mikes1531
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Post by mikes1531 on Jan 3, 2017 0:07:24 GMT
I was reviewing my transaction statement after the December interest was added, and I've realised that my statement has a serious problem with the numbers in the Balance column. (There may be other issues that I haven't discovered.) I first realised there was a problem when I saw my balance at the end of 30/Dec was negative, when I knew it shouldn't have been (because I had sold enough parts that day to make my balance positive).
I tried comparing my online statement with the downloaded data, but that was hopeless because the entries in those two views of what should be the same data are not in the same order!
What I did manage to spot is that the Balance data is not consistent from one page to the next. This has nothing to do with the interest credits because the error exists in pages from before the interest was added. For example, the top line on Page P of my transactions shows my Balance to be -£132.58 (I was selling parts to clear a negative balance at the time). The bottom line of the previous page (Page P-1) shows my next transaction to be the sale of a £100 loan part. From that I would expect my balance on that line to show as -£32.58, but it doesn't. It shows the balance after that £100 part sale to be -£45.17!
I have similar discrepancies throughout my statement. If I take my balance from the top line of Page X and add the transaction at the bottom of Page X-1 the result is different from what's shown at the bottom of Page X-1.
Does anyone else have similar discrepancies?
On a possibly related point, I've noticed that the Transactions data now is spread over multiple pages, with 50 entries per page, whereas ISTM that it used to be on a single page. Am I misremembering how it used to be? If not, does anyone know when the display was changed? Might this problem have been introduced at the time of the change?
I find having the data spread over many pages to be a real problem for me because I can't search my transactions effectively. Am I the only one who would like to have control over the number of transactions displayed per page? Some people may prefer 50 entries per page, and I don't mind if they can have that -- as long as I can have all my transactions on a single page if I prefer that.
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Post by andygod1 on Jan 3, 2017 0:21:29 GMT
I just keep an eye on the overall balance on the left in the green header at the top. I know what that should be and i dont delve too much into the finer details.
the overall balance has always been correct for me and the interest has always been about right for me, no matter how many loans i sell and buy, i know exactly what should be in my account.
so far no problems.
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ilmoro
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'Wondering which of the bu***rs to blame, and watching for pigs on the wing.' - Pink Floyd
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Post by ilmoro on Jan 3, 2017 0:50:29 GMT
I was reviewing my transaction statement after the December interest was added, and I've realised that my statement has a serious problem with the numbers in the Balance column. (There may be other issues that I haven't discovered.) I first realised there was a problem when I saw my balance at the end of 30/Dec was negative, when I knew it shouldn't have been (because I had sold enough parts that day to make my balance positive). I tried comparing my online statement with the downloaded data, but that was hopeless because the entries in those two views of what should be the same data are not in the same order! What I did manage to spot is that the Balance data is not consistent from one page to the next. This has nothing to do with the interest credits because the error exists in pages from before the interest was added. For example, the top line on Page P of my transactions shows my Balance to be -£132.58 (I was selling parts to clear a negative balance at the time). The bottom line of the previous page (Page P-1) shows my next transaction to be the sale of a £100 loan part. From that I would expect my balance on that line to show as -£32.58, but it doesn't. It shows the balance after that £100 part sale to be -£45.17! I have similar discrepancies throughout my statement. If I take my balance from the top line of Page X and add the transaction at the bottom of Page X-1 the result is different from what's shown at the bottom of Page X-1. Does anyone else have similar discrepancies? On a possibly related point, I've noticed that the Transactions data now is spread over multiple pages, with 50 entries per page, whereas ISTM that it used to be on a single page. Am I misremembering how it used to be? If not, does anyone know when the display was changed? Might this problem have been introduced at the time of the change? I find having the data spread over many pages to be a real problem for me because I can't search my transactions effectively. Am I the only one who would like to have control over the number of transactions displayed per page? Some people may prefer 50 entries per page, and I don't mind if they can have that -- as long as I can have all my transactions on a single page if I prefer that. Same issue here. Balance drops by £20 switching from one page 2 to page 1. Yes, it did all used to be a continuous list no matter how many months you set the display to. Changed within the last month as I manually entered interest data into an accounts program in Nov & it was all one sheet then. My balance is what I would expect it to be but adding up the individidual interest payments makes it £15 light so there must be an discrepancy in the entires somewhere. I need to go through it in detail but wont have time for a day of so. Edit just gone back a few months, my account statement doesnt once show a balance of zero whereas in reality it is nearly always at zero except when interest is paid/loans launch.
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twoheads
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Programming
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Post by twoheads on Jan 3, 2017 8:46:04 GMT
mikes1531,
I have a similar issue when viewing my transactions on the website. The pages do not match up and the information is out of sequence. All my interest payments are out of sequence if I view my transactions online using the website.
This is the first time I have noticed this problem because I simply do not use the online view. Instead I always set the date range to encompass my entire transaction history and download the whole lot to excel. The downloaded version, when opened in Excel, does not seem to have any issues that I have seen. It has always (for me at least) been consistent with my loan parts.
In the downloaded version, there is only one 'page' and the sequence of transactions is, for me, always correct. My spreadsheet alerts me if there is any discrepancy.
