Does the account-specific Balance Type setting actually do anything?

The systems for setting/displaying this option is still confused (or confusing). Here's what I mean…

In the account info header above the Transaction Activity register, my account correctly shows "Balance w/ pending." I use this because the bank does not include pending transactions in the balance it sends to Quicken, and I want it to adjust the balance to account for those transactions. That works as expected.

But when open the 3-dot menu to edit the setting, the choices don't use the "Balance w/ pending" or "Bank balance" setting names. Instead, they ask you to choose based on a description of what you think your bank does (include/not include pending in balance).

One option is pre-selected and should presumably the one currently in force. But I don't think it is, because its description of what Quicken is going to do is the opposite of what Quicken is actually doing in this account. It says Quicken "won't adjust" the balance, but Quicken is actually adjusting the balance the bank sends (by adding in the pending).

For both choices, the description of what Quicken will do for each setting seems to be the opposite of what you would want Quicken to do based on the description of what the bank does. What I mean is:

• If my bank doesn't include pending in the balance, then I do want Quicken to adjust the balance.
• If my bank does include pending in the balance, then I don't want Quicken to adjust the balance.

The descriptions say the opposite. And they contradict how the settings are recommended to be used in the help docs. See here: https://support.simplifi.quicken.com/en/articles/4202003-how-to-resolve-balance-discrepancies-in-quicken-simplifi

@SRC54

All of my accounts use Option 1, which means the balance from the bank does not include the pending transactions so Quicken subtracts those.

That's the opposite of what the description of "option 1" says:

It says that when under this option — because the balance from the bank does not include pending — Quicken won't adjust what the bank sends. But I'm not sure that's true. That's the problem.

@SRC54

Just to clarify, your interpretation of the options descriptions is like this, right?

Frankly, I don't understand how you can interpret the language that way.

[EDIT] Just to make this a clear as possible… My comments are about the descriptions used in the selection options, not about how the option actually works. My point is that it doesn't work the way it says it works, which causes unnecessary confusion.

@DryHeat It is TOTALLY confusing, but I think it is the way they intend it to work.

So I look at the entire description:

If you look at all the verbiage, it starts with how your bank handles pending transactions

Your bank sends a pending-free balance

This is what my bank does! Now what does Simplifi do with that balance, it subtracts the pending transactions.

Option 2 says [Your bank] Includes them in the balance

For banks that download the balance including the pendings, QS won't subtract them again.

So this is slightly less confusing than before. Is it great? No. Could I be wrong? Yep.

But I do think this is what they mean.

I still want to know for those who have an Option 2 bank, when you click on the dots, does it have Option 2 checked, or is it the way it has always been and shows Option 1 even if it was Option 2?

@SRC54

I think by focusing on the description of what the bank does in each setting — and essentially ignoring the description of what Quicken does in that setting — you reinforce what I said in my post yesterday.

For both choices, the description of what Quicken will do for each setting seems to be the opposite of what you would want Quicken to do (based on the description of what the bank does).

As @Coach Jon said, "we can agree that the descriptions are confusing." We'll see what the product team comes up with. I think they could improve things by just swapping the descriptions, but maybe they can do better.

@SRC54

the problem is that first QS has to know what kind of balance is getting downloaded.

QS doesn't seem to have a way to know this directly.

That is why it asks the user to select either "Does not include [pending transactions] in the balance" or "Does include them in the balance." I'm ok with that.

The ongoing problem is determining what QS does with pending transactions based on that user input. I think we are currently in a "QS says one thing, but does another" situation. Hopefully, that can be cleared up.

The situation will remain confused, though, because:

• some banks download pending transactions and some don't
• some banks adjust the downloaded balance based on pending transactions and some don't
• some "pending" transactions are known to the bank and some (manually entered ones) are not

This makes adjusting the bank balance based on "pending" transactions significantly more complicated than it at first appears.

Example: What should you or QS do if your bank adjusts the balance for pending transactions it knows about, but you also have manually entered pending transactions in your register? And what will be the result?

@Coach Jon

Thanks for getting the product team to look at this.

Also… Is the team also going to look at the lack of a clear relationship between the option names (like "Balance w/ pending") shown in the transaction list header and the option titles (like "Does not include them in balance") shown when selecting the option?

Someone who already knows how these things work can see the relationship between the two. Or maybe can figure it out from the description (once that is fixed). But someone who is new to the system will have trouble understanding which name goes with which title.

