Allow the Other Spending Forecast to apply to the current month (edited)

John Dressel

It seems that the Other Spending forecast amount only shows for future months. For the current month, the forecast disappears and only actuals are shown. Could it work similar to Planned Spending in that the forecast amount is decremented as actuals come in? If I forecast $1,000 in other spending and have spent $250 month-to-date, the total Other Spending would show $1,000 ($250 spent with $750 remaining). Once I've spent more than $1,000 in the month, the Other Spending total would show the actual amount and indicate that you're over budget.

DannyB

I don't see "Other Spending" as a budget category. I know QS allows you to a choice of options for Other Spending and I have some spending sometimes that ends up as truly other spending. But if you are "budgeting" (or in QS parlance, Planning) to send up to $1,000/month perhaps you should move that to Planned Spending since you seem to be planning to spend it and set it up as something like Miscellaneous. That way you get the functionality that you are looking for without changing the Other Spending into a duplicate or extension of Planned Spending.

DryHeat

@DannyB

I guess there are different ways of using Other Spending. I often end up with quite a bit of spending in there, of two different types.

First is true "Other Spending" that varies each month, occurs in many different categories, and thus is not easy to capture in Planned Spending.

Second is "Other Spending" that is a byproduct of not being able to split my recurring income transactions. I would like to get some input on how other people handle that, so I'll go into some little detail about it.

Let me explain the "byproduct issue" using some made up numbers. Let's say I expect an income deposit of $3500, but it really represents income of $5000, taxes of $-1000, and health insurance of $-500. I create a recurring transaction for $3500 so it will match the deposit, but when it comes in I split it as described.

That creates a $1000 tax expense and a $500 insurance expense that end up in Other Spending. If I put them in Planned Spending at the start of the month they will make my situation look bleak because the recurring Income transaction is only $3500 (not $5000). When I let them go to Other Spending they appear at the same time that the income is adjusted to $5000, so my situation looks stable.

How do other folks handle this? If I made the recurring Income transaction $5000, would it match the downloaded one? If I did that I could put taxes, insurance, etc. into Planned Spending.

DannyB

@DryHeat

Good points. The Paycheck issue would go a long way towards resolution splits get added to recurring transactions…

As far as this topic, keeping the Other Spending forecast for the current month, I'm not particularly saying this shouldn't be implemented and I probably should have made that clear in my comment above. My comment should be taken as more of a suggestion of how to incorporate the monthly anticipated $1000 other spending, so it is included and tracked in the current month with the ability to warn when overspent. I have two Planned Spending Categories that work this way.

As to your question about payroll deductions and how others handle them, I chose to live with the limitations of QS with regard to payroll deductions and only tracked Net Pay and my Spending Plan was based on net pay excluding all the deductions and this worked well enough. Having come to QS from QC where you can set up recurring paychecks with all the deductions, this was an adjustment, but it turned out to not be a huge one for me.

DryHeat

@DannyB "I have two Planned Spending Categories that work this way."

I'd like to be able to do that. How do you set those up?

My problem is that a lot of my Other Spending pops up in very different amounts and categories from month to month so I don't know how to create a Planned Spending item (or items) to cover them.

For example … in February nothing unusual happened, in March I had to send my sister $1400 to help with roof repair, in April I was surprised to find that I needed to put $900 worth of new tires on my daughter's car, and in May our washing machine broke and had to be replaced for $750.

DannyB

@DryHeat

I don't do much granular tracking. Any and all expenses/expenditures that don't fall easily and clearly into the few categories I do track "granularly" are categorized as a Gerneral Expense and I have a Planned Spending category that this tracking category is assigned to with a generous, but not random, monthly amount assigned. I have rarely overspent this PS cat.

I do use Savings Goals to cover the kinds of things you mentioned above. The sister assist would have come out of my Surprise & Miscellaneous SG; the tires would have come out of my Annual Non-Monthly Expenses SG. The washing machine would have come out of one or another or a combination of these SGs. The actual expenses would then be excluded from my Spending Plan since the funds used in each case was already accounted for in my monthly contributions.

Yes, these expenses would have all ended up in Other Spending since they are not included anywhere in my Spending Plan directly (though indirectly they are, see 2nd paragraph above). By them showing up in Other Spending I have the opportunity to review each expense and take care of making sure they are categorized correctly, tags assigned (including which SG to take the funds from) and excluded properly.

My goal is to end the month with zero Other Spending and failing that to end up with as little as possible being charged against a given months available.

Disclaimer: I acknowledge that this post goes beyond the scope of the initial post/feature request, which is that Projected Other Spending stick for the current month. I can see this as having value for those who know they will consistently have a predictable amount of spending that falls outside of their Planned Spending.