Projected Other Spending Is Calculated Incorrectly

ajbopp

OS: Android 13
Browser: Chrome
Device: Galaxy Tab S7 (with DeX)

I started looking ahead to May in the Spending Plan this morning and noticed something odd:

A positive "Other Spending" balance didn't seem right to me, so I double checked.

It would appear the Projected Other Spending forgot the minus sign in front of the $694.14.

I double checked the other numbers as well, and without filling this post up with a lot of screen shots I found that every month was on the wrong side of 0. (yes, I had a positive $700+ balance in March - long story). I would say the chart itself is just upside down from what I would expect, but there's clearly no minus sign in front of the tooltip for January, and there clearly is a minus sign in the tooltip for March.

Coach Natalie

Hello @ajbopp,

Thanks for reporting this issue to the Community, although I apologize that you're experiencing this behavior with Projected Other Spending.

When viewing my Projected Other Spending, I'm not sure that what you're seeing is a bug. I noticed that all of my monthly bars are in the negative, however, there is no minus sign in front of the numbers in the tooltips, so I think this is by design. I also noticed that the 'Average' line in the graph also does not have a negative sign in front of it like yours does.

Just like other areas of the program that are focused on spending specifically, Simplifi will inverse the numbers, as a positive number would be considered negative spending (or vice versa for income areas of the program where negative numbers would be considered negative income). I'm thinking the potential culprit here for you may be March, as you mentioned having a positive Other Spending balance that month. I think this caused Simplifi to project a number in the positive for Other Spending, and the minus signs or lack thereof are actually displayed as designed (inversed since it's a positive number in a spending feature).

Have you tried extending the number of months used for the projection to see if that changes anything once additional months that don't have positive spending are included to see if doing so helps to even things out? If not, I'd definitely suggest giving this a try to see if it helps make the projections and numbers clearer.

Please let us know how it goes!

-Coach Natalie

ajbopp

@Coach Natalie Got it. I'm learning to deal with it, but one of the more frustrating aspects of Simplify to me is the upside-down world it often lives in. Credit card balances in the Cash Flow graph do the same thing; worse, they do that right alongside other accounts which do the opposite thing (and the correct thing, IMO). Graphically displaying a negative balance as a positive is just something I always have to stop and re-orient my brain around for a moment so that I can understand what's being displayed. I can do it, it's just annoying being thrown out of my workflow every morning to kickstart my brain into understanding the opposite thing is being displayed than what it says is being displayed.