How to account for big purchase and using emergency fund to pay credit card

LaurieS

New to Simplifi and nervous about knowing I have the money accounted for correctly - this spending plan is so different than how I used the old quicken…

Washer broke, so we bought a new washer/dryer unexpectedly and I'm not sure how to mark it correctly in Simplifi. There are transactions on the credit card, emergency fund, and checking account.

In which transactions do I check spending plan and reporting, and where do I exclude it?

March 24 - the purchase transaction is on the credit card - include in spending plan and reporting?

March 26 - transferred the amount from our Emergency Fund savings account into our checking account - exclude from spending plan and reporting?

April 2 - set up a credit card payment from our checking account to the credit card. - exclude from spending plan and reporting?

Something isn't adding up correctly because now my spending plan is over spent and seems like I don't have enough though I do, but I don't want to count the transfer from the emergency fund as income because that's not actual new income.

Help?

EL1234

If you can see both sides of the transfer from the emergency fund account to the checking account in the "Transfers and CC Payments" section of the spending plan, ignoring one of them (I don't recall which) from the spending plan (click the 3 dots and uncheck Spending Plan on the menu) should help add extra incoming funds to offset the extra expense. I haven't tried it myself but other people have recommended it for these situations.

RobWilk

1. March 24 - leave transaction on spending plan, don't hide it, because
2. Under transfers in the spending plan, unhide the emergency fund transfer with a positive dollar amount, this will credit that money to the spending plan as long as you leave the negative side hidden. This is "virtual money added to spending plan" to cover emergency purchase.
3. Credit card payments don't affect the spending plan.

DannyB

Both @EL1234 and @RobWilk are right - this is the way to keep the expense visible in your spending plan.

However, it is reasonable to exclude the whole series of transactions from your Spending Plan. The reason for this second option is base on the basic intent of Q-Simplifi and especially the Spending Plan’s monthly focus - I expect this much income this month and I plan to spend this income this month in this way. One of the ways you intended to spend this month’s income is contributing a portion to your emergency fund to cover future emergencies such as the irreparable breakdown of the washing machine.

• The emergency fund money has already been accounted for in your monthly Spending plans so you don’t need to account for it again and thus the transfer back into checking can be excluded from your Spending Plan for this month - it’s already there via you emergency fund savings contributions. (I would suggest that in the future you can set up your credit card payment directly from your checking account.)
• The actual purchase can be excluded since the funds for the purchase have again, already been accounted for via your monthly emergency savings contributions.
• The credit card payment can be excluded since this is simply another movement of the funds to cover the expense.

This is part of the elegance and genius of Q-Simplifi… these unplanned for but expected expenses are covered by your monthly planning including savings goals that spread out the cost of emergency expenses over time so they DON’T impact your monthly planning negatively.

Hope the makes sense and hope that helps.