Spending Plan question

ejs

I’m experimenting with the Spending Plan feature and having trouble understanding how it works, and I’m not sure if it’s because I’m experiencing a bug or just misunderstanding how it is supposed to work.

To test out the feature, I added a “Planned spending” expense item for the category of Groceries in the amount of $400 to recur every month. I added nothing else to the Spending Plan feature (no income, no other expenses, and I have no recurring series set up for any transactions). My Spending Plan shows $-400 available for December 2023, and the same for the current month of January. It shows zero transactions in the Groceries category, even though I have dozens of transactions categorized as groceries in December, and one in January. This seems like an error to me, but am I missing something about how this should work? Thank you.

UrsulaA

The behavior you are seeing is expected of Simplifi. The available to spend calculation is:

Income - Bills - Subscriptions +/- included transfers - planned spending - other spending

In your case = Income (0) - Bills/Subcriptions/Transfers (0) - 400 - Other spending (0) = -$400.

From the article:

The Spending Plan divides your monthly spending budget into four parts:

1. Income after bills and saving is the amount of money left to spend after subtracting your paid and expected Bills, Subscriptions, Transfers, and Savings Goal contributions from your Income (both received and expected) for the current month. Quicken Simplifi uses the Recurring Transactions and Savings Goals you've told us about to determine the totals.
2. Planned spending is the amount you plan to spend on items that fluctuate each month, such as gas and groceries, as well as any other one-time expenses for the month.
3. Other spending is an up-to-minute tally of the rest of your spending for the month, adjusted every time you update your financial activity in Quicken Simplifi.
4. Available is the amount left to spend after deducting the Planned Spending and Other Spending totals from the Income after bills and saving total.

More info here: https://help.simplifimoney.com/en/articles/4212702-using-the-quicken-simplifi-spending-plan

ejs

Yes, the -$400 is what I expected to see as what’s available to spend, but why aren’t the grocery transactions showing up at all? It shows $400 of “unused funds” and zero transactions (even though there are in fact many grocery transactions).

UrsulaA

"It shows zero transactions in the Groceries category, even though I have dozens of transactions categorized as groceries in December, and one in January. "

Thanks for clarifying - have you tried clearing the cookies, signing out, signing back in, and refreshing? Sometimes that resolved the problem for me when the transactions wouldn't refresh. If this does not work, open a support ticket or wait for a coach to respond. I saw threads in the community of other users having issues with the spending plan. Mine is working fine.

ejs

Thanks. Clearing/refreshing didn't help. Just wanted to confirm that this was actually an error and not simply my misunderstanding of how the feature works before I contacted support, which I will now do.

ajbopp

@ejs this does sound like an error to me, but on the other hand it seems so obvious and "in your face" that I would have expected something like this to be reported before, and I can't recall an instance of it. I'm wondering if you would be willing to post some screenshots of what you're seeing, what you're expecting to see, and why?

I'll start.

I have a "Planned Spending" card set up for the Entertainment category. The Planned Spending series is set up like this:

As you can see, it shows that in December I had one transaction that qualified to get put into the Planned Spending Entertainment bucket (a video game that blew that particular budget, and turns out I don't particularly enjoy :(...)

But if I run a report on Entertainment expenses, I get a different result:

Now it turns out I have two expenses in the Entertainment category.

But if I look at my Bills in the Spending Plan, I see that one of those two expenses is already covered there:

So in my Planned Spending, the expense for my bill to Audible is not included because it's already included in the Bills section of the Spending Plan. Putting it in both places would be "double counting" it.

My confusion with your situation is that you say, effectively, that "Groceries" under Planned Spending is the only thing that exists in your entire Spending Plan. If true, that would be a significant software error, but I wonder if you could post some screenshots similar to mine to demonstrate your experience?

ejs

Sure. Here's a screenshot showing the issue:

As you can see, my Spending Plan shows that I have allotted $400 for Groceries. In reality, during December, I spent $359 on Groceries, which is reflected in the 6 month bar chart in the screenshot (and elsewhere in Simplifi, such as the reporting section), but not in the Spending Plan reporting itself. As the screenshot shows, the Spending Plan (aside from the 6 month bar chart) says that I spent $0.00 on Groceries and shows zero transactions. Is this a blatant error, or am I missing something?

(I initiated a support request but am currently waiting to hear back.)

ejs

And here's a screenshot showing Bills and Subscriptions showing that the transactions are not already accounted for there:

ajbopp

@ejs This looks like a bug to me, but I am flummoxed why it works differently for you than for me. @Coach Natalie?

UrsulaA

My spending plan is correct. I only have groceries under planned spending.

Coach Natalie

@ejs, thanks for posting!

