How can I view monthly average spending by catagory

Bythelake

I am new to Simplifi. My reason for budgeting is to be able to view my monthly spending by category. Is there a way to do this in reports? When i view reports it just shows all of the individual transactions of the category for the month. There has to be a way to find this information. When you view monthly summary you only can look at 5 categories. In the spending category it list 8 categories and "Everything Else" I want to see all of the categories and how they compare to the previous months.

DannyB

@Bythelake

I'm not sure you'll find exactly what you are looking for in the current reports module.

Here is a feature request you may want to add your support to.

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/1702/get-rid-of-everything-else-and-show-all-categories-on-the-spending-report-graph-edited

In the mean time, perhaps the Watchlist feature can give you something close to what you are looking for. I use Watchlists for each of my top (parent) categories. I also have a Watchlist that tracks all my expense categories, a Watchlist that tracks all my income categories and a Watchlist that combines both all income and all expense categories (The income watchlists are inverse since this feature really is set up to track expenses.)

I suppose you can create a Watchlist for each category if you want the granularity and they you will be able to compare each of the last 11 months with the current month.

RockLee

I think that's a good suggestion about using watchlists by @DannyB, but be aware there's a known bug with at least watchlists with all expenses.

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/7432/does-anyone-else-have-an-incomplete-breakdown-by-category-for-12-months-in-watchlist-in-web-app

Bythelake

Thank you Danny for your suggestion.

I set up the watch list but you then need to view each category to get a bearing to your average spending. this might force me to go back to ynab

ajbopp

I'mnot certain exactly what you're looking for, but I suspect something that allows you to see all average amounts together? Something like this?

Simplifi doesn't have anything like this that I know of, and of the top of my head I'm not aware of another request for it (I'm sure I'll be corrected on this) . But I agree it would be useful.

RobWilk

Would a spending report with custom dates for the year give you the same thing?

DannyB

@Bythelake

I didn’t think Watchlists would give you what you are looking for, but it was the closest thing I could think of.

Don’t know if you ever checked it out, but Quicken Classic has a robust reports feature since it is built for more intensive bookkeeping and accounting. By your “might force you back to YNAB” statement sounds like that’s not something you want to do. Personally I have found Q-Simplifi to be a good fit and it works great for me. The fact that I don’t have to make adjustments to my Spending Plan month in and month out is all I need to tell me my various categories are tracking fairly close over time so don’t feel the need to compare month to month. Again, that’s my personal experience and a reflection of my personal finances for the past 10 years and looking to the foreseeable future.