Pending transactions have the same issues as before

IRGang

I once again have disabled pending transactions because the same problems that make the developers turn this feature off before (last or year before) are there. Duplicate transactions are back messing up balances. One would naively think paying $70/year for product assures a customer to receive a "well-tested" product but alas, no hope there.

RalphC

I am not experiencing any issues with Pending Transactions.

Pedro504

I have multiple Bank of America accounts with Pending Transactions. No issues.

Chris_QPW

@IRGang You can use the pending transactions feature if you just turn off the part of it that affects the balances.

Overall, I see much less complaints about problem with the pending transactions feature than I did for the other two attempts, but there is a basic flaw in the "balances" that I'm not sure how they can ever fix, one has to either live with it, or turn off the balances pending transactions feature.

This will affect people that are pre-entering transactions the most. Note that by the very nature of fact that the balances can only be affected if the pending transactions are in the register this doesn't apply to people that aren't using the automatic transaction entry mode because their pending transactions will be in the Pending Transactions tab at the bottom of the register and not affect the balance of the register.

Say you pre-enter a given transaction. It will be in the register red pencil status/uncleared. Next you do One Step Update and get this transaction as a pending transaction. It will be in the register as a separate transaction with the status of pending. You now have a duplicate transaction. The pending transaction isn't going to be matched to the pre-entered one, because it hasn't cleared the financial institution yet, and could be reversed. When it clears all of this will be resolved, the pending transaction will be removed, the cleared downloaded transaction will match to the pre-entered one and you will have one transaction. But in the meantime, you will have a duplicate transaction(s).

Another slightly different scenario that I see is with transfers and memorized payees (or reminders for a transfer will do the same). I have a memorized payee setup for my credit card payment. When the payment comes in the "category" is a transfer from the checking account. It takes another day or two for it to show up in the checking account, but that means that transfer has already recorded that expense in the checking account. And for about a 1/2 day before it clears there will be the pending transaction.

To totally avoid this situation, one would have to use automatic transfer detection so that nothing is pre-entered or like I said at the beginning turn off the option to affect the balances.

miklk

Working perfect for me this time mainly with BofA.

Based on the very small number of complaints, I suspect it may work for most.

If it doesn't work with some FIS, I would suggest reporting it and turn it off after you have made sure your option selections are correct.

Also, if you have automatic download into register, you may want to turn that off to use the C2R area with the pending tab as it is less confusing.

Chris_QPW

Just so people can see what is being discussed I purposely pre-entered this transaction that I knew was pending:

And here is what it looks like if it turn off:

Boatnmaniac

@IRGang - I, too, have not experienced any issues with pending transactions. In fact, I've been pleasantly surprised to see how well it has been working. I have pending transactions set up with Fidelity Rewards credit card, Elan Financial Services, US Bank, ATFCU, PayPal, Sears Mastercard, Chase Visa, Wells Fargo, Bremer Bank, Cap One credit card PNC Bank.

The only thing I don't like is that I needed to turn off auto reconcile so newly downloaded transactions would retain the Cleared status making it easier for me to identify them so any needed edits can be made before reconciling them.

Did the duplicate transactions issue you experienced occur with just one of your financial institutions or with more than one? Which financial institution(s) did you have this issue with?