Bills vs Planned Spending

John Dressel

I am new to Simplifi (one full month under my belt) and had understood the bills to be recurring fixed expenses (car payment, mortgage, etc) and the planned spending to be variable expenses (groceries, movies, etc). On February first I noticed that most of my bills were now also setup as planned expenses - there was a planned expense for car payment and mortgage in the amount of the recurring bill. I thought, ok, I misunderstood - planned expenses must be both fixed and variable expenses. However, when the Feb mortgage payment came through, the planned expense did not update. Same for the student loan payments. When I drill into the planned spend category for mortgage, no transactions appear in the 'last 6 months' graph and no transaction detail for Feb. For student loans, the graph shows some activity but the Dec value is low and the Jan value is $0. Something is amiss.

John Dressel

Another observation: the last 6 months of 'car payment' is correct in reports and transactions; the most recent payment is from Jan when I connected the account and that transaction has the 'series' icon (circular arrows). I did notice that the Sept payment was actually recorded August 31 so I edited that to push it into Sept.

In planned spending, the 6 month graph still shows no payment in Sep. It doesn't recognize that I edited the Sept 1 transaction (moved from Aug 31). Is that data cached somewhere and if so, how do I refresh it? It also doesn't recognize the Jan payment, the only series transaction.

UrsulaA

The transactions marked as recurring series -circular arrows - are listed under income after bills in the spending plan only. They will not appear under planned spending again as that will result in double counting.

If you want the transactions to appear in planned spending, you need to not mark them as part of a bill or subscription series.

Check out the support link.

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

John Dressel

Thanks, so my initial understanding was correct. I had not created the planning spending for mortgage and car payment - Simplifi did that on it's own. If I delete them now, will they get recreated in March?

ajbopp

@John Dressel The Bills and Subscription section and the Planned Spending section have different purposes.

Bills and Subscriptions is for expenses that are relatively stable and occur at a regular frequency

Planned Expenses is for areas where you are pretty certain you will spend money but not sure when, how much, or to whom. For instance, you might create a Planned Spending item for Dining Out or for Entertainment, which would typically not be things that are regular recurring expenses. This way you can keep an eye on things that are less reliable than your mortgage or car payment.

I personally have an Entertainment Planned Spending item to cover movies and such. But I also have a montly subscription to Audible and annual subscriptions to a couple of streaming services, which I set up in the Bills and Subscriptions. They all fit in the Entertainment category, but they are not reflected in Planned Spending.

The Spending Report can be filtered to show all expenses in Entertainment, regardless of whether they are in Bills and Subscriptions or Planned Spending.

UrsulaA

I believe that recurring spending automatically created by Simplifi does not get recreated again unless the user enters the series. I deleted an old series for Internet bill to include in planned spending instead of bills and Simplifi did not recreate it.