Rollover Help

mluhring

I just started using Simplifi, to see if I can move to it from Quicken classic.

I like the spending plan rollover feature, but it would be nice if it had a few features I am missing.

Some of my Spending Plan categories are just place holders for money I know is in my checking account but is reserved for some other purpose. It actually may not have a purpose. They are just buckets to put money. I have used the rollover feature to set the amounts for those categories and they should just rollover month to month even though I don't plan on applying any transactions to that category. I don't understand why those types of expenses I add to my spend plan needs to have a target amount set. Just let me have a target of $0. The spending plan shouldn't care if there is an expense with $0. The I can set a rollover amount and the money just stays where it is.

I know other people have asked to have the rollover amounts be visible in other places. I would like to see a report that shows all expenses in my Spending Plan with the corresponding Rollover amount.

I guess I could create a savings goal for this money, but it's really not a goal. Can't I just have savings with no goal?

Coach Jon

Hello @mluhring,

Thanks for reaching out! We do have an existing idea post you may be interested in voting for that requests the ability to allow $0 amounts for Planned Spend series.

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/9467/planned-spending-expense-series-allow-0-00-amount

We also have an idea post requesting a Spending Plan report here:

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/14621/add-a-historical-month-by-month-spending-plan-report-edited

I hope this helps!

-Coach Jon

DannyB

Hi @mluhring

The Spending Plan including Planned Spend is designed as a (virtual) planning tool and is not set up to be a cash management tool. The Savings Goals will come closer to that function for targets you don't plan to spend against, though I suspect you'll find SGs to be less than satisfactory for this purpose also.

Question: If you were able to set $0.00 as the target amount for a Planned Spend "bucket," how would QS know how much you want to set aside to be rolled over?

DryHeat

@mluhring

Many users find the relationship (or lack thereof) between their checking accounts and the Spending Plan confusing. They try to find ways to hack the Spending Plan to make it reflect what's really in their checking accounts (for example). It hasn't worked well so far and it seems to lead to frustration.

That's because, in it's most basic form, Spending Plan focuses on each month as a separate financial "game." It scores each month's game by looking at how much income you have that month versus how much you spend* that month. If income exceeds spending, the "Left this month" figure is positive and you win that month's game.

Notice that none of that tells you how much money you had in your checking account at the beginning or end of the month. What it does tell you is whether, in the long run, your account balances should be going up or down as a result of how you played the game over the intervening months.**

= = = = = =

* "Spending" includes specific Bills you pay, flexible amounts you plan for in Planned Spend, unplanned amounts in Other Spend, and money you set aside in Goals to use later.

** You can also exclude transactions from Spending Plan, meaning they will affect your checking account balance but not your Spending Plan numbers. For example, credit cards purchases are included and affect your Spending Plan but not your bank account, while payments on the credit card are excluded and affect your bank account but not your Spending Plan.

RobWilk

@mluhring You do understand the spending plan is a glorified one-month "Net Income Report", which was recently renamed to "Income & Expense Report"…. It pre-reserves known-spent money, but otherwise, that report is pretty much all it is. The amount left at the end of the month on the bottom left of the report is your "net income" (though you can exclude things from the spending plan specifically) for that month. If it's positive, you spent less than you earned - if it's not, you spent more than you earned. That's all there really is to understand the Spending Plan. Like @DryHeat said, it's kind of a game, with the goal of spending less than you earned, but you (as the user) are the only one who sees or cares about the score.

DannyB

@DryHeat I like the "game" analogy… very helpful.

mluhring

@RobWilk @DryHeat
Yeah, I get the one month at a time game. I am trying to bend Simplifi to a convoluted Budget Game I play in Quicken Classic. I am doing double duty with Quicken and Simplifi for a few months to see if I can find an easier way to do my daily tracking.

I may have to try using the Goals to keep track of my Buckets of money that I don't touch on a regular monthly basis.

DryHeat

@mluhring

I am trying to bend Simplifi to a convoluted Budget Game I play in Quicken Classic.

Good luck. If you find a good way to combine the Spending Plan concept with actual money in the bank you might want to explain it to people here. It's one of the questions that shows up pretty often.

using the Goals to keep track of my Buckets of money that I don't touch on a regular monthly basis.

I tried that for a few months and it did a good job of reflecting my monthly contributions to less-frequent expenses in my Spending Plan (and also showing what money in my actual account was already "spoken for").

But here's a warning I wish someone had given me… I ended up with a bunch of completed Goals (money contributed and used as planned) in my list that weren't relevant anymore. To my unpleasant surprise, when I deleted those completed goals it also removed all indication of contributions to them in my past Spending Plans. So those Plans no longer reflected how things had actually gone in those prior months. It turns out there's no way to fix that, so the results in those Spending Plans remain cockeyed.