Set Recurring Series Amounts Based on Time of Year, etc.

Flopbot

Greetings,

Please consider giving us several options for how to set the Recurring Amount in our series.  Ideally, I'd love to be able to choose between:

1. Enter Your Own Amount
2. Running Average Based on Last 12 Months
3. Running Average Based on Time of Year (Month)
4. Running Highest Amount Based on Last 12 Months

I was always very impressed with Quicken Desktop because it could do #3.  This was so convenient when it came to bills like Electric & Gas which fluctuate based on time of year.

As an added bonus, this auto generated guessed amount would have a red asterisk or something beside it to warn the user that it needs replaced once the actual bill arrives.

DannyB

Great idea!  Hope a lot of Simplifiers jump on board with this idea.  To have Simplifi guestimate based on time of year would be so cool.  And with bill connect you wouldn't even need to worry about adjusting the amount as that will be done automatically when the monthly bill is posted.

JDNYUS

Late joining but I think this would be a great idea.

Kanda

Fantastic idea, utility bills in particular swing wildly over the year due to the need for climate control in the temperate parts of the world, but this is at least somewhat predictable.

Mrsterry

Love this idea!

RobWilk

Does annual recurring transactions not let you do this now?

Flopbot

@RobWilk, no.  Right now, when creating a recurring annual/monthly transaction, there is no way to set the “Recurring Amount” to anything other than a hand-keyed number.  The number you enter doesn’t adjust up/down based on time of year.  If you set it to $100, it will always be $100 until you change it.

RobWilk

@Flopbot you missed my point -- if every January it's a certain amount, you set that amount annually in January - as opposed to consistent monthly.  You can set 12 annual amounts which are all different based on time of year.

dlince

Not sure if this has been implemented somewhere, but +1 to this idea! My energy bill varies every month, and it's frustrating to see "is this a recurring bill?" for each month's different amount.

Hover2mach

This is mainly for variable bills, such as home electricity. Where I live it can range from $70 to $230 depending on the season. Averaging the "last 6 months" doesn't do it justice. I would like my August bill to automatically adjust for the higher bill that month.

Perhaps when programming the bill there could be a slider that asks "variable" or "seasonal" and you turn it on/off. Even more advanced would be an option of adding a ___% annually to account for rising costs.

Probably lots of ideas. Another option would be "Does this change monthly?". Then if you select "YES", it opens a table to manually type January, February, etc… Helpful, would be for it to see last years fee, that month, from that biller.

Open to other ideas. But for certain bills, the average just doesn't work.

ajbopp

Quicken has a configuration where you can set a planned expense as "approximate." I'm not sure what the algorithm is, but it works well for groceries and utility bills (at least, it did when I was using Quicken).

I've often thought this would be a great addition to Q-Simplifi

Amanza

Great idea. Otherwise the recurring feature just adds work to fix it each month and the spending plan is never right.

Amanza

Agree - seems crazy to not have a feature that allows for a recurring bill that varies in amounts. Liked the ideas posted by Hover2mach And especially number 3 by Flopbot. The recurring should be linked base don the merchant and then estimatated amount could be based on a combination of their ideas depending on how much past data is already loaded.

Gas, electric, insurance, real estate taxes, water, excise fees add up to a significant amount and are important to have as part of the spending plan. It is especially helpful for someone trying to manage against a budget and project how much is needed each month.

SRC54

@RobWilk had a pretty good workaround with 12 annual recurring payments. What I do is take the spring/fall charges and make that the monthly recurring and then for June, July, August and Sept, I edit those as I go. Normally it would be about $90 but $200 for summer! For gas, I do the same but edit Dec, Jan, Feb, Mar.

Of course, we could take the utilities up on their offers to balance our bill each month, but I prefer reality to that. LOL

Another suggestion for the developers is to have a setting in the recurring where they go back to the previous year's bill each month and put that amount in. It has the advantage of showing you too how inflation is (rate changes) affecting your bill.

Amanza

@RobWilk - Like the idea of it picking up last year's amount. In today's day and age with Gen AI and regular old AI, seems these kinds of features should be easier to release than in the past. Not to mention, if they had the choice of spending plan or budgeting, they could see what users choose and they could attract an additional set of users to pay the premium.

I am giving the spending plan a try, but it just is not that simple - I wish I could simplifi.