Unlinking an automatically linked reminder messed everything up
Something really weird just happened!
I have a credit card with a recurring reminder for the bill payment as a transfer from my checking account to the cc. The date for that is the 17th of the month, and the upcoming reminder had an amount of over $2000. Today, that credit card downloaded a pending transaction for a refund of around $30. I opened the transaction and unlinked it from the series since that was obviously wrong (IMO Simplifi shouldn't link that, the amount was very different, the date was 10 days off, and the payee was completely different as well).
This is where things went crazy. After unlinking the transaction from the reminder, the transaction showed a message to the effect of "this transaction has been updated, reload to see changes". I didn't click reload since I didn't think there were any legit changes. When I clicked elsewhere to close the transaction, for a second, it updated to show the original amount (>$2000) and date (5/17). Then the window closed.
Investigating further shows the following:
- My pending transaction for the $30 refund is gone from the Pending section.
- In my checking account, the reminder is back at the right amount on 5/17.
- In the credit card account, the reminder is GONE. Next occurrence of it is 6/17.
- Both of the above show "Edit Reminder" and not "Edit Transaction" when I click the three dot menu.
- I don't see the $30 transaction anywhere in the upcoming reminders.
- In the Bills and Income section, under Reminders, on 5/17 I see the transaction for my checking account with the correct amount, but nothing for the bank account.
- Scrolling down until June I do see both sides of the transaction with an estimated amount which is the same for the two sides.
What on earth happened here and how can Simplifi prevent this from happening again? And how do I fix the upcoming reminders??
It would be tremendously less work for me to just match the reminder to the correct transaction myself if this is going to keep happening.
Why does Simplifi match transactions with such different names, amounts and dates?
I hope you can help with this. Thank you!
Comments
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Update!
I found the $30 transaction in the Cleared section. It has the right amount, payee, and date. The category has been set to Credit Card Payment (which is wrong but I can fix that easily).
My reminders are still messed up though.
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The weirdness continues!
Now my checking account has an overdue reminder from yesterday for the negative amount of the ~$30 refund!
(The refund was to my credit card so the checking account shouldn't be relevant here.)
Simplifi allows me to link it to a transaction which I will not do.
I'll probably dismiss the reminder but I'll leave it for now in case you're going to want a screenshot of it or something.
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Hello @EL1234,
I am not sure what happened here, but if the issue was limited to a single transaction and you were able to find and fix it, then I think deleting the errant reminder you mentioned is fine.
You also mentioned your reminders are still messed up. What, precisely, is still wrong with them? Thank you!
-Coach Jon
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The biggest issue that's left is the missing reminder in my CC account for 5/17. The other side of the transfer is there so if I add it I'll have a double…
This is very similar to a quite different issue that I had a few weeks ago with another reminder. That's why I think there's an issue here that needs to be resolved. Thanks!
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Hello @EL1234,
Is the reminder itself missing, or is it the other side of the linked transfer itself missing? Have you checked the Bills & Income tab to verify whether you can find the missing reminder there? If you go to the series, in the 5/17 occurrence missing from there as well?
-Coach Jon
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Copying from my original post:
- In my checking account, the reminder is back at the right amount on 5/17.
- In the credit card account, the reminder is GONE. Next occurrence of it is 6/17.
- Both of the above show "Edit Reminder" and not "Edit Transaction" when I click the three dot menu.
- In the Bills and Income section, under Reminders, on 5/17 I see the transaction for my checking account with the correct amount, but nothing for the bank account.
- Scrolling down until June I do see both sides of the transaction with an estimated amount which is the same for the two sides.
To answer your last question, looking at the CC side of the series shows a coming up transaction for 5/17 for $30 (the wrong amount). But that reminder does not show up in the reminders carousel. Should I edit that reminder to the correct amount? I'm not sure if there's a point if it doesn't show up in the reminders or in Bills & Income. Also, if I go into Edit Series and look at the Preview Next Occurrence section, it shows the next one as $1 (that's the series amount before it gets updated with the real amount) for 5/18, but yesterday it didn't, yesterday when I looked it started from June.
On the checking account side, things have also changed by themselves since last night. The extra reminder for $30 had its date switched to 5/17, and in addition, I see a 5/17 reminder for the correct amount of the credit card bill.
If I click View Series under either one, it shows me Coming Up the $30 transaction dated 5/17, and under Preview Next Occurrence it shows $1 on 5/18.
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I would dismiss the extra reminder on the bank side, but what about the missing one on the credit card side?
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There are a whole bunch of reminders here. Do you want screenshots of all of them? I'll DM
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I can't quite send you the reminder that's missing :) but I can send the series for it.
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DM sent, let me know if you want anything further.
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Hello @EL1234,
Thank you for the DM! I admit I am a tad confused here. You stated that the reminder for 5/17 is missing on your credit card's side, but the screenshot you sent to me via DM shows the reminder's next occurrence is set for 5/17. Can you please clarify where exactly the reminder is missing from? Is it not visible within the projected cash flow at the top of your credit card account?
-Coach Jon
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The screenshot when you edit the series shows the reminder, but it's missing from the Reminders carousel (and the cash flow chart) and also from Bills & Income.
Actually, the Bills & Income list has also changed since yesterday. Now on May 17 it shows the checking account transaction with the correct amount, this is what it showed yesterday, but in addition, it shows a CC reminder for the wrong amount. However, I do NOT see that reminder in my CC account's Reminders section, instead, they both show in the checking account.
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Let me know if you want any screenshots of what I just mentioned
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Hello @EL1234,
To help keep this discussion on the issue at hand and easier to follow, let's try to avoid bringing in unrelated factors to maintain clarity and conciseness.
Thank you for confirming that it is missing from the Reminders carousel. To resolve this, you can modify the series to the next available day and then change it back to the original day. This should correct the problem afterward. Let us know how this goes!
-Coach Jon
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I'm not sure what unrelated factors you refer to, everything I mentioned is related to this exact issue. The fact that the reminders are changing by themselves only serves to complicate things. The issue now seems to be that the reminder on the side that belongs to my credit card account is showing in the carousel for my checking account instead of the credit card.
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I tried to edit the amount on the reminder that is showing in the wrong carousel, to see if changing it to the correct amount will also convince it to show in the right place.
But I got an error:
Before you continue...
- We did not find a matching transaction in the account Blue Cash Preferred. Click continue to create a manual transaction, or Cancel to abortSo I said no.
Then I tried changing the amount of the other reminder, the one that is showing on the checking account as it should be, to see if that would get it to create the correct reminder in the credit card side, but I got a different error:
Before you continue...
- You cannot create a transaction as a self-transfer. Your transaction will be saved as uncategorized.So something is certainly messed up!
I'm going to dismiss both of these reminders, and then edit the date on the series and see if that resolves things.
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Okay I dismissed one of the May 17 reminders and they both went away.
Then I edited the series and set the start date to May 17.
Now on the credit card I have two reminders for June 18 and one for July. None for May. Same on the checking account. I guess I'll just change the date for one of them to May.
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Seems to be good for now! The extra reminded looked like it was intended for May and just got confused about its date. I fixed that and everything looks correct. I'll definitely keep an eye on things and let you know if the issue comes back! Thanks for the debugging help.
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