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Have recurring transactions show up in planned spending (edited)

GirlFriday715

I just realized that the recurring transactions that I've been adding to my accounts do not show up in planned spending. I budget for $125 for Charity per month and I've had 3 cleared transactions already for $120. But in the spending plan/planned spending, I still show that I have $125 left to spend. I found out that because I set this transaction as recurring, it won't show in my budget for planned spending. I can see it in upcoming bills list, but not when looking at budget as a whole to see what I have left in each category. I think you should be able to see both sides of that category, not just one or the other.

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Spending Plan

Feature Request

Planned Spend

Status: Active

Comments

DannyB

Hi @GirlFriday715

As far as the Spending Plan goes your monthly expenses are accounted for either as recurring in “Income after bills and savings” or in “Planned Spending.” If you want to track your total giving you will need to set up a Watchlist that includes your charitable giving category.

http://help.simplifimoney.com/en/articles/3472367-using-watchlists

You can search “watchlist” on the support page for more articles on using Watchlists.

Coach Natalie

Hello @GirlFriday715,

Thanks for posting your request to the Community!

I'm not sure that this Idea post will gain much traction with our Product Team since it will result in transactions being double-counted in the Spending Plan. I think what @DannyB suggested as far as using some of Simplifi's other tools to track spending in certain Categories would be a better solution. Watchlists would be great for this, and you can also use the Spending Report.

If you'd truly like Recurring Transactions to also be counted toward Planned Spending and be counted twice against your spending in the Spending Plan, we can totally keep this Idea post alive.

Please let us know how you'd like to proceed!

-Coach Natalie

GirlFriday715

I find your tunnel vision very disheartening. Maybe your site should provide a demo on the various features when trying to accomplish watching your spending. Basically, your site isn't creating a budget for me. If I create watch lists, it doesn't factor into how much money I make vs what I spend. But then you go to your spending plan and I add my bills (recurring) but I can't also see planned spending because your view of how this should work is very limited. I shouldn't have to choose one or the other. As I'm learning more about budgeting, maybe this isn't the application for me.

RobWilk

I think you have to understand (with this software) there are two types of planned spending:

(1) recurring bills

(2) non-recurring things that you expect to spend money on (like groceries).

The latter is what they mean by planned spending. It holds the money aside in spending plan separately so you know not to spend that money on anything else.

DannyB

Hi again, @GirlFriday715

OK, obviously this is a rather long entry. If you take the time to read it I hope it helps clarify and answer some of your concern.

First, I would say Simplifi has "focused vision" rather than "tunnel vision" and with some thought I beleive you will find that the Simplifi Spending Plan does exactly what you are asking for - Simplifi gives the user a way to "factor into how much money I make vs what I spend." This begins by seeing the Spending Plan as a whole and leaning the nomenclature of the Simplifi Spending Plan.

In either the web version or the mobile version, I can click on the Spending Plan either from the left hand menu (Web) or dropdown menu (Mobile) or by clicking on the Spending Plan card on the Dashboard in either.

Once open to the Spending Plan the user is presented with a summary of all income and all expenses the user has included in Simplifi (which I try to make sure includes all my true expenses not only for the current month but also for those non-monthly expenses and setting aside funds for "surprises" like repairs, replacements, and unplanned for events like accidents, etc.)

Inclusion of income is pretty straight forward right at the top of the Spending Plan in the "Income after bills & saving" section. You can add all anticipated recurring income and even add one time income events for a given month. Once added, Simplifi will track this for me from month to month.

In this same section the user will include those expenses that recur month in and month out - utility bills, mortgage or rent payments, recurring services, insurance premiums, phone, ISP, cable TV, streaming services, etc. These are all known monthly recurring "fixed" expenses that the user knows they will be billed for. Simplifi will even work to find these recurring expenses by analyzing the users bank and credit card accounts. Simplifi provides two ways to list these recurring expenses - bills and subscriptions - but the user will have to decide whether a given recurring billed expense is one or the other and different individuals will make different decisions on where to place a given recurring billed expense.

There is one more piece to this first section - Savings. If the user has anything they are saving for this is included here. It's Simplifi's way to help you "pay yourself first" so to speak. It's also currently the only way to set aside money in your monthly budget for anticipated annual/semi-annual expenses and spending.

