Accounting for regular contributions to savings with no goal

sygyzy

Hi,

I have been using Simplifi for a little over a year now and I am really enjoying it. I haven't made use of some of the features like the Spending Plan and Goals, but I want to start. I have, what I believe is, a pretty typical setup. In addition to my income, I have subscriptions and bills and regular expenses (discretionary, dining out, etc). I also contribute to my savings account twice a month. That is, I have scheduled transfers of a set amount from my checking to my savings account. I do not have a savings goal, and this money is not earmarked for any particular goal; I am not using it specifically to save up for a car, house, etc. While my Emergency Fund is included in this, an Emergency Fund is not the goal, with a set dollar limit I am aiming for.

What is the best way to integrate this into Simplifi (Spending Plan)? The two transfers represent a real drop in my available spending money each month. I cannot not account for them. Currently, my transfers from my checking to savings are configured as a recurring series in Settings. It's also set to Ignore from Reports by default because it's a Transfer type. I do not have Ignore from Spending Plan checked, yet this series doesn't show up in my Spending Plan. If I try to add it as a new Bill inside the Spending Plan, it tries to create the savings as a NEW recurring series. I don't want this since I already have it configured as a recurring series.

So, what's the best way for me to handle this? I know I can create a fake savings goal and put some fake amount ($500,000) but this is not what I want to do. I don't want to have to go in each month and mark that I've "contributed" to this fund. I don't want to see that I am $499,900 short because I contributed only $100 this month.

Is there a better way to account for scheduled transfers from my checking to savings account? Thank you.

DannyB

Hi @sygyzy I'll take a swing at this.  

First, Simplifi is focused on the current month (though we now have the ability to work with monthly spending plans up to 12 months out) and the Spending Plan in particular is focused on your Available funds and expenses for the current month.  Transferring money from your checking account (available to spend) to a savings account (money set aside for another time but still under your control) doesn't change your net worth so to speak, but it does affect what you have available to spend for the current month.  For this reason Simplifi will be default ignore money that is transferred between your accounts but not distributed to an outside person or entity as when you pay a bill or buy groceries, etc.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the money that shows up in the Spending Plan isn't the same as all the money you nave available in your various bank accounts.  The Accounts list will show you the total of all your cash accounts but the Spending Plan is ONLY concerned with what you receive as income in the current month and what you will spend in the current month divided up as you described above.

The only way to account for your savings transfers in the Spending Plan is to set up a savings goal and select "Yes, set aside."  But...

• you will have to set a goal amount (i.e. $100,000.00 or some such)
  
• you will leave the goal date blank (No goal date)
• you can enter your monthly transfer amount as the contribution amount
• you will have to manually contribute to this goal each month once the transfer is completed

Coach Natalie

Hello @sygyzy,

Thanks for posting your inquiry to the Community!

As @DannyB mentioned, transferring money from one account to another does not change your net worth and is usually tracked as a "Transfer" in Simplifi, meaning it doesn't count as income or an expense. If you want to track the transfers as expenses instead, I'd suggest using an Expense Category instead of a Transfer Category for the associated Recurring Series.

To touch on Transfer Categories a bit more, when using the Category of just "Transfer", these items will not show in the Spending Plan regardless of the ignore settings. Recurring Transfers that are set up as a 'Linked Transfer' can be included in the Spending Plan, however, you'll see both sides of the transfer, which will cause them to cancel each other out. The only other type of Transfer Category is "Credit Card Payment", which will just show the expense side of the transaction in the Spending Plan, however, it doesn't sound like "Credit Card Payment" would accurately reflect the flow of money. More details on using 'Transfers' can be found here. 

Using an Expense Category for the Recurring Series instead should allow you to properly account for the transfers as expenses in the Spending Plan. Instead of creating a new Recurring Series from the transaction directly, you can edit the existing Series under Settings>Recurring to change the Category. More details on editing a Recurring Series can be found here. 

I hope this and what @DannyB provided above helps!

-Coach Natalie

Flopbot

@sygyzy Looks like you've gotten a lot of great feedback already from the other three and I'm late to the party...as usual.  But, your post did cause me to think of a few things that I don't believe were addressed above.  Over the last few months, I've been really focused on Savings Goals and how they work...or don't.  In just the last 7 days, I finally have my real world accounts set up in a way that seems to mirror well the realities of Simplifi's current design in regards to Savings Goals.

To start off, I think Simplifi's Savings Goals are really a great tool and I really like what they have so far.  However, unfortunately, they're not quite there yet.  For more details, see this really great "Survey" of Savings Goal idea posts done by @DannyB awhile ago (click here).

