Editing pending transactions (category, notes, tags, etc)

Feedback & Ideas
1

I like that Emma provides the ability to change categories on transactions and add notes and tags. This really helps with spending tracking. However, you can’t do this whilst a transaction has pending status - which may last a day or more. Having to wait a day or two before these things can be added/edited blunts their usefulness, in my opinion. I will often forget to go back to transaction to change the category or add notes/tags a couple of days after it takes place.

Ideally I want to be able to do this relatively soon after a transaction takes place when the transaction is relatively fresh in my mind (e.g. on the same day as the transaction). Please provide the ability to change transaction category and add notes and tags whilst a transaction still has pending status.

13 Likes
2

Transactions change amount, reference and dates once they settle; so we can’t let you do any editing. :frowning:

3

I can imagine it would be difficult, but I suspect not impossible. Admittedly I don’t know what these things look like behind the scenes, but my guess is there would be enough common information to match a settled transaction with a previous pending transaction (and any notes, tags, etc that have been added to it).

4

The problem is we are not a bank, so we don’t have enough common information.

In this case, it would just be the transaction amount, so it’s really a tough guess.

It’s like we can put it in production and it works 5 out of 10. :smiley:

5

I also think this would be handy. I can often see stuff in the wrong category that I have to wait to fix

5 Likes
6

Interesting post on this topic in another thread. Worth having a link here for people reading this thread

7

Tbh I know little of how this works but as an end consumer removing the friction of having to backtrack so often would be a bonus.

How about if I can mark a transaction and when it switches out of pending I’ll receive a notification so I can easily access it and edit?

2 Likes
8

Love that idea. It’s typically only some transactions I want to edit (rather than every one) so would find it useful to flag these occasional transactions for notification once they have cleared. Would be a pragmatic stop-gap solution until the time comes when we can edit pending transactions.

9

Yes, so what we have in plan is to:

  1. Let you edit pending transactions.
  2. Notify when there is new stuff to look at.

We want to solve 1) really well, so we can do 2). This will improve the experience by 10x and make everyone happy.

4 Likes
10

Is this still on the agenda? New to Emma and finding some of my pending transactions that need reassigning to custom categories or splitting are getting lost when auto-categorised. If we can’t edit pending, maybe notifications when cleared or an (optional) ‘new’ category?

3 Likes
11

Hey @tom11, welcome to Emma!

It’s in our agenda, but a very big moonshot, which we have put on pause for now. :frowning:

12

Hi, thanks, enjoying the app so far! Found a good way to work around this for those interested - the ‘recent transaction’ view in the feed lists everything in date order with categories below prices. Probably enough for me actually!

2 Likes
13

One problem I am running into with pending transactions is Emma automatically excluding some and not excluding others that it ‘should‘ auto-exclude. 2 issues with this: 1) I can’t edit to re-include/exclude while pending despite Emma excluding them while pending and 2) Once cleared if I try to re-include they don’t appear in my recent transactions. Back to +++ for editing pending! If Emma can categorise/exclude pending then why can’t I! :smile:

14

Once you recategorise, do they show anywhere else like under the ‘Analytics’ tab?

15

They do. But i find recent transactions most useful as it’s clear how much I’ve spent in the last few days. Ideally once I’ve re-included they’d just work like any other transaction

16

@tom11 Welcome to the Emma Community.

You could use Emma Pro to categorise transactions in a custom category, e.g. “Follow Up”.

Then once or twice a week go into them and set the correct category / split.

I recently used Emma Rewards for Farewill and while I wait for the rewards from Emma to come in, I’ve put this transaction into a custom “Follow Up” category, so I know to eventually add this to the shared tab with my better half. If I add it now, it will be unfair when I get the reward and saves me manually reflecting this back later by memory. :slight_smile:

17

Hola folks,

I just started using Emma a few days ago, with just a Monzo current account and an Amex card. My experience so far with the app has been decent with some minor issues and one major issue which is related to the only reason I joined Emma, budgeting. Monzo does a stellar job at tracking all transactions and always keeping you instantly up to date on your total spending, regardless of whether the transaction has settled or not.