Once all income, monthly fixed spending (expenses you are billed for), and any savings are entered into this first section, Simplifi does the math and gives you the amount of income that remains for the next two sections in the Spending Plan: "Planned spending" and "Other spending"

Here is where @RobWilk 's comment comes into play. All your expenses listed and accounted for in "Income after bills & savings" are planned expenses, right? So why can't one include them in "Planned spending"? I think this is where the confusion happens. In Simplifi the "Planned spending" section is where you account for those expenses you are NOT billed for but you have to plan for. Simplifi gives you a focused view of how much you have available after covering your bills and savings contributions (Income after bills &saving") to spend on such things as groceries, gas for the car(s), going out to eat, personal care, clothes, etc. All that stuff you spend money on but you don't receive a recurring bill for it.

Expenses in the "Income after bills & savings" section have already been accounted for and deducted from your income and once you have set spending goals (or limits) for your more flexible expenses in the "Planned spending section" Simplifi does the math again and gives you a bottom line of what you have "available" after all recurring fixed and flexible planned expenses are account for.

Simplifi gives you one more section to help focus in on your monthly income and outflow - "Other spending." This is where Simplifi gives the user an accounting of spending that doesn't fall into the first two sections. I try to end the month with no "Other spending" since, in my mind, all my spending is already planned for either as a bill, subscription, saving contribution or in one of my Planned spending categories, but it's about 50/50 on whether I end a given month with something in "Other spending" or not.

Simplifi takes all this information and gives the user a very tidy bottom line figure and at a glance the user can see exactly what is available, or not, after all income and expenses are accounted for in the Spending Plan. Then as the month unfolds and the user actually receives income and pays expenses the user can keep track of that bottom line from day to day, making necessary adjustments to keep that bottom line green, or zero if working toward a "zero based" budget.

If you made it this far I hope this helped. Whether Simplifi works for you is something you have to decide, and like any app, Simplifi has it's quirks, but overall, IMHO it's a great budgeting app.

thaJack

If an item that would otherwise be in Planned Spending is instead a Bill or Subscription, it would be nice to have it listed in the Planned Spending transaction list, grayed out, with a tip indicating that it is excluded because it is covered by a Bill or Subscription.

This might help alleviate some confusion when a transaction appears to be missing from Planned Spending.

RobWilk

That would count it twice in spending plan totals.

DannyB

Can you give an example or a scenario how this would be used?

UrsulaA

This request sounds like the one below. There is an example of someone wanting to show the charity donation in planned spending and dimmed in bills, which shows the same transactions in two places.

[removed link to merged thread]

thaJack

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/30546#Comment_30546

It shouldn't count in Planned Spending if it's already a Bill. It should be grayed out, just like transactions that are excluded from Planned Spending, but would be there if they weren't excluded. Same thing here… they would be there if they weren't a bill/subscription, so they should be grayed since they aren't counted.

EL1234

You can see them under Bills / Subscriptions in the "Income after bills & savings" part of Spending Plan. I agree that it might be more intuitive to somehow show those in the Planned spending section instead, and keep the first section just for Income and Savings.

DannyB

There’s nothing intuitive about double counting or double showing a single expense in two places. Fixed expenses and flexible expenses are not inclusive. If you want to capture or track, let’s say your utility bills, under one heading, Q-Simplifi provides for this through Watchlists. With Watchlists you can group various categories for monitoring purposes. The Spending Plan is meant for planning proactively how your intend to spend your monthly income.

Jerrod

If you already have it in your monthly bills, why do you need to see it in another place? If you want to keep track of a particular category, you can just do that in reports with graphs and a list of transactions. You could do that in watchlist, but I honestly haven't found them very useful.

I see the bills/subscription/savings section of the spending plan as those specific items I know I am spending a specific amount of money on. The planned spending section is for those general categories that I know I'll spend money on but the specific amount is somewhat fungible.

shameed

I just learned that the recurring transactions do not show up in Planned Spending if they are captured in Bills. How could Bills not part of planned spending? I want to see everything in planned spending that I intend to spend this month. Particularly now that rollover is supported (in early access mode - enable it in Settings), I want to distribute my annual expenses (like property taxes) and 6-monthly expenses (such as car insurance) into monthly expenses and rollover every month until it is time to actually pay the amount. This way I get the real view of avg monthly expense all the time, instead of a surprise expense once a year.