Specifically, in my mind there are three (3) key missing features:

• Ability to schedule a Contribution / Withdrawal for a future date.
• Lack of ability to see a historical log of past Contributions/Withdrawals for reference purposes.
• Ability to automate the Contributions/Withdrawals under Spending Plan>Savings Goals.

Until Simplifi implements these three items, I've decided to follow these personal -non officially sanctioned - guidelines:

• Only use Savings Goals with Savings Accounts.
• If a real-world Savings Account has a Savings Goal in it, ALL THE MONEY in that account MUST ALSO be accounted for by Savings Goals.  Said another way, the Available To Spend amount for that particular Savings Account will always be $0.
• If I have a regularly occurring, scheduled transfer from Checking to Savings, it goes into a dedicated, real-world Savings Account that DOES NOT use Savings Goals.  For example, each paycheck, I have money deposited directly into Savings for B-Days & Christmas.  These two (2) separate accounts are not covered by Savings Goals.

Here's what it looks like in Simplifi:

• Savings Account A - (Short Term Savings Goals)
• Savings Account B - (B-Days NO Savings Goals)
• Savings Account C - (Christmas NO Savings Goals)
• Savings Account D - (Long Term Savings Goals)

I gather from the subject of your post that you don't want to use Savings Goals, but they can certainly be a useful tool in specific situations...but not every situation, yet.

sygyzy

Hi @DannyB thanks for taking the time to reply. Your response makes sense but I admit I am a little confused by why you and @Coach Natalie point out that moving money from one account to another doesn't change my net worth. Yes, I understand that's the case but it does affect how much available money I have on a month to month basis. The point of the Spending Plan is to visualize and plan out each month's cash flow, based on bills and expenses, other spending, and savings goals right?

Thanks for confirming that my workaround is the only one plausible solution - creating a fake savings goal with no end date and a large target value, and to mark the contributions manually, even though Simplifi knows when the scheduled transfers took place.

@Coach Natalie - thanks for the reply and for explaining the Transfer and Linked Transfer feature more. I didn't know that Transfers never show up in Spending Plans regardless of their toggle. I am not seeing Linked Tranfers in my spending plan (cancelled out or not). Do I need to toggle spending plan visibility? Since they cancel each other out, I realize this is not super helpful but I am just curious.

I appreciate the idea of changing the recurring series (linked transfer) to an Expense Category but it feels like this is going against the intention of the software. A transfer is not an expense or income as you stated earlier.

Thanks for all your help.

DannyB

Deleted all this since it completely misses the point of your question, @sygyzy

Yes, you will need to use fake (virtual?) savings goal or use an expense category for these transfers.  I use.the first never tried the second.

Coach Natalie

Hello @sygyzy,

Interestingly enough, when testing how Recurring Linked Transfers show in the Spending Plan, I am seeing them under Other Spending instead of the Bills and Income section. This is not right since they're Recurring items, so I'm not sure what's going on. 

I suspect that some changes were prematurely released due to a "Transfers" section being added to the Spending Plan. Eventually, we will have a "Transfers" section in the Spending Plan in addition to "Bills" and "Income" (I think they may combine "Bills" and "Subscriptions" into one section with this change, but I'm not entirely sure). This change may very well solve what you're looking to do with your transfers once implemented. Our Idea post here can be followed for updates on this ability. 

In the meantime, I will report what I'm seeing with Recurring Linked Transfers not showing under "Bills". I know it's a moot point for you at this time, however, I will report it so it can be fixed in a future release.

-Coach Natalie

RobWilk

I agree that 'biils' and 'subscriptions' could probably be merged.  I mean for example people may have cable 'bills' and streaming 'subscriptions' but aren't we talking the same thing?  I always have a hard time deciding whether to separate things into subscriptions or leave in bills.  The gym is optional [not required spending], is that a subscription for example?

-Rob

sygyzy

@DannyB circling back with your idea of using savings then manually marking the contributions. It turns out it does NOT work. The reason is it assumes you have no recurring transaction setup (ie to transfer money from checking to savings). When you click on contribute, it tries to record a transaction from one account to another. Instead, the best you can do is mark the amount you want to save each month as a savings goal, mark "yes set aside" but never actually confirm the contribution. It's wonky.

@Coach Natalie Thank you so much for testing this out and for the follow-up. It takes a lot to surface a mistake/bug so your transparency means a lot to me. I hope they are able to fix this issue. I can't wait to have a transfers section added to the Spending Plan! Please don't take away bills and subscriptions

@RobWilk The help articles do a good job explaining the difference between a bill and a subscription and I think you probably understand it on a general basis. I also see your point that they really can be interchangeable. I am a stickler for data and organization so I like being able to separate things out if they end up doing the same thing (debiting my accounts).