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Spending Plan - Various Requests [edited] (2 Merged Votes)

Laura

As well as being able to see one month at a time, would also like to see a way to plan for the full year so that one time annual expenses (like property tax) can be planned for. Otherwise it just makes it seem like you went over your spending plan for the month you made that large purchase in.

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Spending Plan

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Comments

Coach Paco

@Laura It sounds like, with your financial goals, Simplifi may not be the proper product for you. Quicken’s budget option has all of the features that you’ll need to have a detailed budget. In Simplifi, your Spending plan is intended to be a simplified monthly plan to prevent overspending. You can exclude specific transactions from the Spending Plan, in those instances where you may have made a more significant purchase or payment. We also offer Watchlists, which can provide more detail into your spending and more of a“budget” feel.

Laura

That’s too bad! I’ve seen other people mention they’d prefer more budgeting options, similar to Mint. I’ve found Quicken to be not very user friendly and a poor interface (and honestly unreliable in bringing in transactions correctly) which is why I was excited to try Simplifi. Hopefully there can eventually be a Quicken product that gives more budgeting options like Mint but is still user friendly!

bcrossman

Could you accomplish this by changing the frequency of your recurring property tax bill to “every year” instead of “every month”? I know the web version of Simplifi provides this option in settings, but I haven’t played around with my spending plan enough to fully understand the effects of such a change.

I pay property tax twice per year, but the payments are not evenly spaced so the “every six months” option wouldn’t work for me. I also have a few bills that I pay every other month or every quarter. It would be nice to be able to customize the frequency of payment for recurring bills (like in Mint).

Coach Paco

@bcrossman That's a good suggestion! I know that they were looking into more customizable options for recurring transactions. We should be seeing some updates closer to launch!

simplij

I touched on this in the feedback forum, but perhaps this is the better place to discuss this. I'd like to be able to use the spending plan to track money I want to put aside for big bills like property taxes or end of year insurance bills.

Coach Paco

@simplij When making a suggestion, which this one is great by the way, you'll want to put them under feedback I'll get it moved so the community can make some votes on this wonderful idea!

Coach Tappan

@simplij To echo what Coach Paco said, I agree that you that it should be possible to subtract your Savings Goal contributions from your Spending Plan. I know that it's something our development team is seriously considering, so you may see this option in the near future. You can "follow" this discussion by clicking on the "Gold Star" at the top, so you'll always be notified of any updates. Thanks again for suggesting this!

simplij

I do hope it gets added. I'm not looking for complex functionality. Just the ability to get a clear picture of what I have available to spend each month after removing known bills and 'bills'.

Drummon1

I would like to see something like this too. I have money earmarked for certain items (may not be in a goal), and I'd like to see them deducted. As a work around, I could set up as a future bill, but that starts getting a little ugly.

jtjones0304

I would like to echo this suggestion. Large payments due every six months like car insurance or savings goals for large car or home maintenance expenses would be great to exclude from the spending plan.

Coach Tappan

I wanted to give you an update on this suggestion. We plan to add a way to link your Savings Goals to your Spending Plan in the near future. Until then, there's a new function in the Spending Plan that allows you to edit your total monthly income and bills totals to add or subtract a specific amount instead of using the calculated amount provided by Simplifi. Here's what that looks like:

Judd

Looking forward to more integration with the savings goals!

@Coach Tappan said:
I wanted to give you an update on this suggestion. We plan to add a way to link your Savings Goals to your Spending Plan in the near future. Until then, there's a new function in the Spending Plan that allows you to edit your total monthly income and bills totals to add or subtract a specific amount instead of using the calculated amount provided by Simplifi. Here's what that looks like:

jmaiuzzo

I have this request too:
How do I budget/save for a bill that reoccurs every 6 months like car insurance? In a envelope based system, the money carries over month to month which allows me to budget ahead of time. And any unused money carries over with the ability to move unused money from other envelopes into an overdrawn one.

The solution is to allow spending plan categories to behave like envelopes that allow money to carry over and move money between them

BillPayer

Personally, I have starting using the Savings Goals as envelopes. I have an Annual Services goal that I contribute to monthly for these large one-time bills. When that happens I Take From the Savings Goal to cover the bill.

chanceryder25

Adding my voice to the choir requesting this feature! As of right now planning for big bills that don’t occur every month is one of the more complicated aspects of using Simplifi!

415drums

I feel it is critical to have the capability to enter an annual budget (as we have done in Quicken for years) that includes recurring bills (i.e. $50/month for cable) and occasional bills (i.e. prop taxes, gifts). As a retired couple, this capability is critical for us because we need to provide the annual plan to our financial advisor so she can plan our monthly retirement distributions and plan in advance to have enough cash in our IRA's to pay for expensive months like April and Dec (prop taxes and Christmas gifts). It is also needed to ensure we stay within a desired tax bracket. Do finance people in businesses and corportations only budget one month at a time? No, it's always done annually, then reviewed monthly and quarterly. On a positive note, I love the fact that Simplifi automatically pulls in the account updates, the web interface is very modern, and the mobile app seems very capable, but without the annual budget, we may have to revert back to Quicken.

AAAAHHHHHHHH

> @415drums said:
> I feel it is critical to have the capability to enter an annual budget (as we have done in Quicken for years) that includes recurring bills (i.e. $50/month for cable) and occasional bills (i.e. prop taxes, gifts).

OMG a full calendar year view would be SO AMAZING, this would be a selling point for the whole service!!

thenewjerseyer

I just want to second this! I have tuition payments that occur roughly annually and would like to be able to build those in.

I'd also love, and this is connect, a way to budget preexisting savings for such bills. Essentially a pre-completed goal, to show what portions of your savings are actually available to spend at any given moment.

nunuyorker

I like the idea of a "roll-over spending plan" that behaves like an envelope. I think it'd help. I also do think there should be a way to re-distribute large purchases.

Using saving goals as envelope simply doesn't work because contribution/withdrawals are not integrated with reporting.

For example, I pay tuition quarterly upfront. I would like to be able to "split this transaction" across the 4 months, as if I had paid monthly, as described here: https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/1334/splitting-transaction-to-a-different-date#latest

Coach Natalie

Hello All,

Thanks for the great suggestions and feedback!

Upon reading through this, I think that most, if not all of this, is covered elsewhere, or has been implemented already.

Some of you talked about integrating Savings Goals into the Spending Plan, which has definitely been done. Also, I saw some comments about Recurring Transaction frequencies, and we do offer both yearly and every 6-month options, as well as every quarter, with some additional frequency options on the way; please follow here for updates: https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/72/recurring-transactions-location-and-frequency#latest

Now, in regards to an envelope style budgeting system, please add your votes here: https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/1264/integrating-an-envelope-budgeting-option/p1?new=1

You may also consider adding your votes here for rollover abilities with the Spending Plan: https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/114/add-budget-spending-plan-start-each-new-month-with-the-previous-months-leftover-amount-option

In regards to having a monthly breakdown of annual/bi-annual expenses in the Spending Plan, please vote here: https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/1689/break-down-annual-bi-annual-expenses-to-a-monthly-amount-in-spending-plan-2-merged-votes/p1?new=1

Finally, in regards to having the ability to create future Spending Plans, which would allow our Users the ability to budget for these annual/bi-annual events in advance in the Spending Plan, please follow this post for updates, as this addition is currently "In Progress", and will be coming soon to Simplifi: https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/701/future-spending-plans#latest

I believe that these items cover everything that's discussed in this post, but if anyone has anything else to contribute, or if I'm missing something, please be sure to let me know! Thanks, everyone!

-Coach Natalie