Ability to see a Total for all Planned Spending Items (Original & Current) [edited]

rosalynraelyn
rosalynraelyn Member ✭✭
edited March 13 in Feature Requests
I absolutely LOVE the planned spending feature. It's really helped me to track how I'm spending toward my budget throughout the month and adjust according. For reference, I currently track all discretionary spending categories in planned spending as a budget zero.

With that said, I was hoping it would be possible to see what the original planned spending total is in addition to the current. Right now, if I track my spending by category and I overspend in one area (i.e. groceries) but I'm still under-budget for spending overall, it only shows me my new total with the overspent category. I'd like to be able to see the original amount and the actual amount (ex. $1200 spent of $1000).
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Comments

  • Coach Natalie
    Coach Natalie Administrator, Moderator admin
    Hello @rosalynraelyn,

    Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback with us!

    I have gone ahead and turned this into an Idea post so that other Users can vote on it, and our Product Team can review it. Please be sure to add your vote as well! :smiley:

    Thank you,

    Coach Natalie

    -Coach Natalie

  • Phee
    Phee Member
    Yes, I agree.  I have to manually add up what's "Left" by Category to get a picture of how I'm tracking to my planned spending for the month, versus a quick overall sum of planned versus actuals (month to date). Otherwise, it's a great feature.
  • chimoe
    chimoe Member
    +1 for this feature.  much needed!
  • DannyB
    DannyB Superuser ✭✭✭✭✭
    I agree this would be a helpful feature.
    Danny
    Simplifi user since 01/22
    Budget: a mathematical confirmation of your suspicions.” ~A.A. Latimer
  • Lake
    Lake Member

    I love the spending plan. It’s one of my favorite features that Simplifi has that other budgeting apps don’t have. However, it’s difficult to see how much money you have remaining of your allocated amount other than adding up the amount from each category, which is tedious and time-consuming. It would be great to have a “overall spending” bar under the “planned spending” section of the spending plan. This would allow you to see how much money you have remaining across all categories that you have allocated money towards for the month. This would let you see how you’re spending is going.

  • Agreed. I am new to Simplifi and this is one of the first things I am looking for.

    My workaround was to create a single "Watchlist" containing all the categories I have in planned spending. That shows me a totals spent, projected and target.

    Hope this helps in the meantime.

  • Pchamb1998
    Pchamb1998 Member ✭✭✭

    I have to manually add up how much is left in my planned spending categories through the month to get an estimate of free cash flow. It would make sense to show an actual vs planned number throughout the month so you can get a better idea without having to do the math manually. I am constantly going back and forth from spending plans to reports. I have created a watchlist tile to track planned spending but I shouldn't have to do this. PLEASE just put it on the spending plan.

  • UrsulaA
    UrsulaA Superuser ✭✭✭✭

    Simplifi User Since Nov 2023

    Minter 2014-2023

    Questionable Excel before 2014 to present

  • I’d like to be able to see the total amount of money that I have leftover across all categories from my planned spending. Mint would show this and it was a good way for me to see how well I did at not getting too close to overspending across the board. Sometimes I may overspend in just 1 or 2 categories, but the rest I might meet the exact budget or underspend, and currently it doesn’t show how much “leftover” I have of my planned spending.

  • UrsulaA
    UrsulaA Superuser ✭✭✭✭

    Simplifi User Since Nov 2023

    Minter 2014-2023

    Questionable Excel before 2014 to present

  • Coach Natalie
    Coach Natalie Administrator, Moderator admin

    Hey everyone, great news! As of the 3.98.0 Web Release, you will now see a "Summary" section in Planned Spending that shows a total for all Planned Spending items and a total for what's been spent so far.

    We hope everyone enjoys this new feature! 🎉

    -Coach Natalie

    -Coach Natalie

  • Coach Natalie
    Coach Natalie Administrator, Moderator admin

    Hey everyone, I've learned that the Planned Spending Summary was removed in anticipation of the Planned Spending Rollover feature that should be enabled this week (see here), as the numbers were not meshing with the rollover abilities. Our product team is not sure at this time if the Summary will be returned, so this Idea has been reopened for voting and feedback.

    Thanks!

    -Coach Natalie

    -Coach Natalie

  • Jerrod
    Jerrod Member ✭✭

    I honestly found this feature super useful. At a glance, it gave me a decent idea of the path of my spending for the month. Since I don't care much about rollover spending, I kinda sad the feature I liked is going away for a feature I won't use. Before this feature, I tried to make a watch list for total spending but this didn't work due to bills and subscriptions having the same category as some of my planned spending categories.