The problem with this is when a bank changes as mine did without meaning to do so. I had to use Option 2 (in the old setup which really was flying blind). So I don't think it is necessary to take the option away. Almost all banks use the first option and that is the default. The only time a user needs to fiddle with this is when it doesn't work.

Actually for a while, I just simply cleared the pending transactions in Simplifi and that brought the balance back correctly. When they actually cleared, they matched up just fine. 😀

As of right now, I only have banks that use the default, and I bet you do too.

@EL1234

The setting is hardcoded for specific banks, and the fact that you didn't know…

It sounds like you mean that the QS setting cannot be changed for specific banks, including Chase Bank. Is that right? I don't think that's true, but I will check it out. I have been wrong once before. 😎

Ok… I just changed my Chase account from "Does not include them in balance" to "Includes them in balance." The change is sticking in the selection dialog when I reopen it (see below) but does not yet show up in the account header, which still says "Balance w/ pending."

However, when I made the change I got a warning message saying it would not take effect until the next update, which is a few hours away. We'll see what happens then. Will the change stick, or will it change back?

I will let you know.

[UPDATE 4 PM]

Prior to this test:

• The heading showed "Balance w/ pending"
• The Edit Account panel showed option "Does not include them in balance" selected
• [EDIT] The balance shown was adjusted to include my pending transactions downloaded from the bank
• At the time I had no manually entered transactions

I changed the account setting to "Includes them in balance," exited the Web app, and waited for the update interval to pass. Then I reopened the web app and watched while the account updated. The results are confusingly mixed:

• The heading still says "Balance w/ pending"
• But the Edit Account panel now shows option "Includes them in balance" selected
• [EDIT] And the balance shown no longer includes my pending transactions downloaded from the bank
• The balance does include my manually entered pending transactions

[EDIT] In other words, the actual method of balance calculation changed when I changed the setting, but the balance type displayed in the account header (under the amount) remained the same — which makes no sense. And manually entered pending transactions were added to the balance even though pending transactions from the bank were not.

Now I'm going to try changing it back by selecting "Does not include them in balance" to see what that does. I'll get back in 4 hours or so.

[UPDATE 8 PM]

Prior to this test:

• The heading showed "Balance w/ pending"
• The Edit Account panel showed option "Includes them in balance" selected
• The balance shown did not adjust for my pending transactions downloaded from the bank
• The balance did include my manually entered pending transactions

This time, I changed the account setting to "Does not include them in balance," exited the Web app, and waited for the update interval to pass. Then I reopened the web app and watched while the account updated. The results are:

• The heading still says "Balance w/ pending"
• But the Edit Account panel now shows option "Does not include them in balance" selected
• The balance shown does adjust for my pending transactions downloaded from the bank
• The balance does include my manually entered pending transactions

So, once again, the actual method of balance calculation changed when I changed the setting, but the balance type displayed in the account header (under the amount) remained the same. And, as before, manually entered pending transactions were added to the balance (this seems to happen no matter what).

So here is what I take from all this:

• The setting shown in the account header never changes. It always shows "Balance w/pending" under the amount, no matter what the actual setting is. That seem wrong.
• The Edit Account panel reflects the actual setting, which matches whatever I last set it to.
• "Does not include them in balance" actually means that it will adjust your balance to take into account the the pending transactions downloaded from the bank and "Includes them in balance" means it will not. The option descriptions under those titles are backwards.
• The balance is always adjusted for manually entered pending transactions, regardless of the setting. That is a surprise to me, but then I very seldom enter manual transactions.

I would appreciate it if someone else would run these tests to see if my results are correct. The results themselves seem pretty odd, so confirmation would be nice.

It would also be nice to hear something from staff about how this is all supposed to work. I don't think the current documentation matches what is happening here, but let me know if I am wrong about that.

@DryHeat Well, it did change to not include the pending transactions; that's good.

Did you try adding a manual pending transaction to see what that would do.

When you say that it still says Balance W/ Pending, did the selection stay on the 2nd option?

Edit: So manual pending transactions are always subtracted, which is good, because bank knows nothing about those until they are presented.

I think the Balance with Pending is always shown in the transaction register unless one toggles to Bank Balance in the Accounts Column Settings.

I will do a test of my checking account Monday/Tuesday when I get some pending transactions.

Thanks!