Spending Plan: Option to forward 'Left at End of Month' to the following month (edited)

DannyB

FIRST, this is different from the recently released Planned Spending Rollover feature.

This is a request to develop a means to take the left at end of month amount and bring it forward into the new month.

This NOT the same as rolling over unused designated planned spending funds. This IS about the Spending Plan Left at end of month.

The request is to add a means for users to bring unspent money forward from month A to month B.

Flopbot

I voted @DannyB as I'd like to see more options for what to do with the left over/unused amount at the end of the month - or maybe even half-way through it. What are your thoughts on Simplifi letting us not just forward it to the same Planned Spending line, but maybe even forward it to a different Planned Spending line? I've wondered for awhile if a "Move available to a different Planned Spending line" would be good. It would certainly step on the toes of YNAB!

ajbopp

In this implementation, what should Quicken Simplifi do with over-spent money?

Also, what is over-spent/under-spent? Per category, or overall? Or something else?

If

Planned: $200 Groceries, $100 Dining Out

Spent: $250 Groceries, $75 Dining Out

What should Quicken simplifi show me next month?

Or if I spend: $250 groceries, $125 Dining Out

What should it show me then?

Flopbot

@ajbopp

The way I interpret @DannyB post is that he’s saying they should add another option to this screen.
For my ‘Auto - Gas & Fuel’, the remaining $49.47 would be able to role forward into JUST the next month…not all months going forward. I’m wondering what it would be like to divert this $47.47 to my ‘Grocery’ planned spending line, which is currently over during the middle of the month.

DannyB

I actually did think about your insights about budgeting, @ajbopp as I composed this. One thing that is easy to overlook and that I try to keep in mind is that the Spending Plan really is about planning for and executing a plan in the current month.

My request has nothing to do with any expenses that are already incorporated into the Spending Plan and covered in the overall spending plan including all planned spending categories target amounts or actuals as the month unfolds. This is only about having the option to do something with the actual amount that is left at end of month after all actual income and expenses are accounted for, that is extra money that is not part of any designated spending that I have planned for in the Spending Plan.

Whether I overspend or underspend in a given planned spending category will only affect the Available/left at end of month if I go into a given planned spending category and edit the designated amount for the month without adjusting other planned spending categories. In your examples, what Quicken Simplifi shows me next month is exactly what it showed me this month as far as my plan goes just like it does now.

This month:

Planned: $200 Groceries, $100 Dining Out

Spent: $250 Groceries (over spent) , $75 Dining Out (underspent)

Next month:

Planned: $200 Groceries, $100 Dining Out

Spent: $0.00 Groceries, $0.00 Dining Out (until you have expenses in these categories. Not even any rollover from previous month changes this under the current rollover feature as far as I know.)

Every month the Spending plan resets to the Plan as originally built (including any adjustments to the base level). Whether I overspent or underspent my overall plan or any given part of my plan last month doesn’t change my plan for this month.

My goal is to stay within the boundaries of my plan. But within those boundaries I have flexibility, most especially in Planned Spending categories, Subscriptions and Savings Goals.

What affects the Available during or left at end of month after is what you have Planned. What you actually spend affects only the planned spending for a given category UNLESS you edit the category and add money to what you allow which will be taken from your available pool since those dollars are no longer available but designated for some specific expense category. Or, if a recurring expense is higher or lower then the Plan called for.

But what to do if the "left at end of month” is negative? If when all my income and expenses are accounted for at months end, and the end result is negative, how does that get covered? What is the relationship between Quicken Simplifi and my actual income and expenses? I expect and want a high level of correlation between the two. If my Spending Plan ends the month with a negative “left at end of month,” and the Spending Plan at the end of the month includes all my actuals for the month then how did the the expenses that caused the negative cash flow get covered in my actuals? Did I use extra cash that is not accounted for in Quicken Simplifi? Did I use credit or borrow money from someone or somewhere? How will I pay that back if it is borrowed? This feature will allow the user to carry forward both positive and negative funds, if desired, into the new month without changing anything but the bottom line.

