Spending watchlist shows planned expenses that haven't occurred yet

BenB

Is this intentional? I have a watchlist for several categories I want to keep an eye on. One of them is Entertainment and another is software which is under shopping. I also have a recurring $20 expense (Spotify) due on the 28th and a couple Apple iCloud storage expenses due on the 8th and 26th. Those expenses fall under entertainment and software.

Today is the 1st of the month and I haven't spend any money yet, but my watchlist show's I've spent $26. There are no transactions listed but there are the 3 above mentioned bill reminders listed.

Why would the watchlist show spending that has not occurred? Isn't that what the spending plan is for?

Is this intentional or a bug?

Ben

Coach Jon

Hello @BenB,

Thanks for reaching out! The Watchlist does indeed include any reminders/pending transactions in its calculations. Once you’ve created a Watchlist, you'll see how much you've spent for the current month, as well as an average total for the period shown, a year-to-date total, and a projection of how much you’ll spend this month if you were to keep spending at the current rate. This support article goes into more detail on how the Watchlist works here: https://support.simplifi.quicken.com/en/articles/3472367-using-watchlists

I hope this information helps!

-Coach Jon

DannyB

@BenB

As @Coach Jon points out this is a by design thing. This has come up elsewhere in the forum and there might even be a feature request to change this aspect of the way Watchlists work.

Here is one of my Watchlists:

Same situation as you describe. This $26 Spend so far is for a recurring car wash subscription. But QS has projected this once-a-month expense into a daily spending average and is projecting I will spend $780 on Auto Expenses this month. My 12-month average is a dependable amount since it is based on actual auto expenses for the past 12 months. Same with my YTD. But This Month is less than useful since the assumption is wrong to start with.

In my mind, THIS MONTH detail should read like this: "Spent so far" should ONLY include the total amount of actual money spent as of the current day. "Projected" could include any Planned Spending monthly amount that may be set up for the watched item(s) plus onetime recurring expenses plus the "Spent so far" amount.

BenB

Thanks, appreciate the info. Just doesn’t make sense if a watchlist is showing how much you’re currently spending to figure in expenses that haven’t occurred yet. It’s not really a tracker at that point.

I’ll change the categories for the recurring items and remove them from the watchlist. I know those expenses exist, I’m really trying to monitor discretionary type spending.

thanks again.