Planned Spending Rollover: Share your feedback here!
Comments
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I started to compose a response to your last post but after rereading both your posts decided to quote and respond to each post separately below.
Danny
Simplifi user since 01/22
”Budget: a mathematical confirmation of your suspicions.” ~A.A. Latimer0 -
If an expense is tracked in Recurring Bills or Subscriptions, it won't be included in any Planned Spending category.
Since I am tracking my auto registration in Planned Spending, I do not have these expenses set up as recurring bills. One of the advantages of having an expense set up as a recurring bill or subscription is that this allows Quicken Simplifi to include the expense in the account cash flow projections. Since I don't use or rely on the account cash flow projections, I'm fine with tracking my auto registration (along with my other annual fixed recurring expenses in Planned Spending.
Danny
Simplifi user since 01/22
”Budget: a mathematical confirmation of your suspicions.” ~A.A. Latimer0 -
Here are my thoughts on this:
The Spending Plan is where I plan out my income and spending "in detail" so to speak. "This is my plan and I'm 'sticking to it!'" 😁
For tracking parent and/or child categories, I use Watchlists. Your Auto and Transport parent category would be a good candidate to track in Watchlists. I can also keep tabs of spending at various levels of granularity in the Reports module.
I'm experimenting with preparing for specific annual/semi-annual expenses in the Spending Plan using the rollover feature.
I do have a couple of "catch all" Planned Spending categories that are based on parent categories, but all the others are to designate spending limits for specific monthly expenses.
My catch all planned spending cats are:
- Other Fun Stuff
- General Expenses
- Annual Flexible Expenses
Each of these parent categories have several child categories that I want to be able to track and monitor, but as a group, I don't what to spend more than a certain amount overall.
Quicken Simplifi works so close to perfectly for me out of the box because I have highly predictable monthly/annual income and expenses based on our spending over the past 10 years.
As far as your idea, to set up a separate Planned Spending category based on a child category that is already included in another Planned Spending category based on the parent category, it seems to me you would need a way to pick and choose which child categories you want to include or exclude much like the way you can select specific categories for reports.
Danny
Simplifi user since 01/22
”Budget: a mathematical confirmation of your suspicions.” ~A.A. Latimer0 -
"As far as your idea, to set up a separate Planned Spending category based on a child category that is already included in another Planned Spending category based on the parent category, it seems to me you would need a way to pick and choose which child categories you want to include or exclude much like the way you can select specific categories for reports."
Yes exactly, instead of just a single selection, give me checkboxes that allow multiple subcategory selections. Much like how QS allows this in Report filters. Of course QS should not allow duplicate selections in that work flow.
Thanks for you thoughts on how youre are using Spending Plan.
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So this is the first month I've had rollover activated, and it's showing up in my mobile app with the extra green bar. However, it's not showing in my desktop app. I've tried logging out and back in, but still not there. @Coach Natalie any ideas?
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The spending categories are there and are correct, but the rollover portion of each category is missing. The "available amount" was reset to plan, instead of reflecting the amount with rollover.
Oddly enough, the overspend in one category I have IS showing correctly in this month's spending plan as a red bar, with the corresponding amount removed from the available amount.
The series are all set up correctly, and I also set the little rollover icon for each. Maybe I just need to let it ride another month and see what happens?
One thing I was also confused on is that yesterday, I was prompted to release unspent funds, although this issue popped up before I did so.
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@mahka42, thanks for posting!
I'd suggest reviewing our article here to ensure you understand how Planned Spending Rollover works:
If you believe you need some troubleshooting afterward, I'd suggest creating a separate post to outline what's going on so it gets the visibility it deserves and isn't buried in this feedback post.
I hope this helps!
-Coach Natalie
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The basic idea is good - I'm glad we have rollover now as a former Mint user. The piece I'm really missing though, is actual monthly spend if a category is already overspent. I use the rollover for some annual budgeting and may spend a lot in one month and then nothing for several, essentially "catching up" the category back to zero. Right now, it just shows that I've overspent in a category whether or not additional transactions exist for that month. What I'd really like is to see the actual spend total and the overage. This way I can see if I'm still on track with the original monthly budget or underspending enough to catch back up.
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There seems to be an issue with the spending plan and subcategories. After adding a subcategory to a top-level category I'm seeing the spending plan getting renamed to the subcategory while still tracking the top-level category. While I can just rename the plan, I still see the spending plan claim to track the subcategory.
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@SJM, thanks for posting!
It sounds like you're looking for this topic instead:
Thanks!
-Coach Natalie
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