how to track changes to Spending Plan during month

Question

How do I find what affected the 'Left this month' amount? Was it a change in a paycheck? Was it a bill that came in high/lower than expected? Was it a Planned Spending category that went over budget? All of the above? I check this every day and when there is just one new entry in 'other spend' or one bill that came in over budget, it's easy to identify why the 'left this month' amount changed, but many times I can't tell. Once a paycheck is received or bill paid, the budgeted amount is overridden. Is there a way to easily see what changed in the Spending Plan? Is there already a planned enhancement to show 'expected amount' vs 'actual amount' during the month?

Coach Natalie · Accepted Answer

@John Dressel, thanks for posting your inquiry to the Community!

The Spending Plan is designed to track items in real time. This means that once expected amounts are updated with actual amounts, the Spending Plan totals, and therefore the "left this month" amount, will update to reflect this reality. Our help article here goes into the Spending Plan in more depth:

https://support.simplifi.quicken.com/en/articles/4212702-understanding-your-spending-plan

As for how to determine what changed, there is no built-in system for this. I personally just keep a close eye on my transactions — the actual amounts of my bills once they are linked to a reminder, ensuring transactions are split correctly after a shopping trip so my Planned Spend expenses update accordingly, etc. Managing my transactions is what tells me my Spending Plan totals and "left to spend" amounts are on track.

Other users may share additional feedback with you, but I wanted to share what works for me! We also have some requests you may be interested in adding your vote and feedback to, and then following for updates:

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/1327/ability-to-see-a-total-summary-for-all-planned-spending-items-original-current-edited

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/2087/spending-plan-show-totals-for-paid-spent-vs-upcoming-left-with-a-progress-bar-edited

I hope this helps!

DryHeat · Accepted Answer

Is there a way to easily see what changed in the Spending Plan?

I haven't found a particularly easy way to do this. It's a pretty manual process for me.

The best method for me is just to open the Spending Plan and use the arrows at the top to click back and forth between last month (or months) and this month — first comparing the aggregate numbers and then drilling down to the detail if needed. It's not automatic but if there is a big discrepancy I can normally find it and trace it to a particular bill or whatever.

If I am checking the current month, it often helps me more to look at compare the numbers to the upcoming month where the bills, etc. are still the predicted amounts, rather than actual (sometimes different) amounts from a previous month.

It's a bit tedious. Maybe someone knows a better way.

SRC54 · Accepted Answer

I endorse the other answers here but have noticed that when I am notified that a bill has been paid, the notification now tells me the dollar difference from what was expected.  (Maybe it always did this?)

Yesterday for example a medical bill was $3 less than expected and the notification told me so.  I remember it has done the same for income.

In notification settings, you have to enable the notification for "Bill Paid".  Maybe this will help some.