The only purpose Bills should serve is a reminder that this bill is coming up and that the bills hasn't been paid and is overdue. They are two independent things. Not sure why an expense has to be exclusively put in one bucket (Bills) or the other (planned spending).

I think Simplifi should seperate them out and let the user track the expense independently between Bills and Planned Spending, allowing one transaction to show up in both.

shameed

I really loved Bills feature in that it tells me when a bills is coming up and whether I have paid it off or it is past due. But I value more to the information that monthly planned spending gives me. At any point in time, I can tell in this category I anticipated that much expense, and I have spent so much and I have this much remaining. With rollover feature in planned spending, the view could have become even more accurate. But not counting Bills in this view is really killing the value of rollover feature. And I can tell if I am overspending in any of the categories just by going through Planned Spendnig if it included bills.

How do you answer a very simple question that any good budgetting app should be able to answer? How much is my avg monthly expense? This includes the non-monthly expenses (annual or bi-annual or any other frequency) distributed monthly. This way I know if I am making enough money every month and what my savings are going to be.

And if your answer is go look at the graphs, then that's not acceptable for two reasons. First the graph won't show you monthly avg'd out expense. The graph shows you one year back expenses. What if I just started. Why can't I still know what my monthly expenses are just by defining various categories in Planned Spending with rollover feature and then tracking them month over month. I don't have to wait for one whole year, and then look at my total spending.

House of Gurdon

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/15380#Comment_15380

Is there away for instead of the transaction being doubled you can assign it to multiple places. My use case is that I want to track my subscriptions used in the entertainment category (netflix,hulu,etc.) That is also a reoccuring expense so I have it listed as a subscription but it should also be in my planned spending category because i do plan to spend that money. I use the planned spending like a true bucket budgetting system (which i believe is the purpose) So is there a feature (or an area within Simplifi that i'm missing) that shows how much a subscription in a particular category is averaging? Right now I'm tracking it in the watchlist which is fine but that doesn't calculate into my planned spending which is what i'm trying to budget for.

DannyB

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/57240#Comment_57240

Planned Spending in QS is not a "bucket budgeting system" but one component of the Spending Plan as a whole designed to accommodate monthly flexible expenses. The QS Spending Plan is built along the lines of what I would call a Fixed (Bills (recurring Bills, Subscriptions, Transfers) and Flexible (groceries, clothing, fuel, miscellaneous, etc.) budgeting system. I suppose you can "tweak" it to work as a "bucket budgeting" system, but it's not designed specifically for that type of budgeting. If you want to plan for your entertainment (netflix, hulu, etc) expenses in Planned Spending, you would need to delete the recurring series for each one and then can create a Planned Spending expense equal to how much you plan to spend on these subscription services and use that amount as your max spend.

The other option already built into QS is to set up a Watchlist for your entertainment expenses and that will give you a month to month tracking of the total for these expenses.

flintster_99

I think this is a case of Simplifi overthinking this feature (or perhaps implementing it in a way that was most convenient because of the way 'recurring transactions' are structured in the app - separate structures that 'shift into' the register based on matching transactions.) I think if 'bills' were just renamed 'recurring bills' it would be much clearer. 'recurring bills' are the MOST planned a spend could ever be - but are the only things omitted from 'planned spend'.

IMO (and in most budget…. err…. 'planned spending'…. jargon), an expense is an expense. The spending plan should have income, planned expenses, unplanned expenses, and 'goals' in this case.

When you drill into 'planned expenses', the expense itself should show whether its a fixed/recurring 'bill' or not. Even if they were separate sections in the main panel and not interleaved/merged into the sort, it would be clearer (basically 'bills' gets demoted to the 'planned expenses' panel

It would be best if they were interleaved/merged according ot the sort (and just not editable and always showing as already 'spent' in the month with an info bubble 'this is a recurring transaction. You can change it by going to….

flintster_99

DannyB's comment above to make recurring transactions a planned spend item would work, but then that removes them from cash flow management which is arguably more important when trying to prevent overdrafts etc.

DryHeat

@flintster_99

I understand that you would prefer for Bills to be included in the Planned Spend expense series. Perhaps I should explain why I don't want it to work that way. I understand that people use budgeting software differently — I just want to make the point that the current setup is not irrational.