I got an Amex card last week and unfortunately, Monzo doesn’t support tracking expenses across multiple accounts yet, which is why I decided to join Emma.

Emma does an incredible job with the amount of flexibility it provides for customers to track, aggregate, and edit settled transactions across multiple accounts. But unfortunately, does a poor job at keeping the spending amount up to date by not including pending transactions in the spending figure till they settle, which often takes days.

I understand that editing pending transactions is quite a complex thing to support, mainly due to the issue caused by the lack of transparency/info provided by payment processors detailed here - but I believe simply aggregating their(pending transactions) total and adding that amount to the total spending figure should be quite trivial - unless I missed something

I understand that not everyone might want that, so maybe create a toggle which allows the feature to be turned on/off at the user’s discretion

What does everyone think? is it sensible? would you like it too? would that behavior cause any problems? @edoardomoreni @antonio
Let me know!

Cheerio

1 Like
18

Hey @glassofwotah :wave:

Welcome to the Emma Community :bear:

This has been raised a few times before - we’d like to make some changes but we’re just focussing on a few other big projects first! :rocket:

19

@edoardomoreni

This is very desirable. Let me challenge the believed complexity of this:

In my experience pending transactions don’t actually change much when they are posted. The vendor always stays the same. The amount may change. I don’t think it ever changes in my banks. The date will change. But the date does not really matter for budget assignment.

Hypothetical scenario 1: You let me change the budget category on a pending transaction. You save it in a pending table (in addition to your regular tables): Vendor, Amount, Date, New Category. In a few days the transaction is posted… The original transaction is gone (removed from your regular tables). The new transaction comes in as posted with the regular budget category (unrelated to the original transaction, different ID). You match the new transaction first to the pending table. If there is anything for this vendor, this exact amount and date >= pending date + 10 days – that’s a match – you grab the New Category from the Pending table and apply it to the new transaction. Remove record from the pending override table. I would suggest doing second select without amount. Only if the first select was unsuccessful.

Scenario 2: I made two transactions in the same store. Both are pending. I marked one as Shopping. The same story for the tables. If you do select on exact amount – Emma will find the one for shopping.

You can store tags, notes, receipts, exclusion flag, even split info in the pending table. The key is to have the vendor, the amount and the date (within the last 10 days) in a separate table for lookup.

Scenario 3: My wife bought a yoga mat when she was grocery shopping. Single receipt. Say $100. The mat is $35. I do a split of a hundred. It is saved in the pending table. When transaction is posted – Emma will find the pending override record by exact amount.

Scenario 4: I fill up my tank. Pay at the pump prior to filling. Credit card is pre-authorized for $200. I fill up only for $75. This is where the second select will find my override. I think my bank will only show me $75 pending. But I understand everyone’s bank is different.

I am sure if we think hard enough we can find a scenario where it won’t be able to find the override for pending transaction. But I think it will be pretty rare.

This feature seems very intuitive from the user perspective. We users are dumb. We don’t want to understand why we can change this transaction but not that transaction. It just seems odd.

I can buy anything at the grocery store nowadays. By the time my transaction is posted - I will not remember that I have bought new sneakers instead of my regular baguette.

For myself… I can probably estimate I would do overrides on pending transactions for maybe 5% of total transactions. Say it will work 9 times out of 10 (pessimistic). What is 10% of 5%? 0.5%. I think I am fine if Emma will miss my override once for 500 transactions. I probably will forget about it and won’t even notice. But I will be bragging at every corner about an awesome app that let’s me edit even a pending transaction.

Apologies for long post.

20

Seconded… I, too, would love to be able to edit a transaction as soon as it shows in my feed.
The pending status wait is a bit of a nuisances as one has to remember to go back to the list.
:nerd_face: