Just started, but I don't "get" how some things are handled - Questions
Hi all. I tried YNAB and that didn't work for me, so someone suggested Simplifi, which looks much closer to the way I already track my finances.
- One big thing is that I split my monthly fixed bills into a separate account from the rest of the funds - the remainder is like "daily walking around money" for lack of a better phrase, and I sort of want to track them differently - can I do the following?
- Bills account, I want to enter all my payees/payments (which are all scheduled/automated) and see in that account: How many and how much I've paid already, and how many/much is left to pay, for the month.
- Spend account, I just want to see as each month goes on, how much I've spent in what categories since last payday (payday is, easy enough, once a month)
- Speaking of once a month pay, I get paid on the 15th of each month, so how can I adjust Simplifi's default tracking calendar setup?
- I'm trying to wrap my head around credit card payments' treatment. For instance I've got a couple transactions that came in on initial connection, that treated a CC payment as a positive number on my bills account. And I can't set a CC payment as a "bill".
Thank you.
Dave
Comments
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- Are you talking about virtual accounts and not actual different bank accounts? If so, Simplifi doesnt have exactly that but it's Spending Plan breaks things down the same way. You have your Income and Bills for all your standard monthly bills like utilities and mortgage (bills account) then you have your planned spending for money you know you spend every month (gas, grocieries) but not as a single specific bill, and then you have your available funds for any remaining money to spend. Those last two make up what you're calling a "spend account"
- You cannot. Simplifi is not a check register counting down how much you have spent since your last paycheck to ensure you didnt overdraw. It is a budgeting tool to track your total spending vs your total income regardless of what dates the transactions fall on.
- You can set up your CC payment as a recurring transaction. It has two pieces, one is a credit one is a debit because that is what is happening in your actual bank and CC accounts.
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Thanks for the reply -
- Nope they're actual separate accounts. My main question there, which I could probably distill more simply now: can I view the activity on these two accounts separately but simultaneously (like on a report or dashboard)?
- Oh I wasn't exactly looking for it to be a check register type thing, moreso just stating that my personal "fiscal month" runs 15 days off the calendar month, and I'd hoped I could mimic the reports and charts I've been using in my own spreadsheet tracking. (Yes, the counting-down what's been paid is part of what I use that information for, but as a one-stop, one-glance thing for all accounts)
- About CCs - I'm going to have to look more into setting these up; the couple transactions that stood out to me were payments from my bank account, but showed in Simplifi as credits to my bank account (not to the cc account).
Cheers. The biggest thing I need is a reliable data scrape from all of my accounts, the second biggest is a comprehensive dashboard so I can see it all.
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- You can filter by account in many areas, I'm sure not every single screen but I don't have a comprehensive list. For what it sounds like you're trying to differentiate you'd probably just have different transaction categories anyway which will be an easier way to split and view things.
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Regarding credit card payments. QS handles these as transfers and perhaps you are referring to how transactions appear in the "Transfers & Credit Card Payments". If so, the way "Sent" and "Received" appear and the order of the - and + are listed in a transfer transaction seems (to me at least) counter intuitive.
In this transaction record from the Spending Plan, it appears that the $191.34 was taken from my CC account at Chase and a credit was added to my checking account at Wells Fargo. But in reality, and if you look at the actual bank registers, you will see that my checking account was debited, and my CC account was credited. This is some kind of accounting thing that makes sense in the accounting world… or that's what I'm told and/or choose to believe. 😏
Danny
Simplifi user since 01/22
”Budget: a mathematical confirmation of your suspicions.” ~A.A. Latimer0 -
While the offset of transactions makes sense in the net-worth-scale, 50,000-foot accounting view of things, the few hundred I send off to the credit cards each month absolutely need to show up in the Bills list. The Spending Plan treating these as net zero makes the total at the bottom incorrect.
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@DDXdesign, if you want to include a credit card payment as an expense in the Spending Plan, all you have to do is include the expense side. They will still show in the Transfers bucket but will be included in your Spending Plan totals.
However, keep in mind that any spending on the card throughout the month will also be counted as an expense in the Spending Plan, so counting the payment as well will double up the expense.
Let us know if this works for you!
-Coach Natalie
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It's this part that doesn't make sense to me, but if I just go with it, then:
- How do I make the Spending Plan only reference my actual bank accounts, including the payments to cards? (I see some transactions have the Hide options, but do accounts also have it?). EDIT: I found how to hide accounts from SP, fingers crossed it works the way I'm hoping.
- …While still monitoring the balance on the cards and attributing them to the net worth and all that?
- How do I set the card payments up so they show as a bill instead of transfer? And/or how do I exactly do the "only include the expense side" thing, if that is still needed?
0 - How do I make the Spending Plan only reference my actual bank accounts, including the payments to cards? (I see some transactions have the Hide options, but do accounts also have it?). EDIT: I found how to hide accounts from SP, fingers crossed it works the way I'm hoping.
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@DannyB Has a good explanation of transfers and there is really no other way of doing it because your CC expenses are being downloaded and entered dailey, and that money is gone, just not paid. When you pay it from you bank and look at it in all transactions, you have to have a debit in the bank and a credit in the CC (see DannyB above). Simplifi only shows the debit in the bank account and credit on the CC account. In other areas of Simplifi, you have the option to not show transfers.
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Sure, but for budgeting, I don't care how much is spent ON the cards, just how much I spend out of actual moneys toward their balances each month. Most of them it's 100% payoff each month so it's kinda neither here nor there, but I have a couple 0%s running for the next few months. But with the cc payment as a transfer, it comes to $0 on the Spending plan, which I need to fix.
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@DDXdesign, you do have the option of excluding the individual credit card transactions from the Spending Plan so just the payment counts as an expense. I think most people just want to track what they're actually spending money on, which is where the individual transactions come in. I personally pay my credit cards off 100% each month and I track the charges as expenses, and then I exclude the payments as "transfers" (moving money from one account to another).
Are you not planning to use the Quicken Simplifi Spending Plan to budget, or are you just not concerned with what you're spending money on and want to budget from a larger picture? Just curious. 🙂
-Coach Natalie
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Oh, yes I'm looking to use it to budget, but I am to start with trying to at least mimic the dashboards and reports I've already built for myself and have been using for years, to get used to the feel and UI. The credit cards aren't used regularly - I don't even carry them with me; a couple of them just have a subscription or two and get paid off every month, to keep them alive, and occasionally I'll have a big expense that I will put on one for a 0% period, so I don't have any willy-nilly unknown spending on them.
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From your further comments and descriptions of what you are doing with certain CCs, carrying a balance during a zero-interest periods - these CCs are functioning as a loan and as such, following @Coach Natalie 's direction, you can set these payments up as recurring expenses moving the payments out of the Transfers section and into the Bills section.
And as you say, for paying off balances every month, the actual expenses are already captured and accounted for in your Spending Plan and the payment to the CC account from the cash account is not the actual expense, but a shifting of funds from a pay before you play account to a play before you pay account and as you point out, this movement of funds does not affect your net worth like a loan payment does.
As you have built and been using your own custom spreadsheets with dashboards and reports, can I ask what you are looking for in an app like QS?
Danny
Simplifi user since 01/22
”Budget: a mathematical confirmation of your suspicions.” ~A.A. Latimer0 -
Absolutely - the main thing I'm looking for in an app is far more robust and reliable data collection from all my institutions, however acknowledging that I'm not a programmer, I can't use for instance a Plaid API to build my own spreadsheet extension; I am a career data analyst and data-viz guy though. QS was recommended for me to try, and I thought it looked pretty good.
I've been using Tiller integrated to Sheets for a while now, but its data scraper is not great and fails for months at a time on several of my accounts. Before that I used Budgetsheet, slightly better data pulls, but some of my banks would simply never pull correctly. And before that, I just filled in the spreadsheets manually by looking at all the bank websites one by one.
My apologies if this gets to TLDR…
The way my own 'system' (spreadsheet workbook) is set, I have the following:
- One donut chart of all the planned-spend bill categories and dollars in the bills acct, with a slice for the unplanned or 'discretionary' amount that goes into the other account. Note: a monthly transfer to my Savings is also treated like a bill for my purposes. This only changes when I change a planned bill amount.
- Automatic 'Punch list' tracking of my bills (incl card payments) - which were paid, amount of last payment, and the total spent vs to-spend, within the current pay cycle. Uses a formula to compare the last payments to the date of my last payroll deposit.
- Bar graph for utilization tracking on my revolving credit accounts
- The unplanned account gets a second donut chart that breaks out what I've spent in the 'unplanned' account by category…
- Then I have a bar graph specific to the top 10 vendors in a given category, so I can see at a glance what my biggest transactions were and how many times I went to those places.
- And a spend rate assessment (e.g. if 50% of the month has passed and I've spent 60% of the money allotted, it lights up in red - I see QS has this function as well, funny enough)
- Plus all the templates and graphs that Tiller creates, but many of those aren't germane to my usage.
