How to stop future income reminders without deleting all history?

theeaglesnestco

I have a monthly income reminder for a service I was providing someone that has now run its course. I want to remove all future entries in my checking ledger so they don't keep calculating towards my balance, but if I delete the reminder, it deletes ALL deposits going back to the beginning. When I first tried this, it completely messed up my ledger as it removed 23 deposits and put me thousands in the red. With no undo feature in the app, I had to restore from an older backup which was not fun. Lesson learned on that front.

So, how do you stop or otherwise remove the upcoming reminders without deleting all of its associated history? The only quasi-answer I've seen from my forum searches is to edit the frequency of the reminder from monthly to yearly, then once a year, skip the reminder. That seems like a pretty flawed process and I am hoping there is something a bit cleaner than that. Thanks in advance to anyone with the solution.

Boatnmaniac

I want to remove all future entries in my checking ledger so they don't keep calculating towards my balance, but if I delete the reminder, it deletes ALL deposits going back to the beginning. When I first tried this, it completely messed up my ledger as it removed 23 deposits and put me thousands in the red.

I have never heard of deleting a recurring reminder deletes all the historical transactions before. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen any posts by others stating that they have experienced that.

I have deleted many recurring reminders over the years and have never experienced what happened to you. When I've wanted to delete recurring reminders I have done that by one of 2 methods:

1. When I want to delete the reminder effective immediately: Edit this instance and all future instances > Delete > OK.
2. When I want to delete the reminder effective with a future date: Edit this instance and all future instances > Due next on…Change > select the day after the last reminder due date or select the number of remaining reminders.

These processes have always worked flawlessly for me. Never in the many times over many years that I have done this have I lost any transactions history for previously entered reminders. The historical reminders themselves will no longer be shown in the Reminders display but the historical transactions created by those reminders should still exist in the register.

What you might want to do is to first backup your data file. Then try deleting the recurring reminder via one of the methods listed above. Then look in the register or pull up a transactions report to confirm that the historical transaction remain intact. If there is an issue like you had described you can simply restore that backup file you created right beforehand.

Let me know what happened.

Boatnmaniac

@theeaglesnestco - I'm glad to hear that option #2 did what you wanted it to do.

And, yes, I know that option #1 will delete the all of the reminder history but I had thought you meant that it was deleting the transactions history which should never be happening.

I am curious, though, about how deleting the reminders history affects your ledger balance. Simply deleting the reminders history should not be affecting the account register balance (the ledger?) at all provided those historical reminders had been previously entered into the account register as actual transactions. Were the historical reminders not actually previously entered into the account register?

Boatnmaniac

I want to remove all future entries in my checking ledger so they don't keep calculating towards my balance, but if I delete the reminder, it deletes ALL deposits going back to the beginning. When I first tried this, it completely messed up my ledger as it removed 23 deposits and put me thousands in the red.

I have never heard of deleting a recurring reminder deletes all the historical transactions before. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen any posts by others stating that they have experienced that.

I have deleted many recurring reminders over the years and have never experienced what happened to you. When I've wanted to delete recurring reminders I have done that by one of 2 methods:

1. When I want to delete the reminder effective immediately: Edit this instance and all future instances > Delete > OK.
2. When I want to delete the reminder effective with a future date: Edit this instance and all future instances > Due next on…Change > select the day after the last reminder due date or select the number of remaining reminders.

These processes have always worked flawlessly for me. Never in the many times over many years that I have done this have I lost any transactions history for previously entered reminders. The historical reminders themselves will no longer be shown in the Reminders display but the historical transactions created by those reminders should still exist in the register.

What you might want to do is to first backup your data file. Then try deleting the recurring reminder via one of the methods listed above. Then look in the register or pull up a transactions report to confirm that the historical transaction remain intact. If there is an issue like you had described you can simply restore that backup file you created right beforehand.

Let me know what happened.

mshiggins

Is it a paycheck reminder?

theeaglesnestco

@mshiggins - no, it is just a normal income reminder that I created (right click on a deposit downloaded from my bank > "add reminder")

@Boatnmaniac - the first method deletes all my reminder history, affecting my ledger balance. I am going to do a backup and try your second method, thanks for the suggestion. Hoping this one works. EDIT- that worked! Thanks @Boatnmaniac!! I was driving myself crazy with this and didn't even think to do something this straightforward :)

Boatnmaniac

@theeaglesnestco - I'm glad to hear that option #2 did what you wanted it to do.

And, yes, I know that option #1 will delete the all of the reminder history but I had thought you meant that it was deleting the transactions history which should never be happening.

I am curious, though, about how deleting the reminders history affects your ledger balance. Simply deleting the reminders history should not be affecting the account register balance (the ledger?) at all provided those historical reminders had been previously entered into the account register as actual transactions. Were the historical reminders not actually previously entered into the account register?

theeaglesnestco

You know what, that might have been the root cause of this - the reminders were not manually entered each month, leaving them as reminders (past due, at that) and not transactions, but these reminders still contributed towards my balance each month, so I probably just forgot to enter them and left them alone.

I seem to remember that at one point reminders would appear in italic or bold font, visually reminding you to enter them. Could be mistaken, but that would make it easier to remember that a particular transaction needs to be entered as opposed to one that is automatically downloaded/entered. Or I just need to have a better memory I guess ;)

At any rate the mystery is solved and thanks again for your help.