CONNECT BILLER?

LarryG

I don't understand this part. Looking at SPENDING PLAN and BILLS. Each bill has 3 dots on the far right hand side and one of the items there is "connect biller" Each bill will show up monthly on my checking account and updated automatically in Quicken as far as being paid or upcoming. So is it necessary to do the "connect biller" on every item listed under BILLS?

DannyB

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/8884/connect-biller

Nope, there’s no need at all.

For me this feature is only marginally useful for a bill with a variable amount due from month to month like water, natural gas, or electric bills. For bille whose amounts are set month to month there is no real benefit.

Besides, this is a third party feature and there are a lot of companies that don’t participate, so it seems a bit hit and miss for those who try connecting with their billers.

LarryG

Thank you very much for that explanation, Danny. That's one less thing I'm confused about. This is only my second day using the program but have watch many YouTube videos which definitely helps. So do you think the utility bills should use the "connect biller" feature?

DannyB

@LarryG

That's really personal choice. I have 5 of my monthly recurring billers connected. Of those, 3 bill the same amount monthly so no real advantage. The other 2 are my water and natural gas bills. These two do very seasonally. But… I don't really pay that much attention to how well these two update monthly when the billing cycle ends and a bill is issued so… eh.

What I do with my variable utilities is figure an average for the year and set that as my monthly recurring amount. I've never done this, but I've heard of an idea in which you can log into your utility and bring up your monthly payments over the past year and bring those over into Simplifi by editing each month's amount via the Spending Plan by editing each month's reminder.

I don't bother with this since we have the ability to maintain a 45 day cushion in our cash account based on our average annual spending divided by 12 so the monthly average is good enough and the actual amount updates when the bill is paid each month.

DannyB

Oh, and welcome to Quicken Simplifi! I've been using QS for over 2 years now and have found it to be an excellent app for my situations and for how my mind works with stuff like this.