Planned Spending Rollover: Share your feedback here!

Coach Natalie

As the Planned Spending Rollover feature is rolled out to our Early Access users, we want to hear what you think! Whether good, bad, or in between, let us know how this feature works for you!

Our announcement here has all of the details for this new feature:

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/8456/new-feature-alert-planned-spending-rollover

erikhulse

I just got mine all set up. The one thing I don't like…if I have a planned spending category with rollover enabled, and I overspend my available with rollover balance, I think that overspent amount should count towards your current month "available" and not roll over the negative balance to next month. I see how that is useful, but not in every case. I hope you guys can make an option to apply overspending to the current month, but only roll over underspent amounts to the next month. For example, if I have a planned spending amount of $250 per month, but an available with rollover balance of $750, and I spent $800 that month, I wish the original $250 planned spending AND the $50 overspend would apply to the "available" balance on the overall spending plan.

Edit: Similar to how it was done before…if you planned to spend $250 per month, but you actually spent $300, your planned spending for that month would have a red exclamation mark, and it would count the overspent amount totaling $300 instead of $250 in your overall available spending amount. I wish it would count my original $250 planned spending, plus any current month overage from what I actually spent compared to my available with rollover.

This is a great start and I love the new feature, just hope it gets fine-tuned to allow some more flexibility in how it impacts the spending plan calculations! Thanks team!

Trevor

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/31971#Comment_31971

What I do in other apps for that case is just increase the current month's budget for that category to account for the overage, which will then take it out of the available to spend. I don't have access to the rollover in Simplifi yet, but hopefully something like that is an option here as well.

DannyB

Thanks team, looking forward to trying it out.

erikhulse

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/31978#Comment_31978

I just tried that solution, and it definitely works. Thanks for the tip!

RobWilk

I'm only on mobile at the moment, and do not yet see a place to enable rollover. I expect that this is "coming soon"...

Hover2mach

Not working on Safari sign-in on iPad. Should it work on mobile web access, or mobile app access? I do have early access turned on. I don’t have access to a computer.

DannyB

@RobWilk @Hover2mach according to the announcement the new feature is being rolled out incrementally, "We are releasing this feature in stages to our Early Access users…" If it's not available to you yet it should be soon.

bonjiovanni

Can't comment yet on the functionality since it hasn't turned on yet for me but I've got to give the communication a failing grade.

Here's what popped up for me just now on the Android app:

Honestly, I had no idea whether or not I loved rollovers when I read the message, because the only rollover I can think of is for a 401k. Next time, how about a hyperlink in the popup that takes one right to the support article here?

I had fun trying to find the spot where the feature might be in the app, since it's not obvious where to find it. It says the option is in “Planned Spending.” í'm not trying to be the semantic police or anything but there is literally no part of the simplify app entitled planned spending. Since I don't use the spending plan feature, it probably took me 5 minutes to figure out that by planned spending you meant “ spending plan” tab.

Again, how about hyperlinking in the popup so if you click “planned spending” in the popup it takes you right to that feature? That's especially important to allow people who don't use that area of the app to figure out where it is.

Lastly, I don't see the value on popping an announcement like that in-app until you've actually got personal access to the feature. You know when it's enabled for my account, so deliver the popup then. Makes for less confusion by far, and shouldn't be technically difficult to do.

Blackbird

I agree with you bonjiovanni. It would be better to wait until users actually get the new feature before creating the buzz and asking for feedback to avoid any unnecessary confusion and frustration.

UrsulaA

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/32106#Comment_32106

I agree with the communication. Show the pop up to users only when the feature is enabled for them. Link to planned spending, specify that planned spending is on the spending plan. Change the title to planned spending rollovers available instead of rollovers now available. I also think of 401k or IRA rollovers when I see the rollover word.

DannyB

Really? When I received this popup message I knew exactly what it said and meant. The title of this thread is “Planned Spending Rollover…” Simplifi is a personal budgeting app and the Spending Plan is where Simplifi users do their budgeting and Planned Spending is a major component of the Spending Plan. Simplifi is not a retirement account tracking app and other than being able to include investment accounts including 401 (K) and IRAs Simplifi has nothing to do with or even offers 401(K) to IRA rollovers. Why would that be the first and only way to interpret rollover in Simplifi? And a certain group of users have been clamoring for a rollover feature with such verbiage as Simplifi being useless without it… I never once thought they were talking about 401(K) or IRA rollovers.

Cbarth270

Still don't have access to the feature yet. Can't help but wonder if they pushed to known Mint users first, which I am not. Does anyone who didn't come from Mint have access to it yet?

RobWilk

Seems "super" users were (some of us) were left out too… Looking foward to seeing it. I just had a $700 annual expense, and I'd like to start rolling over for the next one (in a year) ASAP if i'm going to use it.

UrsulaA

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/32121#Comment_32121

Yes, I do not have access to the rollover planned spending either.

DannyB

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/32120#Comment_32120

I am not a former (or ever) M*** user and the new feature is live in my Simplifi account.

I read the support article and opened one of my existing Planned Spending categories to see what this new feature looks like and I clicked on the add new to see what that looks like. But I’m still thinking about how I might use this new feature if at all.

From what I read and see, this feature is designed to try an address the issue of moving under/over spending and add it to the following month for a given category. I think the goal is to allow someone who didn’t use all the funds they planned for eating out to be able to add that to the following month’s planned spending for eating out and vice versa to move forward any over spending to the next month reducing in the follow on month what you have planned to spend. I don’t personally need this feature since my practice is to spend within the plan I have set up for each month.

