It seems I can no longer change the category of a “Returned for X” Flex cash return without it also changing the category of the payment. I like to do this since otherwise “trends” ends up being a bit useless. I want to track how much I’ve spent on eating out this month but trends won’t show a drop in cash left, as £20 was just added and just removed with the flex payment.
I used to just change the flex payment to the transfer category and then my remaining budget on trends would drop by £20 as it should. Now it will simultaneously change the original card payment as well to “transfers” without telling me it’s done this.
I assume this is a bug but I’m not sure. Is this an intended feature by any chance?
Thanks for your reply Boris. I really think it would be better if this didn’t happen. In fact I think Flex refunds should always be categorised as transfers and nothing else by default.
I don’t understand how this is supposed to work alongside the new trends feature now, since there is no way for my “Left to spend” to drop when I make a flex payment. If I’m trying to stick to a budget and want to use trends to keep an eye on it, it’s impossible now. Am I misusing or misunderstanding this feature?
I suppose I could just use the flex card directly, but then IIRC transactions don’t show up in the search history. So it’s a trade off either way.
I have to agree with Keeyan this is really awkward as the two transactions contra each other which makes trends useless. What are the thoughts behind this change?
Something doesn’t sound right there… let’s get to the bottom of it.
When you’ve added Flex to Trends you should see:
-£75 current account - initial purchase on the current account
+£75 current account - refund when moving a purchase to Flex
-£75 Flex - the purchase now in Flex
All will appear in the same category, so your balance should go down as you expect:
Thanks for your reply. However, I can’t seem to see Flex as an option in any of the trends tabs. Specifically I’m looking at the targets. Sorry I confused the terminology and said trends when I meant targets in my original post. Although when checking any of the “Balance” “Spending” or “Target” I have the option for including pots, my main account and OpenBanking accounts, but not for Flex, so it doesn’t show up the way you say. When I checked in the spending for a custom category now, it shows money returned by flex and the initial payment which cancel each other out, but nothing more.
I’m on Android with the new “Overview” labs feature on, if that’s relevant.
Ah that’s it! I wasn’t aware of that option in labs. Now that I’ve enabled that as well, the targets seem much more reasonable (after I undid some of my older category changes).
Thanks for your help. Hopefully this feature can be fully released before anyone else gets confused
Odd. Is ‘Flex in Trends’ on in labs too?