For me, the purpose of budgeting is to make sure my expenses are in alignment with my income including future wants/needs and planning for that also. Once I have my plan in place, the next step, is to follow the plan and to stay within the boundaries of the plan. But life happens and what I plan and what happens don’t always line up, and so I also plan for flexibility and variances. But these also, as best as possible, should be figured into the plan (contingency or emergency funds).

My request may, in the end, be incompatible with the underlying structure and function of Quicken Simplifi and if so, it should not be adopted.

Wedo778

I feel like this is more of a workaround for something else; the lack of an annual plan/budget. Monthly budgeting makes sense for a lot of things, but it doesn't cover all the irregular and annual expenses and there isn't a good insight into whether I am making more than I spend each year. Even if implemented, I still don't find out the answer to that until the year is over, I'd rather know when setting up/adjusting my budgets in the first place.

DannyB

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/34754#Comment_34754

I may just be way off on my thinking and with this request.

I think of this idea more along the lines of a "reconciliation" feature allowing the user to track total balance of aggregated accounts over time. Maybe this needs to be something found in Reports rather than an actual "rollover" feature in the Spending Plan.

BTW, and you may already be aware that there is an annual planning tool being developed by the product team to be deployed at some point:

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/1813/enter-spending-plan-budget-in-table-view

My idea here can perhaps be thought of as a type of "reconciliation" of my aggregated accounts over time. For me the "left at end of month" is undesignated but still very much actual funds spread out over my various bank accounts. Over the past two years, I adopted @Coach Natalie 's practice of tracking this cash outside of Quicken Simplifi. I use a separate page in my Family Finances Excel workbook for tracking my monthly finals as shown in each months Spending Plan summary page. This includes a running count of our Income, Bills, Subscriptions, visible Transfers, Saving Goals contributions, final Planned Spending for each month, any Other Spending, AND "left at end of month."

I have been using Quicken Simplifi for over two years and I am a highly satisfied customer. QS is one of a very few products or services I have or will recommend to family and friends - that's how much I enjoy and see the benefits of this app. And for me the core of what makes QS a superior personal finance management app is The Spending Plan! I love it and I don't want to lose this tool. I have no problem with the monthly focus and actually see it as one of QS's strengths.

But, then again, I have an annual budget worked out in that Excelle workbook I mentioned earlier including the summary page mentioned above - the same workbook I used when I set up any personal finance app and I certainly used to set up my Plan in QS.

What I would like to see a way to do this in QS.

Wedo778

Thanks, I had spoken to the product team and knew they were looking into annualization, but I didnt know the specific idea here for it (and searching didn't help, too general of a keyword).

Yea I want Simplifi to do for me what your excel file is doing. And that's kind of how I interpreted this request. I'm having anxiety over this month and next month because the Spending Plan is telling me now in the red I am. Makes me feel like I need to start acting like a miser, live on ramen, etc until I "get back on track". But the reality is I just happen to have a few huge annual items due these particular two months (federal taxes, property taxes, homeowners insurance, etc). These months are supposed to be red. My actual annual budget is fine. Simplifi just doesnt have anywhere to show me that and I get slapped in the face by the Spending Plan every time I open it. Similarly all the other months its telling me all about this big pile of money I have to spend when I shouldn't actually be spending it.

If you want and need to reconcile accounts more than validating transactions I get that. I just need to know if I am budgeting to be over or under for the year. And by how much. I plan to always be under and however much it is I consider that how much I saved this year.

DannyB

@Wedo778

I have used Savings Goals to cover the annual expenses you mention above. It worked just fine and kept my Spending Plan on an even keel through the year without causing the heightened anxiety you mention above.

When I first started with Quicken Simplifi, I added my annual expenses as recurring bills but as I got familiar with the app and how it functioned, I ended up creating savings goals and deleted the recurring series from my Spending Plan since I would be using funds from my savings goal to cover the cost and mark the expense as Exclude from Spending Plan. My monthly contributions to the Savings Goal spread the "burden" of the annual expenses across the year and reduced the "left at end of month accordingly. When it came time to pay the annual expense, I had the funds set aside and ready to go as has been my practice prior to using QS to manage my personal finances.