@RobWilk I haven’t tried doing what you are planning, using the Planned Spending rollover (not talking about 401(K) or IRA rollovers) for an annual recurring expense. I have been thinking about this application, but not sure how it will work the way the feature is set up. But worth a try I suppose.

I do hope that as the feature is rolled out to more early access users to hear back from those who really, really wanted this feature to see how it meets their need.

RobWilk

@DannyB after reading your post, i considered a potential problem: if the annual expense is logged as a bill, it will not show in planned spending..

DannyB

I have spent some time over the past couple of days thinking about how I might use this new feature especially since this is a Planned Spending feature and NOT a recurring bill (fixed expense) feature.

I have decided to try using this new feature to eliminate my non monthly flexible spending Savings goal. My attempt to do this is laid out here:

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/8500/working-with-planned-spending-rollover-an-experiment

nwbackpacker

I have the feature enabled in my mobile and web apps, and I do have Early Access enabled on my account.

I think it's pretty well done as an implementation. I'm waiting to see how the experience looks coming into next month when the actual first real rollover occurs and I'm particularly interested in what happens with previous-month retroactive category changes. Will it reflect that in the rollover? Or will the rollover be baked in?

I'm not sure if others remember but Quicken reached out to us in the feature request thread for Rollovers and asked to schedule time if we wanted to provide some input for the development of the feature. I provided input a couple of times on various mockups and UX flows. It's nice to have a company that does this "Voice of the Customer" approach, and it's becoming more common these days in tech. So, good job to Quicken for reaching out.

I thought the communication was fine. I did not confuse rollovers with IRA/401K but I've also been waiting for this feature. It's not easy to put yourself in the mind of someone with a different context.

Blackbird

I finally got the rollover feature enabled last night. I plan to keep things simple: I will use the rollover only for monthly expenses that are variable but that I want to have a yearly budget based on my expense history (by the way, the tool gives you a good estimate based on 6 months but you can check under reports for longer periods). I then divide that amount by 12 and enable the monthly rollover. For any other expenses that are more predictably on any fixed frequency, I just use recurring payments under bills or subscriptions. I believe this is the way the developers have in mind with Simplifi so I plan to give this a try and see how it works going forward. I am sure others may have other ideas on how the new rollover feature may help them track their expenses.

DannyB

@Blackbird

Can you give a n example of the "monthly expenses that are variable" that you have set up as rollover? I'm wondering if you have taken something like your electric bill or water bill and moved it from your recurring bills section to a Planned Spending bucket.

Blackbird

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/32261#Comment_32261

Danny, for variable expenses I have groceries, health, car maintenance, gifts, gas, shopping, vacations, eating out, etc. On the other side for fixed expenses under bills or subscriptions, I have memberships, streaming services, phone bills, cable, insurance payments, and anything it is a pretty much set payment on an given frequency for which I created a recurring reminder linked to those expenses. FYI, I always had fix expenses under bills and subscriptions and variable ones under planned spending so for me it was just a simple matter of enabling the new rollover feature in all my planned spending expenses and making sure the monthly budgets is based on my last years monthly averages, unless I anticipate a change for an expense in which case I will put the anticipated future annual expense divided by 12. One last thing I do with the new rollover feature, given that we are enabling it in March and not in January, is to look at January and February expenses in each category to see if there was any significant over or under spending from my set budget in March, and if it was I adjust the current rollover amount by that amount to start March with the most accurate amount. I try to keep all my monthly expenses amongst Bills, Subscriptions, and Planned Spending buckets, and keep the Other Spending bucket as close to zero as possible, only with miscellaneous rarely used expense categories. Quite simple. I hope this helps.

DannyB

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/32276#Comment_32276

I was thinking that's what you meant. I'm set up the same way using the Spending Plan as designed. Since I have rarely gone over the amounts I have set for my variable planned spending, and on this occasions simply dipped into my monthly margin (Available) to cover these few overages, I won't be using the rollover feature for my existing planned spending buckets.I did create a new bucket for my non-monthly variable recurring expenses so I'll see how that goes.

jsy42

@Coach Natalie, it appears that you can only activate rollover for a series created in the current month or one in the future? Is that right? I'm trying to go back to January to create a rollover series for the year, but the option isn't available in previous months.

UrsulaA

Looks like the feature is being rolled out in alphabetical order by username. Wish my user name was AUrsula instead of UrsulaA. 😂 I do not have the feature enabled yet.

DannyB

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/32367#Comment_32367

Per the support article for this new feature, it is not retroactive.

https://help.simplifimoney.com/en/articles/9029030-using-rollover-in-planned-spending

jsy42

Thanks, @DannyB. I missed that.

Blackbird

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/32367#Comment_32367

Jsy42, you can calculate your rollover amount from January and February and enter it in the “Current rollover” field to the left of “Applies to March 2024”. Like a Rollover offset. This is what I did.

Blackbird

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/32370#Comment_32370

Danny and jsy42, you can create a rollover offset adding the amounts above or below your March budget that you have in January and February and entering this offset in the “Current rollover” field at the bottom of the expense series for each category you want to have rollover enable in your Planned Spending. This is what I did.

DannyB

@Blackbird yes, forgot to mention that, but the support article explains that also. Hopefully @jsy42 caught that.

jsy42

Got it. Thank you!