Spending Plan - show totals for paid/spent vs upcoming/left with a progress bar (edited)
Comments
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Is there any update on this potential feature?
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Would add the current spending view (right had side of screen with bars) of: Income, Bills, Subscriptions and Savings is lacking the key area of Planned Spending. It is on the left of screen showing the total amount budgeted for the month - and then once clicked on can see the detail for each category, but this is the critical budgeting data that should be aggregated and also included on the right as it's own bar with ability to click on the bar to expand below with each category - make sense?
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I like having the spend plan category, but it would be nice if I could have a summary of the actual spend vs the planned spend. I use the envelop method, but I would like to see how much money is remaining across my planned spend categories.
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This feature looks partially complete. In the web app, for planned spending, one can see.
It will be nice to have the same breakdown for the bills and subscriptions.
Simplifi User Since Nov 2023
Minter 2014-2023
Questionable Excel before 2014 to present
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Hi! Thank you so much for recently adding the % spent indicator to the spending plan charts, that's a great help. Something I really miss from Mint is being able to see how far through the month I am over the top of the charts. This better helps me understand if my spending is on track at a glance.
I've added a screenshot of how Mint treated it
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What would be helpful for me is to see my remaining total budgeted balance of the Planned Spending. Overspending in one category of Planned Spending can create an Over Spent condition. But if all other categories are under budget, then in actuality, I have not currently Over Spent. Yes, I will over spend if I spend what was budgeted in every category.
Just wondering, in these situations, do folks go back and lower and/or raise budgets in other categories to correct Over Spent conditions? I typically don't as I just look at all the buckets and see where I can save in a given category. Hence the request to see the overall remaining budget somewhere.
For example
- The $500 is the total of all the budgeted amounts in the cards/categories
- $123.45 is what has actually been spent
- $376.55 is what is Available per the budgeted amount
- While I have overspent in one category, Fitness (which creates the Overspent pie graph), in total, I still have budget remaining so this gives me a big picture view of what's left.
- Then I can choose to make budget (expense) adjustments in a given card(s) or leave everything as is and monitor spending as I go.
I believe the $500 total budget would match the Spending Plan number at the start of the month. As you spend, the Spending Plan number changes, but your budgets don't, unless you edit them.
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One of my favorite features in Mint was being able to see how much of a monthly budget I'd spent compared to how far through the month we are. They had just a simple vertical bar on the budget tracker. So for example, if we're 1/3 through the month, but I've already spent half my budget in a category, I know I should be more careful about that category
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The bars are helpful in each individual category. I was hoping for an overall Planned Spending status to get a big picture view of remaining budget. An example is shown in the prior comment.
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Can we get different options to viewing the spending plan totals. I'm more of a loose budgeter and the bold "X amount left at the end of the month" is less helpful to me as I'd rather get a "Spent X amount out of X amount" as the overview category total
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So far I have enjoyed using the app. I think you guys are doing a great job.
I wanted to give a suggestion that I think would benefit many and make the user experience better.
Would it be possible to add a simplified/minimal list view to Spending Plan and/or Watchlist? This way a user can get a good overview of the different items in a small area that flows top to bottom.
I think Mint and Copilot do this well:
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I'd love to see a better recap of my past spending plan Planned Spending section that includes what was released and the original budget, not the updated budget that matches the spend after releasing funds. That doesnt really provide me any real info.
Here is an example of what could be viewed AFTER releasing money. The red text is suggested new information. The $200 is the original budget that I'll use each month.
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I went searching for a thread most similar to a feature I'd like to see and I think this is it.
I want to be able to see what's left to still come out of my Spending Plan in any month. I want a bar or figure showing me how much of my monthly spending plan is still out there to be allocated/used up. I use the Projected Cash Flow religiously. Plainly, I want to be able to look at the end of the month and subtract off what's still yet to be used up from my Spending Plan.
My monthly Spending Plan (categorized monthly expenses, not bills (i.e. gas, groceries, entertainment)) is $2,000 a month. As I use money in categories (e.g. I get gas for $50 and mark down that I've done it), obviously the money left to spend in that category decreases.
Currently, if I want to take my remaining Spending Plan into account when I check my end of month Projected balance I have to manually tally up what is still left in each category. It would be much easier to get a quick snapshot of remaining Spending Plan to spend so that I can deduct it from my Projected end of month balance.
Perhaps there could even be a feature to be able to show remaining spending plan for any month on the Projected Cash flow. I think it could be valuable to get that quick visual. (See what my end-of-month looks like after my bills AND my spending plan money has all been used at the end of the month.)
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It would also be nice to have progress bars for total bills and total subscriptions, too. Basically, if there is a total somewhere, having some way of seeing your progress towards that total would be great.
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I'm surprised there is no total amount spent vs. income in the Spending Plan section. Like others, I may overspend in one catagory and save in another but want to know if I'm staying in my total budget for that month (or more likely how much I've overspent that month). Thank you for the consideration.