This way of handling annual expenses is discussed elsewhere in the forum and is openly acknowledged as a work around until Quicken Simplifi provides a way to include these expenses directly in the Spending Plan. One advantage of using Savings Goals is the way QS tracks them. I can see how much I need to save, how much I have saved and where those savings reside in my cash accounts.

If interested I am journaling my experiment with switching from using Savings Goals to the recently implemented rollover feature in Planned Spending to handle these annual expenses here.

But my feature request here has nothing to do with my typical recurring, planned and even other spending - be it monthly, semi-monthly, irregular, semi-annual or annual. All of those expenses are fully captured and accounted for in my Spending Plan one way or another and with high confidence. What this feature request is about is a way to keep the "left at end of month" in my Spending Plan month-to-month.

I don't know if this is a big enough issue with enough of the Quicken Simplifi user base who engage in this forum to warrant any attention let alone development, but thought I'd put it out there to see.

Is it feasible or desirable to do something with the UNDESIGNATED funds left (or even a deficit) at the end of the month?

Can Quicken Simplifi add the ability for the user to have a choice about what to do with the left at end of month perhaps along these lines?

• Ignore
• Rollover into new month's Spending Plan.
• Add to/ Split between Savings Goals.

Marc77

Long time Quicken user looking for a new finance app. This question of what happens to money at the end of the month is a huge drawback to Simplifi for me. My spending in each month can vary widely and the new planned spending rollover is no help because, as far as I can tell, it’s category specific which is not very flexible.

As far as I can tell there are at least two ways to skin this cat (sorry cat lovers). First is to rollover the excess from the spending plan, which is what’s been suggested. The second is to allow the user to see actually what excess money is available to add back into the spending plan. What I mean here is that there’s literally no way in this app to see what money I have available after my upcoming bills, savings goals and transfers are accounted for. I can only see what I have available from my monthly income after all upcoming expenses are accounted for. But there’s more money in my accounts—the leftover from last month and previous months and other random income.

In Quicken I have a report that tells me exactly what I have available to spend. I’ve chosen to include in the report two checking accounts that I use for bills and daily expenses, three credit cards, my savings goals that are deducted from these accounts and all upcoming expenses from these accounts. This seems to me like a basic number anyone would need to know: how much money do I actually have available to spend right now that’s not already spoken for. But in Simplifi I literally have to drill down to the transaction level of detail to extract all the information I’d need to calculate that number.

Either allowing monthly gross rollover to be added to next month’s income after bills and savings or creating an option to show available unencumbered funds from select accounts would make me a Simplifi user. Without that I’m really on the fence as to whether I’ll drop the app after the trial period.

To anyone who has made it to the end of this post, thanks for listening.

EL1234

I wrote something up about this about a week ago but now I can't seem to find the post so maybe it never went through. I had this exact situation where I wanted to forward some extra income from April that I planned to spend in May (April had a lot more income than most months due to getting tax refunds, and in addition, I had a large bill that I actually submitted payment for in April but the company only charged my credit card in May which put my Available to Spend in the negative).

I created a custom income category called "Float" and also a manual account called "Income Float" (I chose the Other account type so it would be listed at the end of my account list). I then created two manual transactions using the new account and category, one for a negative number on April 30 and one for a positive number (same amount) on May 1. That effectively "rolled over" some of the extra income from April to May.

My manual account balance remains at zero since the transactions cancel each other out, and this way I didn't have to fudge any numbers in my real accounts - and the end result was that the amount I used was subtracted from "left at end of month" in April's spending plan and added to "available" for May. It worked out great!

It's not something I'd necessarily want to be automatic but this time it made sense for me, and now I can do it again whenever needed.

DannyB

@EL1234

I did read your idea that you posted last week.

I'll give this a try.

Marc77

@EL1234 Thanks for the tip. That might be a useable workaround. Still, it’s a workaround and it doesn’t answer the question of where in my accounts I might have useable money that’s not accounted for in the spending plan.

EL1234

It's definitely still a workaround but it's a lot better than fussing with savings goals I think. I don't mind looking at my spending plan at the end of each month to see what income to float forward. If you want to look for other extra funds (let's say from even older months), you might want to use the cash flow projections, I do that to when deciding how much money to transfer to savings.

