Who Is Struggling With Their Cards?

FamZoo family members often struggle with their cards. Not surprising. Young kids are just learning the financial ropes and discovering the 11 important numbers they need to know. Teenagers inadvertently sign up for subscription services they can’t afford. Elderly family members have senior moments.

Are your family members struggling with their cards? When? Why? Where?

Unless you have activity alerts enabled, you may not know for sure. Even if you do, you may want to collect a handy summary report for a family finance meeting.

Here’s how to capture a quick struggle snapshot across the whole family:

1. Sign in to FamZoo as the parent. Note: family members in the child role can do everything mentioned below as well, but they’ll only see their own accounts and transactions.
2. In the Desktop UI, select Bank ⟩ Accounts to see the list of accounts in your family.
3. Click in the Search field along the top of the listing and press the Enter key. Or, click on Download in the left hand sidebar.

You’ll land on the Search Transactions screen. By default, the search results include all of the transactions across all of the accounts in your family.

Let’s narrow the search results to just declined transactions:

1. Click on the Status column heading.
2. Select Declined under Filter. If Declined is not an option, congratulations! Your family has never had a declined transaction! You’re done. The rest of us can keep reading... 😉

The search results will now show only declined transactions with the oldest ones appearing first.

Want to see the most recent declined transactions instead?

1. Click on the Date column heading.
2. Click on the down arrow button.

Now, you’ll see the most recent declined transactions first.

Want to narrow the results to a specific time frame?

1. Click on the Date column heading.
2. Choose one of the handy default ranges under Filter like Last Week, Last Month, or Last Year.
3. Alternatively, if you want a very precise date range, you can fill in the Start Date and End Date fields in the section above the results.

Want to know all of the precise details about a declined transaction? The reason for the decline? The remedy? The merchant category? How the card was entered? The security level of the entry mode? The attempted transaction amount? Just click on the Declined link in the Status column for the transaction. Up pops the Transaction Detail dialog with all the specifics.

Would you like to see the reason for each decline along with the attempted purchase amount displayed right there in the search results without having to click on each individual transaction?

1. Click on the Actions button to the right of the Search button above the search results.
2. Choose the Select Columns menu entry.
3. Select Decline Message in the Do Not Display box and click on the right arrow button to move it over to the Display in Report box.
4. Do the same for Decline Amount.
5. To change the display order of a column, select it in the Display in Report box, and use the arrow buttons on the right to move it relative to the other displayed columns.
6. To hide an undesired column, like Amount which is always zero for a declined transaction, select it in the Display in Report box, and click the left arrow button to move it to the Do Not Display box.
7. Click the Apply button.

Now the decline reasons and amounts are conveniently visible at a glance in the search results.

Would you like to see the declines grouped neatly into separate sections for each card in the family?

1. Click on the Account column heading.
2. Click on the Control Break button. (It has four stacked horizontal lines — a long line followed by three short lines beneath it.)

Now, you can easily see at a glance who is struggling with their cards and who isn’t.

Would you like to download a nice PDF version of the report to print, save, or email to the family?

1. Click on the Download link to the right above the search results.
2. Select PDF for the report format.
3. Click the Download button.

Now, you’re ready to hold that family financial coaching meeting. Review the struggle snapshot report with family members, and get things back on track.