Our team has been hard at work implementing some new features and refining some existing experiences. As you will see some of these features have been requested for a while and I’m happy to deliver them. All of these features we plan on releasing in our forthcoming Banktivity 9.5. We expect to release this version by the end of this summer.
Delete Means Delete
Since we first introduced Direct Access for bank connections over a decade ago, there has been a peculiar behavior. Many of you have probably noticed it. That is, if you deleted a transaction that was recently downloaded via Direct Access, it would come back the next time you refreshed your accounts. This original implementation was by design with the thinking that the transactions from the bank are “the truth”. Now, after many years of experience managing bank connections we’ve learned about the mistakes that can sometimes make it into your Banktivity document. So with Banktivity 9.5, when you delete a transaction that was imported via Direct Access, it won’t return the next time you refresh your account. That is, delete really means delete now*.
* We are providing a way to override this functionality in case you deleted something by accident and you want it to come back.
Auto-Categorize Investment Income Transactions
This should be a popular feature for our customers that track investments in Banktivity. Here is the typical workflow now:
- You download/import investment transactions
- Every dividend transaction across every account is uncategorized
- You hunt down every uncategorized transaction and apply your preferred category like, “Investment Income”
Now with Banktivity 9.5 you can set a default investment income category at the account level. This category is automatically set the first time you edit an investment income transaction and apply a category. Then subsequent imports will automatically apply the category. If you don’t want this behavior, you can explicitly set the category to “none” at the account level and subsequent imports will remain uncategorized.
You can set the investment income category on Mac, iPad or iPhone and the setting will sync across platforms.
Apple Card Import
For those that have Apple’s credit card and iPhone, you will now be able to import your Apple Card transactions. This has been made possible by a recent change Apple made to its frameworks. This process will only work on iPhone, because that is the only device (at least at the time of this writing) that supports viewing transactions in Apple Card via the Wallet app. The good news is the way we’ve implemented it will make it fairly easy to enable this to work on other devices if Apple ends up supporting Apple Card transactions via Wallet on other devices.
Plaid Connections for More People
I’m happy to report that Banktivity 9.5 supports Plaid connections for all customers. This means you won’t have to go through any extra hoops to set up connections via Plaid (up until now you had to enable a specific Setting). Of course, we are also continuing to support connecting with Yodlee. Overall, this is a great improvement to our Direct Access technology and ultimately should mean more connections working, more often.
Conclusions
We are happy to get you these features that we know you’ll love. Please note, we haven’t stopped here. We are still hard at work on making sure our app shines into the future and remains a good citizen on Apple’s platforms. We have other good features and improvements coming, but I’ll save a discussion of those for the future.
- Coming soon: Banktivity 9.5 - July 19, 2024
- Continuing Investments in Direct Access - February 26, 2024
- Banktivity 9: The Little Changes - September 8, 2023
A small point, however a change I would like to see is in “Transaction Type”. I like many others have numerous accounts. I currently have 12 accounts varying from Credit Cards, Brokerage, CMA, Mortgage, Auto Loans, IRA’s, etc. When I go to enter a new transaction into a specific account I invariably have to change the Transaction Type. It would be very helpful if I could select a default Transaction Type for each account at the account level.
I’ve been using Banktivity for 10 years now, and I just have to say how impressed I am with their commitment to excellence. The team is incredibly attentive to bugs and defects, ensuring that any issues are addressed promptly and effectively. What’s even more impressive is their ongoing innovation—Banktivity continues to evolve and improve, always introducing new features that enhance the user experience. Kudos to the entire team for their dedication and hard work!