Link from Transaction to 'take from' or 'add to' Savings Goal (1 Merged Vote)

Tabby90

What's up with this year's old request? I'm a new user and Quicken Simplifi seems really great, except for this missing functionality. I can categorize a transaction towards a savings goal, so you're halfway there. Why doesn't that categorization on a spend or deposit transaction add or decrease the amount saved to the goal? What's the plan there?

kramerlap

I wish I had made screenshots each month of contributions to goals, and available $$ left. As it is, looking at previous-year budgets is HUGELY misleading because that unknown amount of money that was set toward goals now shows as left-over money. Moving forward, I'll make those screenshots.

DryHeat

@kramerlap

Did the previous contributions disappear because you deleted the old Savings Goals? Or for some other reason?

If it was because you deleted the no-longer-needed goal (as I have done and now regret), you might be interested in this discussion:

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/14543/deleting-completed-savings-goal-corrupts-previous-months-spending-plans

And you might want to vote for this suggestion:

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/3833/ability-to-close-out-and-archive-or-delete-completed-savings-goals-edited

RDMitra

I wanted to add my support for this request — linking transactions directly to savings goals is a basic feature that would make Simplifi much more useful for real-life budgeting. Right now, contributions and withdrawals don’t reflect cumulatively, so it’s hard to see the actual progress toward a goal, especially for large or irregular expenses like weddings, travel, or family care.

Allowing automatic updates of contributions, spending, and remaining target when transactions are linked would remove the need for manual calculations and make goal tracking accurate and intuitive. This seems like a feature many users, including myself, would rely on regularly.

estebanV

I made this comment in another post, and I was told I should do it in this one…. so, below are my 5 cents… I completely support this request… I hope 2026 is the year we can have it!

- - - (copied and pasted)

I’ll try to explain what I think the request really is, or at least what I would personally like to see.

Besides using Savings Goals to track my emergency fund, I also use them to manage sinking funds. For me, Savings Goals are a way to set money aside for known future expenses and then spend from that money when the time comes.

Here is the scenario I have in mind:

I have two sinking funds (Savings Goals):
– Christmas, with $3,000
– Annual Subscriptions, with $2,000

Simplifi already does a great job letting me budget and assign money to each goal.

Now let’s say this month I need to pay my Simplifi annual subscription, which costs $71.99. I already have that money saved inside my Annual Subscriptions goal.

When the credit card charge comes in, it would be great if I could edit the transaction and see a field like “Spend from Goal.” That field would show a list of my existing goals. I would select Annual Subscriptions, and Simplifi would automatically subtract $71.99 from that goal.

Instead of just disappearing, that amount would move into a kind of “reconciled” or “spent from goal” balance. Then, at the end of the month, I could clearly see how much money was spent from goals and either:

• transfer that amount to checking, or
• pay the credit card directly from the account where the goals live

This could be done manually or using Simplifi’s transfer tools.

Another budgeting app already works this way, so I know this kind of flow is possible. It would make sinking funds feel complete from start to finish: save the money, spend from the goal, and then reconcile it cleanly.

I hope this explanation makes sense. I would really love to see a feature like this added in the coming months.

Dancerfrog

I have given up on goals until it's user friendly. As is it just creates extra work. I make 2 deposits a month to savings; it SHOULD allow me to contribute to goals via edit transaction. I find it completely a duplication of effort to do it or figure a workaround, or make a separate deposit for each goal. Pointless. I have deleted all my goals. I'll just go back to my spreadsheet for managing savings goal categories,

DryHeat

@Dancerfrog

I'm also giving up on Savings Goals. I can't delete the ones I have without messing up prior months' Spending Plans, but I'm going to retire them once they have run their course.

I'm going to use recurring expense series in Planned Spend instead. That automatically highlights a certain amount each month as being needed for the eventual expense, without the need to make contributions. And I can look at the expense graph to see how much I have intentionally "not spent" so far to use toward that goal.

I'd really prefer to use the Savings Goals for this function, but until they implement some of the suggested improvements it's just not going to work for me.

geazx1

I jut started using Simplifi to see if I want to move from the current app that I use. Savings Goals need to be improved such that all Savings Goals transactions are visible and trackable. This oversight seriously impedes the whole idea of having a budgeting app ie you need to see all transactions. Thanks.

angeleyz21

Adding another vote of support here - this really should be a simple programmatical fix since you already have the tagging feature which consists of Savings goals. It really shouldn't take much code to make it so that when a user tags a transaction with a specific savings goal, it auto-deducts from that goal. Change it from a multi-select field to a single select field. If multiple savings goals are affected, the user should just do a split transaction and tag each portion of the transaction appropriately. I bet this could be accomplished in an afternoon by a skilled programmer on your team. PLEASE - we're ALL begging you - make this happen. Other apps are light years ahead of you in this area.

I just switched from YNAB a few months ago because I wanted a more robust view of my finances (which you do well) but they absolutely crush Quicken when it comes to future budgeting/planning. While it can technically be done in Quicken (and is honestly the only other service I've found that even comes close to what YNAB can do), it is horribly convoluted. It's really not that hard, Quicken has been a financial management leader for decades - you can do better than this. ;-)