If you're transferring money from a savings account and want to use it in this month's spending plan, you can unignore the positive transaction from the Transfers & Credit Card Payments section in the Spending Plan, that works very nicely too.

EL1234

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/35564#Comment_35564

Thanks! Found it :) I was looking in the rollover thread before.

Marc77

@EL1234 I thought about your idea to find unencumbered funds but it doesn’t seem to work. Cash flow is shown on an account specific basis. So if I look at my checking account I can see what the low balance is for the next six months. But I can’t take that amount out because then I would not be able to cover my credit cards, which are obviously separate accounts and are not included in checking account projected cash flow. Also, the cash flow doesn’t take into account existing or planned contributions to savings goals. So, unless I’m misunderstanding how this works (which is 100% possible), I’d have to manually account for those things to find the cash flow minimum. If that’s the only way to find your true useable cash, that’s really not workable.

EL1234

I like to use the cash flow to predict what I'll have in my checking account over the next month. In order to account for credit card payments, I have a recurring transaction set up for each card, with an amount of $1. Every few days, I look at my cash flow and scroll through it and for each $1 reminder, I manually update the amount with the amount my credit card payment will be. It's manual work but not a terrible amount and I find it very worthwhile as it helps me make sure my checking account will cover and it shows me how much I can safely transfer to my savings account.

I haven't gotten into Savings Goals so I can't help with those but you might be able to do the same thing with a recurring "bill" and then delete the reminder when you contribute to the Savings Goal (or if you are actually transferring money to a savings account like I do, you would just need to match the reminder with that transaction).

DannyB

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/35691#Comment_35691

Yes, the cash flow projections are account specific. But the Spending Plan is not. However, you do raise something that I hadn't considered specifically and does raise some question as to the feasibility of what I am suggesting.

This may be a bit of overkill, and this may or may not address your observation, but here is my current understanding of how the Spending Plan works and how it relates to the various real-world accounts I use to execute my Spending Plan.

• I think of the Spending Plan as a "virtual reality." That may not be the best way to say it, but here is what I mean - The Spending Plan, while it takes into account all my potential income and expenses for the month none of what I include in the Spending Plan is real-world account specific.
• All income will go into my main checking (cash) account but not all expenses are paid directly out of my checking account. Many of my expenses are paid via credit cards and some out of savings accounts. But all income and expenses are planned for in my Spending Plan and my Plan doesn't particularly "care" about what accounts are used in the actual execution of the plan.
• Credit card balances are the result of "play-before-you-pay" expenses and all of these expenses are already included and accounted for in my Spending Plan and have been deducted virtually from my available balance.
  • That is to say, none of the money that is included in "Available/left at end of month" is needed to cover credit card payments since all the expenses paid for via a credit card are covered in the Spending Plan.
  • It doesn't matter to the Spending Plan if I pay an expense via cash out of my cash account or via a charge on my credit card - all that matters is the income I have included in my Spending Plan and the expenses I have included in my Spending Plan.
• For example:
  • I anticipate $5000 in income for the month. My bills, subscriptions, and savings goal contributions are anticipated to come in at $2000 leaving me with $3000 Available. I plan to spend up to $2300 on my flexible expenses in the Planned Spending section. This leaves me with $700 Available or undesignated funds for the month.
  • I pay many of my expenses with a credit card during the course of the month and Quicken Simplifi dutifully takes note of when these expenses are paid. Indeed, my CC balance increases as I pay various expenses, but that balance is covered by the designated funds I have planned for with the result that I have cash readily available to pay in full my balance for any given billing cycle.
  • As a result, I do not need any of the $700 Available to cover any expenses charged that are already part of my Plan. The $700 remains free for me to spend or save as I see fit.
  • At the end of the month when virtual has become reality, all my bills and subscriptions have been paid and I have made contributions to all my savings goals and the total for all these came in at $2830 because my electric, natural gas and water usage were less than planned for. My available will increase to $870. I ended up spending a little less than planned for in all my Planned Spending Categories for the month coming in at a total of $90 under what I planned for all categories. Now my Available is $960 - which becomes my "left at end of month" once I close out the month.
• The "Available/left at end of month is actual cash on hand that has not been designated/used for specific expenses or savings goals contributions. This is money that is available to use any way I desire after accounting for all other planned expenses.
• Even if I do spend money of something not already planned for - Other Spending - that expense will also be deducted from the Available funds accordingly, but whatever remains in Available/left at end of month is still "free" cash. These are undesignated funds that have nowhere to go and nothing in particular to do.
• As far as cash flow projections, this money remains in my cash account(s) and remains as part of the projected balance since these funds didn't get spent and are not designated for any particular purpose or expense.

