I can change some account types but not the others. Line of credit for example is a multi-purpose account. Different people may want to see it in different account buckets. Mine is always in loans and I cannot change that.
In general I find Emma flexible. I definitely love this. Why would you not allow changing account type of certain accounts?
btw… for a second I thought I’ve cracked the code. If I make the account hidden - change account option becomes visible.
I am curious why…
What’s the harm if somebody changes the type on a line of credit? Especially if this is no extra work for you. The option already exists. Hiding an already available option is extra work.
Example: I take 50K out of my credit line and I buy Tesla stocks. Not suggesting this is good financial decision right now. I will see +50K in my investments and -50K on the Loans. That’s busy. I would rather see zero. When the stock value will change - I will see if I am making money or loosing it.
I guess the point being: lines of credit can be used for very different reasons. We are spoiled users. We like when we are in control.
I would like to put my balance transfer credit card under Loans rather than Everyday. It does seem like a nice simple tweak. Maybe the new spaces feature will make this unnecessary
There is a reason. It’s got something to do with the different balances an account can have and how that changes based on account types.
On each account, banks generally give us a “posted balance” and an “available balance”.
Posted balance on any account type = how much you owe the bank or how much you are owed by the bank.
Available balance on current/checking/savings/investment accounts = like the posted balance, but more up-to-date as it includes pending transactions.
Available balance on credit cards/loans/line of credit = how much is available to you to borrow (example for a credit card: credit limit=1000, spent=200, available=800).
This difference in meaning of the balances means you can’t just take an account and its associated balances and change sections, because the context matters.
We used to have the option of changing whatever (a credit card could become a checking account), and the result was the following: users wrongly moving the accounts in “incompatible” sections, then not understanding why their balance looked wrong and uninstalling or complaining to customer support.
As a user it’s very easy to agree with these statements (who doesn’t like flexibility?) but as a product builder I believe that making “opinionated products” is the best way to build great products. The “extra work” of hiding some options pays off in the long run.
@antonio , Thank you for taking the time to explain it. Now it makes more sense to me.
“Opinionated product” vs “Flexibile” is a philosophical question.
I actually find Emma very flexible. In fact… Probably the reason I like certain feature in Emma is because I am in control how I use it and whether I use it at all.
Subscriptions, budget categories, tags, searches, hiding accounts, savings and investments types. These are all perfect examples.
It is where you start putting me in a box that I feel I am missing functionality. People are naturally resistant to change. We want the app to adjust to our needs.
But I understand technical limitations or difficulty to implement certain rules. I know prioritizing your backlog is difficult. Working on the right stuff vs spinning wheels trying to get a little feature perfect… It’s not always worth it.
Please, don’t shift off too far from being the most flexible app out there.
Emma already allows you to change the account type across these accounts (real accounts only)
From your explanation, it sounds like these should be compatible, but there’s no option to change a real credit card account to a loan account.
It makes sense that not every account type can be changed into every other account type, but why the restriction on credit cards being treated as loans?
@antonio
The balances explanation makes sense for normal accounts; but for manual accounts you only track one balance no? I’d argue it should be possible to switch between everyday/savings/investments types in that case.
People are naturally resistant to change. We want the app to adjust to our needs.