I suggest that you use the downloaded version as the online view has issues.
savingstream, this seems to be a software issue: transaction sequencing seems to be incorrect in the online view (certainly for interest payments, maybe more). This makes the pagination appear to be incorrect but I think this is due to the incorrect sequence. For parts of my history with only regular transactions (funding and selling) the transaction sequence and pagination looks okay (cursory glance only).
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mikes1531
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Post by mikes1531 on Jan 3, 2017 22:59:06 GMT
For parts of my history with only regular transactions (funding and selling) the transaction sequence and pagination looks okay (cursory glance only). I noticed this problem when reviewing the transaction pages related to the December interest credits, but I've subsequently looked back even further and the error exists even when the transactions don't involve interest. I can't count on savingstream responding here, so I guess I'll have to send them an email. There's a small issue in that any examples with reference to specific transactions that go over a page boundary cease to be an example of the problem as soon as there's another entry in my transaction list.  I'll report back here when I get a reply from SS, presuming I do get one.
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sl75
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Post by sl75 on Jan 5, 2017 10:38:05 GMT
FWIW I'm not seeing either of the problems mentioned here... does that mean it was fixed before I saw it, or that it's only affecting some accounts?
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spiral
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Post by spiral on Jan 5, 2017 10:52:30 GMT
I tried to get to the bottom of this yesterday but found nothing I could add so didn't post.
FWIW I viewed 3 pages, pages 1 and 3 were correct but every balance on page 2 was out by £17.79.
I tried to see what I could equate to 17.79 on either page 2 or 3 (totals or percentages of subgroups) but could find nothing.
Edit: After seeing subsequent posts, mine reconciles correctly too now.
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twoheads
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Programming
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Post by twoheads on Jan 5, 2017 11:00:01 GMT
FWIW I'm not seeing either of the problems mentioned here... does that mean it was fixed before I saw it, or that it's only affecting some accounts? You're right. On looking today, the transactions are ordered and paginated correctly with the balances matching across pages.
I'm guessing that it's a phenomenon caused by the interest run.
SS insert the interest, backdated into the transaction history. I.e. they do the run on the 1st of the month but insert the interest payments so that they appear in the transactions for the last day of the previous month... thus before any transactions already made on the 1st. EDIT: In fact, on my account, the interest payments appear as the earliest transactions in the last day of the month, preceding all other transactions for the day.
It is possible that a temporary negative balance that you may have run up by early buying on the 1st, may never appear in your final transaction log because the interest payments are inserted before your purchases.
I am assuming that the reordering of transactions is time consuming and that downloading transaction history during this process causes the online view of the transactions to be confused.
Interestingly, the download to Excel does not suffer this problem.
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twoheads
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Post by twoheads on Jan 8, 2017 17:49:51 GMT
Stranger still...
When I downloaded my entire transaction list today I found that several historical transactions (from months back) had been reordered.
My balance was unchanged and the various transaction amounts were all equal but the order was changed which means that the balances at various intermediate times are sometimes different. In particular, the interest payment sequence for my October and November interest has completely changed. Also a few other transactions have been reordered but when this has happened the reordered transactions are always very close together in time: usually a batch of sales of small loan parts of some property or other which would all have occurred within a minute of each other.
Also, two November interest payments were completely removed, both were for £0.00 so it makes no difference. It is still a liitle odd that previously they were in my statement and now they're gone!
I think that this can only be because the SS transaction log is only accurate to the nearest minute. I also think that all interest payments for a month are given the same time and date (I'm guessing precisely 12am at the very start of the last day of the month). These are complete guesses on my part but would explain the facts.
So, I can make a guess at the reason for resequencing of historical transactions here: I think that historical transactions are sometimes reordered (interest run?, end of year? possibly other times). They are ordered by their stored date and when dates and times of two transactions are equal then, with many common sorting algorithms the order becomes arbitrary. Many sort algorithms (e.g. quick sort) do not preserve the sequence when sorting items which are equal. Other sorts (e.g. the superior merge sort are called stable sorts and these preserve the order of items which are considered equal). Most common languages use quick sort as their default sorting mechanism. Thus when dates and times of transactions are equal, then sometimes they are reordered by the SS transaction sorting algorithm.
Why is merge sort superior? Mostly due to efficiency. The efficiency of quick sort is effectively random and depends on the initial sequence. Usually it's very fast (near to best possible) but sometimes it's efficiency can be terrible although this is statistically very unlikely. Merge sort always runs at optimum efficiency and that efficiency is equivalent to the best possible case for quick sort. Also, merge sort is stable, preserving the sequence of items considered equal in the sort order whereas quick sort will reorder items which are considered equal (the reordering looks random although in fact it is predictable if you know the precise details of the quick sort algorithm used).
Quick sort is the common choice because of the history of computer science. Merge sort is more efficient but requires some temporary extra memory to run. Quick sort does not require extra storage. Therefore, in days of old, when knights were bold and memory was expensive (and in short supply), everyone was taught quick sort. Modern languages still tend to use it as the sort of choice.
End of computer science lesson - thank you for reading!
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