Ability to mark reimbursements (from my roommates) as a recurring bill, rather than income (edited)

eperduk7
eperduk7 Member
edited December 2021 in Feature Requests

I ran into this problem because I split my electric bill with my other 2 roommates (3 of us in total). I pay the total bill (say $150/month for purposes of this example). I have a recurring bill for Duke energy of $150/month in the spending plan. But that is not my personal outlay - I am only responsible for one third ($50/month) and I want my spending plan to reflect this NET result of -$50/month.

Well this already exists you may say, BUT the only way to make this netting possible is to add the reimbursement transactions as 'Personal Income' and make a subcategory of 'Reimbursements'. But this is not straightforward if I wanted to see a report for my total spending on electric for the year. The report for electric would show $1800/year and my report for reimbursements would show $1200. This is especially messy if I had multiple bills I am splitting (electric, cable, water, etc.) Sure, I can add tags on the reimbursements of electric, cable, water, etc. but the problem remains that I cannot coincide the expense categories with the respective tags (tags for cable are separate from expenses of cable).

I feel strongly that the purpose of this app is for it to be autonomous. People want to link their accounts, spend some time to set up the spending plan, and monitor it every so often to see what they have remaining to keep their margin. In my opinion, not being able to net out expenses AND reimbursements from that same category is a problem.

The solution would be to add the ability to mark reimbursements (from my roommates) as a recurring bill (rather than income) that is categorized under the same roof. This will do the netting process for users while keeping it under one view. I believe that this is an essential fix for Simplifi. I am a financial advisor and have downloaded/experimented with many personal finance apps to help my clients - none have anything close to the power of the Simplifi's Spending Plan. This capability would further Simplifi's competitive edge.

14 votes

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Comments

  • Coach Natalie
    Coach Natalie Administrator, Moderator admin

    Hello @eperduk7,

    Thanks for the great suggestion; please be sure to add your vote! :smile:

    -Coach Natalie

  • august
    august Member
    edited December 2020
    @eperduk7

    I do this already by putting a reimbursement under the same expense category but make the number positive! You can do this with recurring bills too, just click the “+” in the lower left hand corner of the number pad. 

    For example, if I pay for food at a restaurant and my friend is paying me back for their portion, I put in the total bill for the food under the “restaurant” category I have created, which is considered an expense. Then, when my friend pays me back for their portion, I add that under the same “restaurant” expense category, but with a positive value.

    Hope this helps!!
  • ambeckert
    ambeckert Member
    The reimbursement doesn't work very smoothly, especially if you want to use the "spending plan" feature. It shows that I am responsible for all the bills I have entered, when I am truly only responsible for half. It comes out that I have overspent each month. I wish the connected billers had the option for a split. 
  • +1 for this… 3 years later and there's still no clean way to account for reimbursable expenses? Seems like a super common scenario

  • Yes- this would be very helpful. It's disappointing to see this from years ago. Please add this feature in!