Hey everyone, weāre iterating on our account balances based on some feedback weāve had. Currently we donāt display the breakdown of cash very well, so weāre trying to improve this and also weāll have a drill-down to explanations of what they mean (for anyone who is unfamiliar).
The question I have is in this screenshot, would you expect to see a total cash balance including your reserved cash (money āreservedā for the basic/batch orders that are pending) or just see your available cash i.e. that which you can invest or withdraw.
Hereās a poll, because voting is cool folks , feel free to comment below though if you have any questions or strong opinions on this.
Since Iām unable to use the reserved cash, including it in the balance doesnāt seem like āactionableā information to me. Iād rather focus on how much I have available to invest.
I personally think it is rather similar to bank transactions. I never liked seeing the money as āavailableā when I have spent something and it was not yet settled. Similarly with Freetrade, if trades will be settling T + 2 days, I would not want to be mislead by the ānominal cashā when making investment decisions.
One thing I should have mentioned is that although itās reserved itās not really gone anywhere yet as the trade hasnāt taken place. You can also cancel basic orders therefore making this cash amount available again.
Agreed with @anon2636484. If you pressed the āBuy for freeā button, in your own little world you already own the share. Yes, you still can cancel the transaction until the set deadline, but if you lurk for something else to buy, you probably would be inclined to see the remaining balance assuming what you bought will settle.
Definitely share Alexās and Vladās initial sentiments. Thereās probably some scope for confusion, and unnecessary customer service interactions if users misunderstand balances as being available when they are not? āI canāt place this trade?! Iād better get onto COps at onceā
That being said, having a drilldownable list of your actual cash position is important.
Couple of questions:
If I tap āUnsettled Cashā, āReserved Cashā, āWithdrawable Cashā what happens? - Could it be useful to provide a list of pending trades, pending settlements from each ābalanceā?
Would it be useful to have a ācash available to investā balance? Whilst retaining the other balances as it shows your actual cash position and goes some way to explaining the mechanics of the transaction process. If that makes sense?
Slightly off topic but related: If the market moves upwards before the trade is placed, and you donāt have enough available funds to cover, what happens? Does available cash reflect movements in the price of the security?
Hey @CTE, thanks for this very insightful. Tapping the cash amounts presents a view with an explanation of that cash balance, I definitely want to show youāre pending trades when you tap reserved but hadnāt considered showing trades pending settlement, fair shout. The āAvailable cashā is your available to invest balance, maybe it requires a clearer label or potentially the drill-down explanation would be enough?
off-topic: If you have enough available funds then youāll get the same number of shares albeit at slightly higher price. If you donāt have enough we reduce the number of shares youāll get to what you can afford.
@Vlad it is our intention to send a push notification but this may not be the case on launch. It will actually be quite hard for this to happen though so itās an edge case really. Weāre just providing a better experience than killing the order altogether.
Thanks for detail @Freetrade_Team_Design! Iām curious to know if anyone else thinks thereās utility in having lists of pending trade and settlements relating to each balance?
Sorry, this is essentially what I meant, in so far as making it 100% explicit that itās cash available to invest. Now whether thatās detail for a drill down or a a super explict labelā¦brain clunking
Maybe another question is, what should the headline cash balance be? Total, available to invest? Orā¦?
No worries, itās keeping my brain ticking over in this heat!
Yes, and I think this actually frames this whole topic more clearly (thanks ). Essentially we have to show your total cash position somewhere but I think in terms of what the headline value should be, available to invest might be the better/clearer figure and then show total cash more nominally in the list.
Re what to show I have the same reaction as the others - show available balance only. Once an investment is committed, the money should be hidden. Yes you can cancel certain investments, but Iād expect to see the money back in the account only if cancelled - that it is in limbo for a day in the account behind the scenes is an implementation detail that you donāt need to leak to users.
Iād expect something like:
Cash Available Ā£100
Pending investments Ā£50
Wouldnāt really mind if Pending wasnāt there as once the money is committed it is gone in my mind. I find labels like Reserved and Unsettled pretty inscrutable personally, would prefer plainer language labels - like the idea of a ? though to fully explain.
I assumed at first this account screen is tied to one account (an ISA for example). Seems weird it says āAccountā at the top and on a tab. Looking at your tabs it looks worryingly like you have an āAccountā tab separate from the Portfolio (which I assume will eventually contain all accounts), how are you going to reconcile that with Cash held in an ISA, Cash held in a SIPP etc? Unless Iāve misunderstood Iām not sure I want this separate staging area for cash at all - cash goes into separate accounts (SIPP, ISA, GIA), and is held there pending investment (at least in my head as a client, but also legally it makes a difference which account it is in - withdrawal and deposit rules differ).
@Freetrade_Team_Design love it! Agree with @CTE, it would be nice to see the unsettle cash as a sub-heading as you have it here; transparency is the name of the game. I think you got it visually, and you might just be worried about the naming. great work!
Sorry if I am not answering your question directly but I see the account ātabā differently.
The account page, in my humble opinion, should show your the current balance and the history of all your transactions.
Similarly to bank apps (even the most modern), a trading app, for me, should show the history of all you transactions. This way the user does not get lost among what is pending/reserved/whatever.
For example, if you make a bank transfer in a banking application (at least in those I am using) you donāt see it as pending - you see it in your transactions history and you also see a change in your account balance.
Just to round this conversation off, thereās been some really helpful input here so thank you very much. We have iterated pretty fast on this one as we need to concentrate our efforts on the thing you all want .
Thereās an update below of the wires that we narrowed down to (there were many more versions!) and the visuals that are now being finalised. We decided to go with your āavailable to investā amount as the headline figure as here in your account thatās whatās important, then showing the breakdown of your balances with links to descriptions via a bottom sheet component.
I can totally see what some of you are saying above but you will actually see most of the mentioned information in your portfolio aka your home screen, which is where youāll have all your holdings, see your total cash balance and your true total portfolio value.
, feel free to comment below though if you have any questions or strong opinions on this.
). Essentially we have to show your total cash position somewhere but I think in terms of what the headline value should be, available to invest might be the better/clearer figure and then show total cash more nominally in the list.
great work! 
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