Future-dating cleared transactions in Simplifi (additional annual spending plan)

aolafsson

Does anyone else sometimes future-date or back-date transactions? And what are you learning about how this works in Simplifi? (User coming from Mint here)

My use-case: I get paid a bonus each year in March. My bonus is used to fund "extras" (extra savings, extra spending) that I otherwise wouldn't have room for in my spending plan. In Mint, so it wouldn't mess up my budgets, so net-income month over month would stay green, and so I could still report on these transactions, I did some date changing in Mint. The bonus lands in March, and then I future-date or back-date all the 'things I'm spending against my bonus' to March. And then I monitor that net-income report for March really as my ad-hoc spending plan for the bonus, usually trying to make sure I've saved at least a third of it, but spending against it really all year from Jan-Dec for any notable large purchases maybe a dozen times.

I do like & realize that I have the granularity in Simplifi to say hide from spending plan OR reports (again in Mint, it was all in one). So, I think first, I'd just want to hide everything in this bucket from my Spending Plan (and can still have it all be part of reports).

In Action: I just paid for a few large purchases for this year's travel that I'd typically do this with, flights & deposits. However, if I future date them to March, they disappear from the register and become pending transactions for March. Should I just do this and ignore the fact they're called "pending" (even though they're not), and they'll just reappear in March and look normal? I think the back-dating later on in the year will work just fine.

Other Ways to Think About managing an Annual Ad-Hoc Spending Plan like this: I also realize I may have a "Mint mindset" around this, since Mint had you "Hide from Budget and Trends" (all or nothing) so I couldn't hide it, and hence had to move the date since I wanted it in reports but didn't want it to mess up my budgets. Essentially, what I'm doing is having 13 Spending Plans per year, 12 monthly ones tied to recurring income and 1 annual one tied to bonus income. Is there some other way I should consider doing this in Simplifi (or community ideas I should vote for :) ) that doesn't involve changing the date of transactions? I think changing the date of transactions is the only way if I want to show my net-income in the green month over month, but curious for any ideas.

UrsulaA

I see @Flopbot and @ajbopp use savings goals, which may fit your use case. Hope they can chime in here.

ajbopp

First, I'm not sure I understand what this bonus means. Is it an amount that can be accurately forecast? Does it change based on performance (either personal or company)? How reliable is it?

In general, I'm not a fan of spending money I haven't received yet, because any number of things could happen that would result in me not receiving that money when I expect it, or even at all. The company might close, the policy might change, etc.

I've never had the joy of receiving an annual bonus, so I'm not sure how I would handle it. I suspect I would construct my budget to not account for it at all, and assume that when I get it it's a happy accident. Then I would apply that toward a savings goal for whatever I wanted to spend it on. But I would never spend money from the savings goal that doesn't actually exist yet, such as buying plane tickets or hotel reservations based on what I hope will happen but hasn't actually happened yet.

aolafsson

This is much more of an 'how I orchestrate the reporting' question; not spending money I don't have. I just typically make adjustments to dates of transactions so my monthly net income reporting stays positive unless I'm truly dipping into past savings (then a negative net-income month would signify that). I just prefer that I don't have months "in the red" (where I spent from bonus) while March is extra green (when I got it) and prefer to level it out by changing the transaction dates. Plus, this behavior was also so that I could use a March net-income report to explicitly track how much I had spent against it. Most of the time, I'm back-dating transactions in April-Dec back to March when I'm "spending my bonus." In this case, yes I'm buying flights before, but if the bonus didn't come through (though reliable at this point in the year now), I have the savings to cover this trip, and it would make this month negative to signify the that change of events and my truly dipping into savings, and that would be OK.

Thanks for the tip on using Savings goals! I definitely may have more to learn about how Savings Goals work in Simplifi. Mint it was only about tracking contribution only, whether you were on-track and subtracting savings goals from budget. It looks like Simplfi also lets you "withdraw" which is cool. I might be able to put it in a goal and then withdraw from it, as an alternate way to track other than a March net-income report. I just did a test: I created a savings goal that was already fully funded (just the amount in my savings account), then "withdrew" from the goal for the amount of these plane tickets as a test, and I can't tell what that did. I see it's tracking how much I've spent of the goal (maybe it just allows me to do that), but I don't see what the impacts are elsewhere in the platform yet (i.e. it didn't add that into my Spending Plan for this month for spending).

If I did future-date a transaction (just use my old/usual method), it will just disappear from the register for now, and then come back on that date that I put it on? In Mint they'd just stay on the transaction register at the top. Will I do anything else wonky by future dating an already cleared transaction?

EL1234

Would it make sense to have a category called Extras or something, and a Spending Plan for the amount of the bonus divided by 12? This will, however, bring us back to the topic of Rollover in Spending Plan (which is a discussion you can read about here) if you don't distribute your Extras spending evenly per month.

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/114/rollover-unused-spending-plan-money-edited-10-merged-votes

aolafsson

The "Extras" are definitely not even, so especially without rollover I don't think the Spending Plan is of any help; I'd be either moving the expenses, or splitting and moving the income per the amount and not /12. Plus, I do want expenses and income to hit their correct categories.

I'm certainly missing rollover budgets generally and have voted for that!

EL1234

Got it! Yes, expenses that aren't distributed evenly over the year is one thing that I still don't have a good plan for at this time. Hoping we get rollovers in spending plan to fix that!

Flopbot

@aolafsson

Here’s more info on how I use Savings Goals.

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/4567/my-savings-goals-simply-work

aolafsson

Thanks for sharing, and yes, those rules just don't work for me. I still don't understand how savings goals are useful if you have to apply all those rules and do all this manual work.

Re: #5 (no automatic deposits), all accounts have automatic deposits in the form of interest that has to be manually reconciled. Plus, I use automatic deposits in the traditional sense.

I'd also add Rule #7 is "Be willing to manually re-enter all transactions that are happening automatically to keep goal balance and account balance in sync" of which I am not across 5 goals. This is my primary problem preventing me from even dabbling in goals within Simplifi's other restrictions.

In following Rule #4 (one account per goal) and rule #6 (ignore the goals in savings plan), it's way easier to remember what the goal balance is for each savings account, see how much I've completed in the account list on the homepage, and add the custom total goal amount to withhold from my spending plan.

It would be nice if even in the 1:1 sense, for just savings accounts, goals could be auto-tracked my Simplifi in accordance with the account balance. But in reality, even that doesn't fully meet my needs on goals. My goals are all but one in more than one account, and one goal includes a brokerage account.

So, I've just accepted that if I stick with Simplfi,, I won't be able to use Goals (and will monitor for improvements in my ability to use during this trial year). I'll have my goals in my head, and custom entered lump sum in the spending plan.

Flopbot

@aolafsson

It’s important to note that my “rules” aren’t official Simplifi canon. It’s just what I came up with that seemed to work for me. I frequently find myself choosing to break my own rules sometimes. That said, you are absolutely right that right now - as designed - Savings Goals in Simplifi are a very manual process!