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For many many years I have kept a spreadsheet to track monthly bills. This tracking included "total amount", "total amount paid", and "total amount remaining" for each month. I continue to do this tracking, mainly to be able to instantly see the total amount remaining I have to pay each month.
Currently, Simplifi shows the bill total for each month in the spending plan, but does not show a total amount remaining. In other words, a running total of how much is left to pay as bills get paid throughout each month.
If this feature could be added, I would be able to stop duplicating work by using a separate spreadsheet to keep track of these amounts.
Simplifi has become so stable I have essentially quit using Quicken as a backup, and would like to quit using my spreadsheet as well.
Thanks in advance for the consideration.
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I would like to see a total at the top of the Planned Spending page: How much of my planned spending has been spent vs. how much I actually planned to spend that month. A total of all the categories combined.
This would be helpful in situations where I know I spent too much on the dentist this month, but I didn't spend anything on the boat, so I know I'm still in the black overall for the month. I'd like to know HOW MUCH I'm in the black overall for all categories for the month.
This is different than the donut chart that shows my planned spending vs. available vs. other spending. What I want to see is how much of my planned spending total has already been spent.
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Spent so far and left to spend summary was available for Planned Spending for a short time in early 2024. But for some reason this feature was incompatible with the Planned Spending rollover feature and when the rollover feature was launched, the spent so far and left to spend was disabled/deleted.
Hopefully, this remains on the roadmap for future deployment.
Danny
Simplifi user since 01/22
”Budget: a mathematical confirmation of your suspicions.” ~A.A. Latimer1 -
It was a "squeaky wheel gets the grease" kind of thing.
Danny
Simplifi user since 01/22
”Budget: a mathematical confirmation of your suspicions.” ~A.A. Latimer0 -
This wheel sounds squeaky to me.. how bout it simplifi?? planned spending totals progress bar with percentage and $$ ..lets make it happen
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When I release funds on underspent categories in the spending plan, it reduces the amount budgeted to the amount spent. I would like it to at least show the original budgeted amount so I can easily see how I did compared to my originally planned spending amount
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This has always bothered me too. I would like to be able to look back and see how I did with my Planned Spending amounts — Was I over or under?
As an alternative, I could just choose not to release the funds. But if I do that, it would be nice if I could turn off the alert or warning or whatever it is that nags me to do the release, as @UrsulaA suggested here:
DryHeat
-Quicken Classic (1990-2020), CountAbout (2021-2024), Simplifi (2025-…)2 -
Along with the "Planned Spend" [removed - accuracy/speculation], and the "Overspent" amount, please add a total "Unspent" as well. Especially as I get close to the end of the month, I need to see how much remains unspent in the categories that are under spent in total. Right now, I am having to do that by hand every month. I get a "Left this month" at the bottom of the left pane, which is just income minus bills, predicted spending plus a total of overages. But this month, for instance, there is a huge gap, which is the gap between all my planned spending and what I have actually spent thus far this month. So as an example, this month, the "Left this month" says $981, which should be a "Oh, no!", but I am a day form the end of the month and I have a $1600 gap between my planned spending and my actual spending so far this month, what looks like a problem actually isn't. Rather than manually adding that up over and over, it would be nice to have it at the top.
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I saw a screenshot this morning that showed an "Available" or "Left to Spend" in the left hand pane, which I could swear was there when I last used Simplifi a couple years ago and I sure hope that as some speculated above, it wasn't removed. In general, the latest iteration of the spending plan screen just fails to paint a picture of where I am at any given time. I had to make a spreadsheet this morning using numbers that are already there to get a good picture because Simplifi doesn't provide that picture. Though I think it used to, if I remember correctly.
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I hope it’s not too off the topic, but I’d love to see something like a stacked area chart (days of month in horizontal, and money spent/planned on vertical axis.) as an alternate option for the pie chart that is currently available under spending plan.
Basically the total income would be highlighted as the shaded area or line in the vertical axis, and a dotted/translucent areas are the projected spend based on planned spend and bills (for bills you’d have exact dates, for planned spend you could just do an average rate to spend down budget until end of month), and perhaps different colors can indicate categories of spend. As the month progresses, the actual data would be filled with solid areas and projected spends would be recalculated based on remaining balance left.
This is somewhat like the cash flow chart in Empower that I have used. But incorporating the planned spend and bills help visualize how the budget is spent down over a month, and if the user is in mid month, it’s helps visualize the trajectory they are on. This I believe is the biggest weakness of the Empower chart (ie not helpful to see the trajectory if all my big bills and rent hit at the end of month).0 -
It would be helpful to have a calculation in the Spending Plan and in the Next section of the Bills & Income that shows a calculated sum of the remaining bills and subscriptions due.
Right now, we can see the net amount left over after bills are paid, but I would like to see how much money is still due for this moth for the remaining unpaid bills.
For example, in the Spending Plan, there could be a line under, or in parenthesis next to the sum of the Regular Bills that displays the remaining due amount that calculates all unpaid bills. This can also be in the sidebar of the Spending Plan and in the Summary section of the Bills & Income.
Thank you
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