EL1234

I agree with the spending plan acting as a virtual reality - all it does is guide you to keep that month's spending within that month's income. You could have tons of extra money in your bank account from last month and it wouldn't know or care about it at all, and on the flip side, if you started off "in the red" (ie: with large credit card bills from last month's spending) you could end up with not enough funds in a checking account to cover your bills. You could also run into trouble if money is in the wrong account (savings/cash/etc) when you need it. Also, since the entire month is lumped together, even if you never use credit cards you could run into trouble if the month's expenses happen before the income that's intended to cover it.

That's why the cash flow projections are so important and why I take the time to manually input the amounts for my credit card bills, so I can project what will happen over the next few weeks and make sure that all bills will be covered, and know how much I can safely transfer to savings. On the other hand, cash flow projections don't help you with that big picture budgeting of what you spent or plan to spend in which categories across all your accounts - that's what spending plan is used for.

That's why I use both of them, personally. Is it possible that Simplifi could add features/capabilities to keep them more in sync? Probably, and this would be a good example:

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/6208/update-next-reminder-amount-for-credit-cards-automatically-using-the-account-balance-edited

but for now I have a good system going and I am able to stay on top of my finances the way I'd like to, so I'm happy.

Marc77

@DannyB @EL1234 Thanks for continuing this discussion. You’ve given me some ideas and at the very least given me comfort that I’m not completely misunderstanding how QS works.

DannyB has basically described how I arrange my finances and what the problem is. Your numbers aren’t too far off either! EL1234’s mention of the suggestion to have credit card balances automatically updated points out the bigger problem. I’ve seen at least three potential solutions to this issue: rolling over spending plan balances, the credit card solution above, and also there’s a solution that has to do with custom reports (that I can’t find right now). I hope the good folks at Quicken like Coach Natalie understand that these are not competing ideas but are all attempts to deal with one significant issue that a lot of people appear to be having with this product. Personally, I think the spending plan roll over is the worst solution because it still doesn’t, in DannyB’s words, connect the virtual reality spending plan with actual balances. The report solution is probably the best because it’s the most flexible.

In Quicken I had a simple report that showed me how much of my 2 checking account balances was “unencumbered.” One click and I knew where I stood. Very easy. QS had a lot of advantages over Quicken. This is one area where it falls terribly short.

DannyB

@Marc77 @EL1234

Thanks for the interaction.

A number of years ago I used YNAB for a year or so. What I really liked about YNAB was their "philosophy" laid out in their 4 rules: Give every dollar a job; Embrace your true expenses; Roll with the punches; Age your money.

In the end I didn't stick with YNAB because of Rule 1 - I could never quite get myself to give every dollar a job due to my bent toward spontaneity and my utter lack of ability to pay attention to detail, i.e. I really loved Rule 3!

But, the Rule that I was able to put into practice and have maintained ever since is Rule 4 - Age your money. I appreciate the cash flow projections and your usage of them as you outline above is outstanding, but I have found that aging my money has been the best stress reliever of all. My wife and I have maintained a ~60-day cushion, that is the funds we use to cover this month's expenses have been in our cash accounts for two months and our income for the current month will not be used for two months from now.

This was certainly not always the case for us but over time we were able to age our money and we have enjoyed the results.

Marc77

Again, more similarities. I don’t really budget by category. I’m fortunate to not need to do that, at least not anymore. I also keep a buffer amount in my checking account that is basically one monthly paycheck just in case there’s a snafu with my check. So I don’t really worry that my credit card is not covered. The issue is really whether I have extra money to splurge or save—not losing track of that money.

That all goes to the reason I picked QS over something like YNAB, precisely because I don’t need or want detailed, category-specific budgeting. QS’s spending plan approach is very good in that regard, at least on a monthly basis.