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Watchlist "This Month - Spent so far" amount should include only actual spending [EDITED]

DryHeat

The "THIS MONTH - Spent so far" amount for July is $1,937.59:

But the Transaction Activity shown in the Watchlist for July is only $678.93.

I searched the main Transaction Activity registers and these 4 transactions are all that exist for July. I have no idea where the other $1200+ show as "Spent so far" could come from.

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Comments

Coach Jon

Hello @DryHeat,

Thanks for reaching out! The "This month" total is a projection of how much you’ll spend this month if you were to keep spending at the current rate. It is calculated by using the transactions that have already occurred during the month, as well as any upcoming Reminders for the month.

Here is one of my watchlists as an example, showing the upcoming Reminders that add up to the projected total.

-Coach Jon

DryHeat

@Coach Jon

'The "This month" total is a projection of how much you’ll spend this month if you were to keep spending at the current rate.'

There are two amounts given for "This Month" — "Spent so far" and "Projected."

I can see now that, halfway through the month, the "Spent so far" amount is calculated like this:

amount actually spent so far + amount in Reminders to be spent in the second half of the month

That confused me because it isn't what "Spent so far" usually means. I would have expected the future Reminders to be included in the "Projected" amount in some way.

Also, it throws the "Projected" amount for the month wildly off. The algorithm apparently calculates that full-month projection something like this:

2 x (amount actually spent in the first half + amount in Reminders for the second half)

You can see the problem when you look at the card for this Watchlist. It's projecting only $13,776 for the year — which is about right — but it is projecting $4,290 (1/3 of the year's total) for this month alone.

I don't know how this will look earlier in the month because I just started using Watchlists. But I suspect that — if the algorithm works as I think it does — the Projected amount will be even more out of whack.

Coach Jon

Hello @DryHeat,

Thanks for the reply. The "Projected" amount displayed for Watchlists is calculated by taking the average amount that's been spent per day during the month (including upcoming Reminders), and then Quicken Simplifi uses that average to project forward for the number of days remaining in the month.

Our support article goes over how these projections for the Watchlist work here: https://support.simplifi.quicken.com/en/articles/3472367-using-watchlists#h_77590ac14d

We also have an idea post you can vote for and follow that you may be interested in here:

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/4588/watchlists-better-calculations-for-projected-amount-edited

-Coach Jon

DryHeat

@Coach Jon

Your description of the calculation method matches what I outlined in my previous post. We are on the same page on that.

What remains is that I think the method is very misleading. The discussion you linked covers part of the problem and the one below covers another:

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/2989/watchlists-exclude-upcoming-reminders-from-spent-so-far-amount-edited

At least I know I'm not alone on this one.😉

egal

This projected spending concept is not an easy problem to solve because it will vary greatly depending on the type of spending. It seems that it is only considering a linear approach to spending spread evenly throughout the month. This would work decently for those categories that are very regular like gas and groceries. For expenses that occur infrequently or are irregular amounts, the projection will be fairly meaningless. However, even today my grocery watchlist is likely low because of the distribution of trips to the store this month. It will likely be in line with my monthly average however, is showing lower by $200-300

I think displaying the monthly average is useful information and perhaps showing the difference between spent so far and the monthly average would be a more valuable piece of information than a linear projection.

I agree that the nomenclature of Spent so far is typically understood as transactions that have occur to date. I think removing the reminders amounts from the spent so far and addjng a "With Reminders" number would be useful to clarify the difference.

SRC54

@DryHeat @egal Thanks for the interesting discussion.

I have only 2 watchlists that I rarely watch and I pretty much ignore the projected amount. It's like when I set a Planned Spending amount, what Simplifi suggests rarely works. I just put in what I think is a reasonable amount.

RobWilk

I disagree with the premise of this. If spending is expected in this category, it is essentially already spent.

DryHeat

@egal

I think your suggestion of removing upcoming reminders from the "Spent so far" total and then changing the display (as you describe below) is the best solution I have seen so far.

I think displaying the monthly average is useful information and perhaps showing the difference between spent so far and the monthly average would be a more valuable piece of information than a linear projection.