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Spending Plan Question

OregonNomad

I’m relatively new to Simplifi. I have linked 1 checking, 1 savings and 4 credit cards along with recurring bimonthly salary and bills including credit card bill payments as account transfers. I began using the IOS only app in January 2025. The dashboard overview seems correct and the one month projected cash flow under Bills & Payments seem reasonable. As mentioned, I have reminders / recurring transactions set for upcoming bimonthly salary income, credit card payments (transfers between accounts) and various recurring bills. Why is it then that the Spending Plan is different from Net Worth / Banking balance by a whopping $8591? Unless I can get the available balance in the Spending Plan to resemble the actual cash I have at my disposal (even if negative) then I don’t see the point in all the effort I have put into the app so far. (IE the current Banking balance: -$1965 Vs Available spending of +$6626). Yea I know the Spending Plan works without regard for account balances but why does it seem like my credit card payments (past and planned account transfers) are not reflected in the available balance in the Spending Plan? Thank you for any suggestions on a way to do this correctly to achieve realistic and useful results

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Comments

RobWilk

Spending plan is more like a budget - it's guides you towards spending less than that month's income. The spending plan does not reflect the balance of any one account.

If you have more specific questions, ask.

-Rob

OregonNomad

thanks Rob. I wonder what I’m doing wrong since the spending plan tells me I have $6000 more money to spend than I actually have in my possession.

RobWilk

Do you have more money coming in later in the month? If so, that may already be factored into the month's spending plan. It's based on all known income and expenses for the calendar month, both planned/recurring and actual.

Again, the spending plan is not about how much money you have. Presumably you have credit cards, for example, where you might be spending and paying off with a late month paycheck. It's the whole month picture.

OregonNomad

thank you. Yea I have a planned income at the end of the month but it doesn’t account for the large amount of spending money available. I’ll keep plugging away at trying to make sense of it thanks.

RobWilk

The amount available for the month =

Total Income for the Entire Calendar Month

minus BILLS and SUBSCRIPTIONS (recurring)

minus any PLANNED (set aside) spending

minus any NON-PLANNED ALREADY HAPPENED SPENDING

= your spending plan amount left for the month

It does not in any way tell you how much. money you have at any given time. It just helps you stay within your spending for the month.

RobWilk

In general, if your spending plan shows that much left for the month, whatever it is, and you don't spend it before the end of the month, that will essentially increase your net worth (compared to the month before) by that much. But the following month's spending plan starts fresh every time (*unless you specifically use roll-over). So, if you look ahead to february's spending plan, which you can do, you can see that month's planned total income, that month's bills/subscriptions, if you have any planned spending you'll see that there, and you can forecast, based on previous months, the 'other spending' amount.

-Rob

RobWilk

Reading this article in the support section (above) might be helpful:

https://support.simplifi.quicken.com/en/articles/4212702-understanding-your-spending-plan

OregonNomad

THANK YOU for all the assistance. I had many transactions EXCLUDED from the Spending Plan and Reports check boxes selected). This was a low hanging fruit of omission on my part. That’s now corrected. The real issue remaining I think is how I handle credit card payment transfers (four credit card transfers monthly; balances paid in full - unable to link to credit card biller to have current balance updated automatically - except in the initial Simplifi overall sync when setting up the account). By default Simplifi excludes these credit card payment transfers between accounts so they are not factored into the Spending Plan or Reports unless I uncheck the boxes manually. Therefore the spending plan seems to show more money available than I actually have. If I untick just the credit card account receiving the monthly payment in full, it will reduce my available money to spend accordingly in the Spending plan. But my understanding is that these transaction transfers between accounts should remain unreported (checkboxes checked) as is the Simplifi default. But then this skews the Spending Plan money available by thousands of dollars. Hence the feature is useless unless I find a way to do it correctly… hmm 🤔

RobWilk

The "spending" on the credit cards is what counts towards the spending plan. That is, if you were to buy a $100 item, you wouldn't want both the $100 item and the $100 credit card payment deducted from your spending plan, would you? That would be a $200 deduction for $100 worth. of spending.

-Rob

RobWilk

But if you did want the money from the payment included in the spending plan, you could unhide the money out (spending) side of the transfer…

Just an afterthought.

-Rob

OregonNomad

..Every single credit card transaction is accounted for and categorized etc. and everyone of these credit card transactions are also accounted for in the spending plan. But then the credit card bill has to be paid out of the bank account as a transfer transaction once every month. This appears as two transactions. And this is where the entire spending plan breaks down and either shows thousands of excess dollars or thousands of dollars in the negative depending on whether I check or uncheck the credit card side of the transfer under the spending plan / reports checkboxes. Please see the attached images. What is the correct way to handle this situation in order to make the spending plan useful?

RobWilk

If you had $3400 worth of spending that month, the spending should be what matters for the spending plan, not the transfer. The transfer is just moving money from one place (checking) to another (credit card account). If you charge both the $3400 worth of spending and the $3400 credit card payment to the spending plan, you're claiming to have spent $6800 for the spending plan, which you did not do in this case.

Paying a credit card is NOT spending, Spending is spending. The balance in your checking account has nothing to do with the spending plan.

-Rob

OregonNomad

That helps. Thank you. It may also be because it’s my first month and the Spending Plan may become more realistic as the months go by. Once I ignore the credit card transfers as is the default setting (and as you point out), then I have an eye popping $9000 available to spend which is not the case at all. I basically should have nothing. So the only way I can think of it is that credit card transactions from prior months somehow are not counted in the spending plan since it only registers beginning with the month I start using Simplifi (plus or minus five days). In other words the spending plan is not usable for new users until they have been using the application for a few months and all credit card transactions have been categorized with a chance to “catch up” with the current billing periods …. Something like that. I was expecting the Spending Plan feature to be useful from the beginning which is probably not possible.

RobWilk

Yes, if you have a partial month's worth of data, the spending plan will be less accurate.