Left this month and overspending in Planned Spend (edited)

Question

I'm brand new to QS, but have two concerns or questions.

1.  What do you do with money left this month?  I wish it would go into next month as income because it is money I still have.  I called and they said that it doesn't do anything, that it just stays there in the month you were on - so say for example I had 1,000 left this month in August and then September started.  The month 1,000 I had left from August would not even show up in the September budget.  Just wondering best how to categorize this money without forgetting about it or not utilizing it.  There should be a way for it to carry over.

2.  When you over spend in the Planned Spend it doesn't show up as being gone from your budget correct?  It just shows a warning sign and says how much you are over in red.  For example, if you overspent in groceries by 500.00 the amount of money in your money left this month would not reflect that you had spent the 500.00 correct?  I just wish the amount left was an actual reflection of what was happening in your current account.  Is there anyway to try and know the actual amount?

DannyB · Accepted Answer

Hi @Kimmie, welcome to Quicken Simplifi!

There are some things you will need to keep in mind, and these are very important for understanding the Spending Plan. First, the Spending Plan is focused on "this month." Each monthly plan is independent of all previous and all following months and each month is a plan for that specific month. Second, the Spending Plan is a planning tool for how you plan to manage your income and expenses, and not a bank account ledger. Third, the Spending Plan is not connected to your actual bank accounts and does not affect nor is it affect by your actual bank account balances. (Caveats: There is a rollover feature in Planned Spending that "rolls" under and overspent numbers forward, but that doesn't affect the "this month" focus of the Spending Plan and, as the month unfolds the reality (actual income and expenses) will replace the planed adjusting the plan in real time to reflect reality and allowing you to make adjustments to your plan along the way, but again, the Spending Plan for any given month is specifically for that month alone.

Keeping that in mind:

* The "left this month" amount is simply telling you that, all things being equal, you have a certain amount of surplus income that is not currently designated to be spent in this month's Spending Plan. You can let it ride knowing that you have a surplus of available to spend this month or if you want to see that surplus shrink or go away in the Spending Plan for the current month there a couple of possible things you can do: 1. set up a Savings Goal to contribute to and add a contribution equal to your "left this month" amount. You will have to designate a bank account where the actual cash "resides" so this works best if you only have one cash account you receive all your monthly income into. 2. you can create a rollover Planned Spending category to designate those undesignated funds to and update this month's limit to whatever amount is "left this month." The Savings Goal approach is a bit easier since you can wait until the next month to make the contribution which gives you a chance to finalize your month's plan after releasing any unused Planned Spending funds.
* Remember that I acknowledged that the Spending Plan updates based on actuals as the month progresses? As reality replaces anticipated or planned, the Spending Plan will reflect that reality and as a result the bottom line ("left to spend") will also adjust to reality. Therefore, any overspending in your Planned Spending Categories will be deducted from your "left to spend" in real time. For example, my Planned Spending total for this month is $4050.00 and to date I have spent a total of $4451.51 making me overspent by $401.51. This overspend is in one of my categories that also shows me as overspent by $401.51. If I want to balance out my Planned Spending so that I don't have any overspending I can do a couple of things. I can adjust other Planned Spending categories by reducing the limits for each and add that reduction to my overspent category (if there is enough unspent available for this). Or I can up the limit for the overspent category, dipping into my "left to spend" surplus (if there is enough available for this). The first option will restore any "left to spend" back to "left to spend" and the second will reduce "left to spend" by the amount of the increase to my Planned Spending category.

P.S "Other Spending" will also be taken form the "left to spend" pile.

DryHeat · Accepted Answer

@Kimmie

The Spending Plan in QS is designed as a "month at a time" view into how your income (for the month) and expenses (for the month) compare. It does a good job of that, but it isn't really designed for longer-term budgeting. There are some work-arounds (search for Savings Goals and Planned Spending Rollovers), but they don't really serve as a long-term budget. I do find Savings Goals useful for quarterly and annual expenses, but mainly I just use the Spending Plan to help guide my decision-making in the current month.

If you want to know what is going on in your current account, the best tool is still the Transactions view, where all accounts are listed along with their balances and transactions.