    I understand how it would be weird to use it with rollover categories, but maybe the developers allow for a toggle that shows it or not and recommend not showing it if you use rollover spending categories.

  • I would still love to see a summary on the planned spending page. As wisely spending is such a big reason for using Quicken, I'd love to quickly gage where I am on my monthly progress. Thought I do like the idea of a Planned Spending Rollover ft as well.

  • breadfan18
    breadfan18 Member
    edited March 28

    YES PLEASE. The total displayed on Planned Spending should be the actual sum total of all categories spent (OR find a way to display both). Right now, it shows total planned plus overspent amount for certain categories. And i find it very unhelpful, because I really want to know if I'm on track for the overall budget in the month, even if I go over for specific categories.

    If you all implement this feature, you will have me locked down as a customer, because this is the only thing that's making me consider other options.

  • BudgetsAreSoFun
    edited June 2

    Planned Spending needs to have a total at the bottom to show overall, how you are doing / did for the month. Also, it would be nice if Planned Spending were more integrated with the Left at the end of the month. I understand maybe you don't want to update Planned Spending, since it's planned in advance. How about having another category that reflects how the actual spending impacted what's left at the end of the month? Currently, I have to manually calculate that, or go to the Net Income report to see how I did overall for the month.

    Hope this makes sense!

  • Coach Kristina
    Coach Kristina Moderator admin
    edited June 3

    Hello @BudgetsAreSoFun,

    Thank you for coming to the Community to share your idea! You may find this existing Idea interesting also, since it's very similar to the first part of your request: [removed link to merged thread]

    Thank you!

    -Coach Kristina

  • Coach Natalie
    Coach Natalie Administrator, Moderator admin

    @BudgetsAreSoFun, thanks for posting to the Community!

    Please check out these existing requests for the second part of what you requested:

    Otherwise, you'll want to go ahead and create a new Idea post to request that second part, as your primary suggestion was merged with this existing request, and you want to outline and request just one suggestion per Idea post. Our FAQ here has more details on creating Idea posts in the Community.

    I hope this helps!

    -Coach Natalie

    -Coach Natalie

  • HLSPOS19
    HLSPOS19 Member

    I want a real time calculation of Planned Spending. Simplifi provides a total for each individual planned spending category, but it is not available for all planned spending categories together. I constantly have to add up each individual category by hand and it's time consuming. This seems like a very easy feature to add.

  • In the Planned Spending section, it would be helpful to see the total amount budgeted for the month and how much of that total remains. Currently, I can view individual budget categories, but there is no place to see the overall budget vs. spending in one glance. This feature would make it easier to track total budgetary flexibility throughout the month and make more informed financial decisions.

  • UrsulaA
    UrsulaA Superuser ✭✭✭✭

    To account for the rollover, can we modify the prior screen as follows:

    With rollover (add the rollover amounts to available and total allotted)

    Available, Spent so far, Total allotted

    Without rollover (same as before)

    Available, Spent so far, Total allotted

    Either show both scenarios or allow the user to toggle to show with and without rollover.

    Simplifi User Since Nov 2023

    Minter 2014-2023

    Questionable Excel before 2014 to present

  • C2M
    C2M Member

    It would be great if we can see the total amount spent across all budgets along with the remaining budget for each month. This will allow users to monitor available budger holistically (screenshot below with proposed update)

  • RobWilk
    RobWilk Superuser ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited November 8

    They've tried to avoid the word "budget", really the spending plan itself covers the total and remaining, but I agree, the totals for the planned spending section could be summarized there.

    Really it shoud be "Total Planned Spending" and "Total Remaining planned spending", or more simply "Spent $xxx of $xxx planned total"

    +1


    Rob Wilkens

  • I think I'm saying the same thing, but it would be helpful to see the original budget below the actual spending/current forecasted total. For example, the summary tile on the planned spending tab would show our spending with the original right beneath it and then color green/red depending on if we're below/above, respectively. I've attached an example, but the colors are backwards in my example as i'm looking at income. Additionally, could the red exclamation mark only show up if i'm over budget in total? Maybe a yellow one if there are certain categories that are over but still okay overall?

  • Wedo778
    Wedo778 Member ✭✭✭✭

    And/Or if I am over in a category let me dismiss the warning and don't warn me again for the rest of the month for that item.

    I think this comes into play more with rollover than when not using it. I am rolling over because I expect to be over some months and under others. Whereas if I never want to roll over I am able to accomplish this same thing by editing this month's plan. Rollovers basically took away our ability to say "yea I went over what I said and thats ok". Really need to get to phase 2, 3 and 4 of rollover implementation.