We want your input for the Simplifi Blog!

Coach Natalie

We'd love to hear some input from our Community Members! Please let us know what types of content you'd like to learn more about by answering the following questions:

1. What Simplifi features would you like to learn more about?
2. Is there anything in Simplifi that you'd like to know how to do?
3. What personal finance topic or question is currently at the top of your mind, e.g. achieving savings goals, paying down debt, protecting against inflation, etc.?

This will give us an idea of what our Users would like to see in upcoming Simplifi Blog topics. We look forward to hearing your feedback!

Flopbot

1. (Highest Priority) Spending Plan  (2nd Priority) Savings Goals
2. Similar to my first answer, I don't currently understand how Savings Goals are supposed to work, so I really, really want to know how to add money to them, withdraw money from them, transfer money between them, etc.
3. How to not overspend in an age of inflation.  My lack-of "Achievement" in this area is really annoying.
   
   

Poptarts

I would love to see tips on managing property and mortgage payments

ijac

Spending Plan
Savings Goals
Transfer Transactions

Coach Natalie

We appreciate your feedback @Flopbot, @Poptarts, and @ijac!

-Coach Natalie

Krystle

I would like to link my Apple card!!!
Planning a budget for future months!

Ccorock

[removed - off topic]

Coach Natalie

Thank you for the feedback @Krystle!

Please be sure to also add your vote and feedback here for Apple Card: https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/1292/applecard/p1?new=1

-Coach Natalie

LtDan1912

I'd like to second @Flopbot 's answer.
I think the Spending Plan and Goals deserve the most attention from a product perspective and an education perspective.

They could potentially provide the most benefit to users, but in their current state are very cumbersome to use. After working with them for a couple of months now I still have confusion about:

• Transferring money from goal to goal (without affecting my spending plan)
• How the use of goal money affects the spending plan, etc

Some Questions:

1. When spending from a goal what are the exact steps we need to take?
   Currently, as I understand it, it involves:
   - Withdraw from goal for spending
   - Tag the transaction with the goal's tag
   - Mark the transaction as "Ignore from Spending plan"
   This all seems like a lot of effort on the user's part and too much to miss to get things to appear correctly in the Spending Plan. Hopefully, I am missing something here.
2. What happens if I have an expense come in on the last day of the month that I want to spend from a Goal, but I don't see it until the first day of the next month?
   In this scenario, it seems like any "spend from goal" changes I make will affect the wrong month. (The current one instead of the one in which the transaction occurred). This throws off the Spending Plan for both months.

Please take all of the above as constructive criticism. I think we all want to see the product get better.

DannyB

Ditto @Flopbot and @LtDan1912 and @ijac

I am sold on Simplifi as our money management app going forward.  Clarifying and enhancing the connection and interaction between Spending Plan, Saving Goals, and transfer will be most helpful.

One suggestion is to have someone on the Simplifi build team devoted to building a library of how-to tutorials, video and written, as well as explaining the philosophy of money management behind Simplifi.

One feature I really appreciate but haven’t seen much discussion or commentary on is the Watch List!  For me, this is a great feature that helps me visualize just where I am through the month in each of my top level budget categories.

No burning financial questions or topics at this time.

R&C

I have been testing budget apps for the past three months (you name it, I have likely tried it) and recently became a Simplifi user.  So far it seems to click all my checkboxes except one:
- The ability to set a year planning horizon in the spending plan.  Example, I know that over the year I want to budget (spend) $600 for entertainment category.  Yes, that is $50/month, however showing me a month to month average and spend (over/under) doesn't really tell me how much is left in the bucket without doing calculations in my head. Monthly spending will vary.  If by November I have spent all $600, then in December I won't be going to the movies!

So, a checkbox option to display watchlists and spending plans in yearly format would be really useful.

timmyc123

[removed - off topic]

Coach Natalie

Hello All,

We appreciate everyone's feedback here!

Although we very much appreciate the feedback, it seems that this post is becoming a bit off-topic. As a reminder, the input that we're requesting is for the Simplifi Blog specifically, and our Team would like the answer to the following questions to help us get a better idea of what content to feature:

1. What Simplifi features would you like to learn more about?
2. Is there anything in Simplifi that you'd like to know how to do?
3. What personal finance topic or question is currently at the top of your mind, e.g. achieving savings goals, paying down debt, protecting against inflation, etc.?

If you'd like to see some changes or enhancements made to Simplifi as opposed to the Simplifi Blog, we have a Feature Requests section with tons of Idea posts that can be browsed and voted on, and you are also more than welcome to create a new Idea post for your suggestion if one does not already exist. More details on Idea posts can be found here. 

We appreciate everyone's understanding!

-Coach Natalie 

dmc1

Thoughts after 20+ years using both Microsoft money and quicken.

Full disclosure I am a CFO that uses a multitude on accounting and finance systems as well as numerous personal finance systems. 

I was so reluctant moving from quicken with all the features that would no longer be available. I've tried 15+ personal finance software over past several years and didn't find anything close to what I had.

The decision was made to realize that quicken's days are coming to an end. Maybe not for a few years but as technology improves more and more solutions are leaving behind this type of technology. 

Simplifi has its shortcomings but I've seen alot of improvements. It has a different approach but with all web based software it has to scale or the speed would make it unusable.

There's alot to like and as enhancements continue I believe it will be one of the leaders in this space.

CharlieP

I would like to see logged issues fixed much sooner. The Venmo issue (can't connect to Venmo) was logged on Feb 1st and I first logged the Watchlist issue (not including transactions in January in year-to-date totals) in late February. I have to do too many workarounds because I can't currently have Venmo as a linked account. I left two other budgeting apps because I was noticing too many unresolved issues. I'm curious, why is it taking so long to fix issues? I would imagine that you've put a priority on new features. Please dedicate more development to fixing known issues otherwise customers will move to another app. There are a lot of other budgeting apps available. I really hope I don't have to drop this and start over with another app. 

CharlieP

It would be very helpful to new users to have better training videos to learn from. The Simplifi videos I found on YouTube that was created by Simplifi are very basic, just clicking around the user interface, and don't address more complex scenarios that users run into. For users to figure that out on their own can be very time consuming. Fortunately you offer coaching sessions which I've taken advantage off, but would be very helpful to have more in-depth videos to learn from. Please check out the training videos that corporate YNAB trainers create. They're very informative, engaging and address common scenarios that users struggle with. Thanks. 

Strahan001

It would be great if my financial institution could be added, I had put in the request 2 months ago.  That would be helpful instead of me manually inputting items.  Thank you. 

Jedp

For me, here's the best things we can work on in order of importance
1) Better management of cash flow for those who use a credit card each month and pay off the balance to earn points.
2) Spending plan future budgeting.
3) Rollover budgets.
4) More crypto exchanges in investments.
5) App speed enhancements on slower computers.