looks like my credit card payment on July 8th will be near $0 when I absolutely know that it will not be that low. For the next couple of weeks, my future cash flow is misrepresented. Typically, the payment will be close to my historical average, or the amount I have manually edited for the reminder.
   5. Ideas to solve the problem scenario. Hat tip to @flintster_99.
      1. On June 10th, the system would still
         1. honor my Recurring Amount configured in the Series, or
         2. honor whatever value I had manually entered into the reminder
      2. As the month goes along and I rack up credit card charges, then start auto updating the reminder amount for the current billing cycle much later in the cycle. EITHER
         1. Close to the end of the billing cycle (e.g. starting on July 1st … {due date minus 1 week}), or
         2. When the actual amount from the billing cycle exceeds the amount on the Series reminder

Sorry for the wall of text, but hopefully that amount of detail will more clearly explain the feedback.

I am currently playing around with manually overriding the future Amount in the next Reminder by clicking "three dots" > Edit Reminder. I'll see how that works, and report back if anybody is interested. Even after I manually edit the reminder, I suspect the system will periodically overwrite the manually entered value, since the edit reminder screen says:

Finally, thanks again to the Simplifi team. Overall, I am happy to be posting about ideas for tweaks to this feature instead of not having the feature at all.

@MTcoug

While you wait for changes (which may never come) your best bet might be to revert to a manual system.

My situation is a lot like yours and I used to handle it manually like this:

1. Set the Recurring bill series amount to last year's average after dropping 2 highest and 2 lowest.
2. Modify a few individual reminders that I know will be different (January CC payment gets increased for Christmas stuff, etc.).
3. Manually update the upcoming reminder monthly after the CC statement comes in.

It sounds like a lot, but #1 is only done once a year and #2 is only done for Christmas and vacation months. Unfortunately, #3 is a monthly chore. I only did this for one credit card that carries most of my expenses.

For me, the new system works well and relieves me of these chores. But that's because my focus is on the Spending Plan — and modifying my spending behavior — rather than on Cash Flow.

(NOTE: @MikeT says turning it off might not work — see his post above.)

I have a credit card account through Capital One that I am paying down, as well as my bank accounts. Recently, Simplifi started automatically connecting the statement info from my bill to my recurring payment series and displaying the statement balance as my payment amount. While I understand how this could be a convenience for some people, for me it really ends up messing up my cash flow projections for the account from which I draw payments. I've tried multiple times, both in the app and on the web, to disconnect this biller so the payment series shows the regular payment amount that I wish to make each month. However, each time, even though the system displays a confirmation that the series was updated, future instances of the recurring series continue to display the statement balance instead of my series info; and when I go in the next time to check on the setup, it has reverted back to connecting to the bill. How can I make the disconnection stick?

Hoping someone can help here. I have a question about Bill Connect, I have a recurring series for my Amazon Prime Visa card from Chase and I connected it using the new bill connect feature. I'm not sure what to enter for a couple of the fields.

#1 - Recurring amount — in the past, I always just left the amount as 0.00 and would manually update each reminder for that month, with bill connect the reminders automatically import I believe, so I assume it's ok to leave the series as 0.00

#2 - Match Criteria - do I want to set that as auto match or any amount? Since the amounts will be different for each month based on the statement balance from the biller.

Appreciate the help in advance.

After the latest update, all of my accounts were automatically connected to the Biller, something I never asked for. This messed up all of my accounts, and I had to manually go in and remove or disconnect the Biller connection. This is super frustrating because this type of thing happens too frequently. I've had to reconnect accounts and lose the account history. I like using Simplify, but if there was a better app, I would chose another route. I'm hoping this gets fixed as well as other complaints from people.