I view Bills as more-or-less fixed payments that I am going to make during the month. They may change by a little bit one way or another (like an electric bill) but I am pretty sure of the approximate amount and very sure that I am going to have to make that payment by a certain date.

The expense series I identify in Planned Spend are different. They are general types of expenses (like Groceries or Dining Out) where I have an idea of what I am going to spend but not when or where I am going to spend it. And, crucially, these are expenses that I have some control over. I may decide to spend more or less if needed.

And, finally, Other Spend is where more random and unplanned expenses surface. Some months I have Travel expenses, some months Home Maintenance expenses. Generally these expenses are covered by the slack between Income and Bills & Planned Spend. The Left this month figure shows me how that is going. (There are always such expenses, but if one starts turning up regularly I can move it to Planned Spend.)

So, for me, these are three different types of expenditures, some of which I have more control over than others. I don't want them mashed together. Looking back over the months and seeing how the different sections performed is useful to me.

DannyB

I feel like this has become a semantics conversation and a bit of a debate over nomenclature. To use any system effectively I need to understand the nomenclature of that system as that system defines it. If you are willing to learn the nomenclature used by QS, you will find that it is a rational system for managing personal finances.

DryHeat

@DannyB

I feel like this has become a semantics conversation and a bit of a debate over nomenclature.

I don't think it's just nomenclature. In the Spending Plan the four expense sections (Bills, Planned Spend, Other Spend & Goals) are treated very differently by the system. For example:

Bills are deducted from Income before actually paid. They also show up in Projected Cash Flow; none of the other sections do.
Planned Spend items are deducted from Income before actually spent (and if you don't release funds, are deducted even if never spent at all).
Other Spend items are deducted from Income only after they occur.
Goals are deducted from Income immediately, but reduce available balances in accounts only after contributions are made.

These are real operational differences. Understanding how each section works highlights the differences between Spending Plan and typical budgeting systems. It also enables the user to get the full benefit of this somewhat unusual system.

DannyB

@DryHeat Exactly my point.

This whole thread started with the original poster's desire to have recurring expenses ALSO show up in "Planned Spend" (formerly Planned Spending) since the particular expenses were "planned." The point of confusion appeared to be using "Planned Spend" as the actual budget feature in the Spending Plan rather than recognizing that the Spending Plan as a whole (as you have described quite well and succinctly above) as the "budget" feature in QS. Planned Spend in QS serves a particular purpose that is one component of the whole system.

I understand nomenclature to mean a system for naming things particularly in a specific field. When I was being trained in auto mechanics the first lessons were all about theory and nomenclature. When I went from primarily gasoline powered engines to diesel powered engines, I had to learn nomenclature specific to diesel engines. Even though there are a lot of crossovers between these two types of internal combustion engines, gasoline fueled, and diesel fueled, you had to learn the differences and how the nomenclature differed. Treating a diesel-powered engine like a gasoline-powered engine will end in less than satisfactory outcomes. You make a good point of the operational differences, but what I was commenting on was the debate over "Planned Spend" as it is used in Quicken Simplifi and how some are insisting "Planned Spend" should be used based on experiences and definitions used in other systems. If I learn the nomenclature of a given system I will be able to work more successfully within the rationality and operational parameters of that system.

As a QS user it is simply a matter of understanding and accepting the nomenclature as it is used in QS. Understanding the nomenclature and the operational differences are part and percale* parcel to using QS effectively and successfully.

*"percale" is a type of weave used to make sheets, so in a sense it can work in this context of speaking of the way QS "weaves" it's functions together. 🤔😶😏

SRC54

It's disconcerting at first but once you get used to the logic of the Spending Plan, it makes sense to have the Bills separate from the targets of planned spending. Planned Spending is what you call "discretionary" spending. Bills are not.

DryHeat

@DannyB

Understanding the nomenclature and the operational differences are part and percale to using QS effectively and successfully.

Quite right.** You have to understand both the nomenclature AND the operational differences to understand the system.

==============

** Except for the "percale" part. I don't think alternating warp and weft threads have much to do with it. But, as always, I could be wrong about that.🤣

DannyB

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/58062#Comment_58062

I found QS to be a breath of fresh air when I discovered it. I loved the Spending Plan from the get-go. It just made sense to me and even though I've checked out other fin apps from time to time I haven't found any that match QS as far as the way my brain works.

SRC54

Yes, @DannyB helped me to understand it when I was new to it. I agree completely.