Yes, this definitely looks funky to me, though I'm also not seeing any issues with my own Planned Spending. Have you already contacted Support directly for this issue? If not, can you try a couple of things to see if any of them work, please?

1. Delete the Planned Spending item and recreate it.
2. Delete one of the "Groceries" transactions for December, as well as for January, and then recreate them.
3. Try from a different browser or in incognito/private mode.
4. Check December and January's Planned Spending on the Quicken Simplifi Mobile App (if you use it) to see if the issue is also presented there.

Let us know how it goes!

-Coach Natalie

ejs

Yes, I have tried all those troubleshooting steps and none of them resolved the issue. The same issue occurs in the mobile app (iOS) version of my Spending Plan. I have contacted support directly and they escalated the issue. I'm currently waiting to hear back.

ejs

I tried setting up Watchlists and those seem to have a similar error for me as the Spending Plan.  Each Watchlist shows $0 of spending, even though there are transactions in the relevant category that should be counted. Unlike the error with my Spending Plan, the transactions do show up in the Watchlist transaction list, but they aren’t being counted towards the Watchlist spend tracking. To illustrate, here’s a screenshot of the Watchlist I set up for groceries (there are $90.92 in grocery transactions, but it shows the total as $0):

I wanted to experiment with the Spending Plan and Watchlists to see which of them (or combination of them) would best approximate the budget feature in Mint that allows you to see your actual spending vs. your target spending, either in a given month, or year-to-date, or for previous years.  Given that I’m unable to experiment with these features because they’re not working properly, can someone please confirm that my understanding of how these features work is correct?  My understanding is as follows:

I can set up a Spending Plan with a planned spending item for every category that I care to track, with zero entries for recurring items (so that nothing will be picked up in the bills or subscriptions categories).  That will enable me to see how much was spent in any given month vs. the target amount for each of those categories, but without the nice single-screen visual chart Mint provides showing spending vs. target across all categories.

Separately, I can set up Watchlists for every category I care to track, which would also enable me to see how much was spent vs. the target amount, but the information would be spread across the various Watchlists and without any visual representation in the form of a chart.

Does that sound correct?

Coach Natalie

@ejs, your understanding sounds mostly correct, however, Watchlists do have graphs —

I'd suggest deleting and recreating the Watchlist that's showing blank values to see if you get better results. We also have some support articles you may be interested in looking over for more details on how these features work:

https://help.simplifimoney.com/en/articles/4212702-using-the-quicken-simplifi-spending-plan

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

Let us know how it goes!

-Coach Natalie

ejs

@Coach Natalie , thank you. I have tried deleting and recreating the Watchlists (for multiple different categories) but always get the same result of blank values for the spending amounts. I assume this is connected to the problem with my Spending Plan (which also incorrectly shows blank values for spending). I'm still waiting to hear back from support on that issue.

Coach Natalie

@ejs, the Spending Plan and Watchlists are two entirely separate features, but the issue of transactions missing from both locations could definitely be related. It looks like Chat Support reached back out to you 3 days ago — have you checked your Messages in the Help Center?

-Coach Natalie

ejs

@Coach Natalie, thanks - I didn't get any notice indicating that I had a message from Support, but now that you pointed it out I did go to the Help Center and found it. It just asked me to confirm whether the latest software update fixed this issue (it didn't; the issue persists in both my Spending Plan and Watchlists). I chatted with Support again and they will re-escalate the ticket to try to resolve this issue.

I'm not sure what's happening that would cause this error for me and not for others. If it's a software issue, it would seem that others would be experiencing the same problem, but I haven't seen anyone else reporting this issue in the forum. Yet Support has not been able to identify any problem with my settings or something else specific to my account, either.

Coach Natalie

@ejs, it sounds like it's dataset-specific. Best wishes for a speedy resolution!

-Coach Natalie

CDizzie

I am also suffering from this same bug.

Edit: Or maybe it is not a bug. It appears as if items that are categorized as bills are not intended to be reflected in planned spending even if they are categorized as the same transaction type. This is different than how Mint functioned.

UrsulaA

@CDizzie - you are right. Items that are recurring bills or subscriptions are not reflected in planned spending; they are listed under bills only. This is the case even if the recurring bills fall under the same category as a planned spending item. Simplifi does not double count transactions against the spending plan.

https://help.simplifimoney.com/en/articles/4212702-using-the-quicken-simplifi-spending-plan

From the support link above

Note: The Spending Plan is designed to not double-count transactions. For example, if you have a transaction that was linked to a Recurring Reminder, the transaction will be counted towards the Bills and Income section of the Spending Plan instead of a Planned Spending expense of the same Category. Learn more here!