QBP: Create Separate Spending Plans for Each Business

DryHeat

I suggest that QBP provide separate Spending Plans for each defined business (and of course for Personal), selectable by choosing the business from a dropdown. I plan my business spending separately from my personal spending. If I didn't, I wouldn't really need QBP.

Each spending plan would be built on all (and only) those transactions that are recorded in an account whose "Account Purpose" is the same business as the Spending Plan. In other respects it would function the same as the default Personal Spending Plan.

I think that to make this function correctly, Savings Goals would have to be designated as "Personal" or "XYZ Business" and only allowed to save in Personal or XYZ Business accounts as appropriate. Perhaps other changes might be necessary, but I don't have time to figure all that out.

There may be some reason why separate Spending Plans for businesses are a bad idea. If so, maybe someone could explain why.

Background:

From my initial experiments, it appears that income deposited in a business account and categorized as a kind of business income does not appear in the Spending Plan at all.

The same is true for business expenses paid from a business account and categorized as a type of business expense.

Oddly, a Savings Goal set up as having an initial "Amount Saved" in one of the business accounts does show up in Spending Plan.

It is possible that there is some switch that can be set to make these transactions show up, but if so I have not found it.

Stealthian

I have connected Quicken to my business and personal accounts. Having a single "Spending Plan" or budget for both is not useful at all, it is better to have two separate budgets to distinguish between the two. Can you please make this a priority for small business owners?

Mayra

what you can try to have multiple spending plans is to create a separate business/personal space, meaning that will create a new Simplifi environment that will allow you to add your business and manage your own budget, if you need to have another one just create another space.

Here is a helpful article about it https://support.simplifi.quicken.com/en/articles/10362268-managing-your-spaces

DryHeat

@Mayra: I may try that, although I am reluctant because I read that Spaces cannot be deleted once they are created.

As I mentioned above, a major problem is that income deposited in a business account and categorized as a kind of business income does not appear in the Spending Plan at all. Same for expenses categorized as a kind of business expense.

Does creating a new Space allow these business income/expense transactions to show up in the Spending Plan?

If so, that could be a good way to handle this. Let me know and I will try it.

Flopbot

@Mayra and @DryHeat ,

Technically, yes you could create a different Spending Plan using Spaces.

However it largely defeats the point of QBP, several considerations:

• When switching between spaces, you’re physically switching between different datasets. When I’m in “Moms Finances” space, I no longer can see my stuff, and vice versa. The screenshot shows what the switching looks like.
• You have to pay for each account/space separately and each one requires a unique Quicken ID (U/P).

If you really wanted to keep your personal and business life separate, this would be a great option but you’ll pay for it.

DryHeat

@Flopbot

Two things:

(1) As I mentioned above, it doesn't seem that business income and expenses show up in Spending Plan at all. Am I wrong about that? Would creating a new Space have any effect on that?

(2) I thought you could create up to three Spaces for free. And Quicken IDs are free. Did you have to pay for each Space separately? If so, the docs on this are very misleading:

https://support.simplifi.quicken.com/en/articles/6443103-how-to-share-your-quicken-simplifi-data

Mayra

@DryHeat

You are right, the docs doesn't say you need to pay for each space created, I have not paid for extra datasets created so far and there is no warning about it. 🤔

DryHeat

@Mayra "I have not paid for extra datasets"

That's good to know. But I'm still wondering if adding a new Space would make any difference in the "business transactions don't show in Spending Plan" problem.

Flopbot

@Mayra , that's interesting. Are you saying you are currently using separate Spaces without needing a different, paid Quicken account? If so, I wonder if that's something that is more recent than when I started using Simplifi Spaces in August 2024.

@DryHeat , for #1, I'm ashamed to admit that I've never really focused on the Spending Plan so I can't speak to your question. Someday, I'll get around to learning about it, but for now, I've just had other priorities. Regarding #2, if you set up a separate Space for your business, there won't be any blead over between Personal and Business since you won't be able to see Personal transactions from the Business Space and Business transactions from the Personal Space…assuming your Personal and Business accounts are separate, so you can sync them separately into each Space.