Pending bank transactions no longer visible on Cash Accounts tab

Previously when having pending transaction in a bank cash account, there would be a new column showing up to indicate if it was a credit or debit, and the total. This is gone in my version (cloud). How do I get it back? It was very useful.

This feature disappeared sometime after 17.1.51. I am elevating this as a bug.

Instead of multiple columns, there is just one column called simply Balance.

When you click on the amount, you will see list of all receipts, payments & transfers posted to that cash account. There is new Status column instead to indicate whether transaction is cleared or still pending.

Pending transactions are automatically pushed to the top (just like it’s done with unpaid invoices). If you want to see balance of only cleared transactions (which should reflect your bank statement), then that would the the balance amount of the first transaction marked as cleared (in the case of this screenshot, that would be $11,621.62).

If you want to see total pending payments or total pending receipts, then this won’t show anywhere. The reason is that most users have only handful of pending transactions at any point of time (there are 3 in the screenshot) and even if they have more, I’m struggling to see the use-case why it would be desired to see such a total. Generally you really care about individual transactions and looking to clear them as soon as possible. Totals are irrelevant (as per my assumption but I’m open to discuss this further)

Overall, what I’m trying to achieve is to make the system more intuitive under Cash Accounts tab. Previously, if you had pending transaction, you had to go to pending column, mark transaction as cleared and the transaction would be gone from the list. This is something I was trying to avoid as you don’t clearly see where it went. Under new interface, editing pending transaction will bring you back to the original list of all transactions and you can see the transaction is now marked as cleared (instead of pending). In other words, there is just one list of all transactions and new column Status to indicate whether transaction is cleared or pending.

Hi @lubos, thanks for commenting. Let me clarify what I found useful. I have 8 cash accounts and appreciated that I could see which accounts had pending transactions. The way it works now is fine, what I am really missing is the visual cue. It was a super useful reminder to see which accounts had pending transactions as and investigate what to check/clear. Could you bring this back somehow, perhaps temporary while finding a suitable replacement or build a notification UI?

OK, so you are not really concerned about the total, you’d rather see the number of pending transactions for each cash account. Correct?

Yes, that’s correct. And that is a fine solution, something like a conditional column (like backorders)?

My feedback is quite different @lubos. When you introduced the pending columns, I thought that was a huge improvement. One could click the Cash Accounts tab and instantly know the full status of all accounts. It was a mini-dashboard for cash management and visibly made obvious how much money was available in each account. This knowledge could inform decisions, such as whether a debit card expenditure could be made from a checking account (requiring a cleared balance) versus drawing a written check and sending it by post (possibly allowing one to take advantage of a several-day float). This was particularly useful for transfers between accounts with different institutions, which might take many days to clear. (An example is payment of a credit card statement where the card issuer is not the same bank as the one where a checking account is maintained.) The previous display, with pending columns, actually made it unnecessary to use reconciliation statements unless a printed record was required.

With the change, the impression is that the so-called balance is fully available. But that might not be true. You might have more; you might have less. @whereskarlo says just the number of pending transactions would be acceptable. In my view, that information would be virtually useless. It is the amounts in pending status that are important.

I beg you to bring back the pending columns. This was a step backwards in usability.

LATER ADDITION: I didn’t mention that the new status column is a nice add-on, after you have drilled down on the balance, but not a good substitute for the pending columns.

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I would agree with this. The status column is a nice addition, but it doesn’t make up for the loss of the two pending columns and the cleared/actual balance columns …it was a great summary page/dashboard which easily allowed you to see the status of your different cash accounts. Please bring it back, as I’m now used to using this on the desktop version and am missing it on the server version. Thanks

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Another example of problems with the recent change is that before you can spend money, you need to drill down on the account balance to see what the available balance is. Formerly, you could tell that from the Cash Accounts summary screen–the same place where the Spend money button is. So the change necessitates separate check-and-return actions before money can be spent.

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The latest version (17.1.63) is bringing those columns back.

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Thank you for bringing back this column. I have a suggestion about this… Maybe instead of two columns of “Pending Withdrawals” and Pending Deposits" you could make just one column called “Pending Transactions”. I don’t know if someone is against this but for my usage, for example, I just want to see where are my pending transactions and I don’t really care if there are deposits or withdrawals. Maybe doing it all in one column you can simplify the visual effect on the Dashboard. As I said, I don’t know if someone is against this suggestion and they may have their reasons, but for the love of simple things I would like to have all transactions in just one extra column. Cheers!

The difficulty with combining pending deposits and withdrawals is that you would be forced into using positive and negative numbers. Then you have to decide which convention you are going to use: do you base it on debits and credits within Manager (which are frankly mysterious to many users) or on additions and subtractions to the cash account balance? If you don’t think this is an issue, take a tour through various tab registers, reports, and drill-downs and see how many different presentations there are of the same transaction already, depending on context. For that reason, some displays have already moved away from positives and negatives and towards labeled debits and credits.

The approach of separate columns for pending deposits and pending withdrawals is particularly useful for tracking progress of transfers between accounts at different institutions. @sulfuror, you have described a situation that is less than optimal and explained how you could live with it because your need is specific. But others have different needs. Now that we have the full solution back, let’s not give it up.

Well, I didn’t mean to start an issue. The suggestion is just because the columns were eliminated and maybe @lubos was trying to look for a simpler or cleaner way to present the pending transactions.

No issue. :relaxed: I think you are right that he was looking for a simpler presentation, and I am finding the new status column informative. I just don’t think it substitutes for the pending columns.