And, the whole thing runs on my own 'fiscal month' rather than the calendar because I get paid once a month, in the middle.
In typing all this out, I realized what it is at its core:
I have a completely mechanized system in my bills-account income and totally-automated billpays, so for the Bills account I just need a realtime monitor to make sure it's all humming as intended. Over on the discretionary spend side, I need the realtime monitor just to keep an eye on my spending. But in order to have that, I need a way better data aggregator than Yodlee. I do have other things I built into it, like loan calculators and some rudimentary projections, but that's the gist.
Thanks!
Dave
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@DDXdesign Sounds to me like what you want is to click reports and select net income. I can't figure why something as important as knowing if you are saving or spending more than you earn each month is not available on the Dashboard.
As for the Dashboard, I think much of the information is useless for your situation. I am thinking net income will tell you everything you want to know along with the other reports on the page. I use the spending plan almost never and have tweaked it very little. I hope Simplifi will add net income to the Dashboard and allow you to hide stuff you don't want. You can drag what you want to see to the top of the screen and the other stuff does not show unless you scroll down.
I would recommend checking the transactions page often to be sure bills are being paid and you recognize all the charges and checks. It is wonderful to have all your income and expenses in a single list.
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Thanks for that… wow, data analyzer indeed!
I can't help but wonder if Quicke Classic might be a better fit for you. My understanding is that QS is meant to make monthly planning a simpler process for folks like me who don't need a high-end, heavy lifter bookkeeping system with a robust set of data mining tools which is what Quicken Classic provides.
I have found QS to be the cat's meow for myself giving me a means to sort out and keep track of my monthly inflow and outflow. One thing I will say is that the Spending Plan is for me the real prize in QS, and I have found it to be a perfect (OK, near perfect) tool for keeping track of my monthly dance with personal finance.
One last thing, others have commented on and asked for the ability to customize the Spending Plan cycle dates:
Danny
Simplifi user since 01/22
”Budget: a mathematical confirmation of your suspicions.” ~A.A. Latimer1 -
Net Income looks oversimplified for my needs, but thanks for the input - If I can get Spending Plan set right, I think the charts it provides might be OK, but I get ya. Part of wanting to make a move to a better aggregator/app is also the simplicity of not having to "keep the hood open" and constantly babysit all the connections, which Simplifi at least seems pretty good with.
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Have you checked out the Watchlist feature. I wonder if you will find some of what you are looking for in Watchlists.
One of the quirks in Watchlists is the way Quicke Simplifi handles the "Projected" for the month which is explained in the article, but that number can create a certain level of consternation.
Danny
Simplifi user since 01/22
”Budget: a mathematical confirmation of your suspicions.” ~A.A. Latimer1 -
I have not used Watchlist, but will check it out.
I think the only thing I still want to try is, really, to figure out precisely HOW to enter my CC payments as Bills, just to see if that makes the spending plan work more similarly to what I was envisioning.
EDIT: case in point, I just added my car payment as a bill - I transfer the money to the bank that holds the lien (because that counts as a direct deposit for them to give me a half-point discount on the APR) and then the payment to the note is pulled from that account - but I was able to add it, and it appeared in the spend plan's Bills area, however when i picked the 'matching transaction', it then disappeared again from the spend plan! Even unlinking it didn't bring it back.
EDIT 2: I think I got it to stay this time?
I feel like I'm SO CLOSE with this thing. If I can do the cards it could be all good.
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Just to be clear:
Are the expenses you are paying with your credit card(s) already included in your Spending Plan? For example, I pay my cell phone bill via one of my credit cards. When the bill is paid out by my credit card bank and that transaction is downloaded into QS, QS will match it with my recurring monthly cell phone bill and mark it paid. I have the credit card account set up to auto pay the full balance every billing cycle on the due date. When that transaction takes place, I will have a debit added to my checking account and a corresponding credit added to my credit card account. When these transactions are downloaded into QS, QS will (usually) match these transactions and classify them as a transfer and automatically exclude them from my Spending Plan. Since the actual expense has already been accounted for in my Spending Plan, I don't want the credit card payment to also be counted in my Spending Plan.
Are your credit card accounts connected for data downloads into Simplifi? This is where it will get tricky, I think, with setting up the CC payment strictly as a bill since QS will want to treat movement of money between connected accounts as transfers. I imagine it can be done if you can disassociate the two transactions. But I'm not sure how this would be done or if it can be done. Also, how will you keep the actual expense payment from being, in essence, double counted?
On the other hand, even though these payments and corresponding credits are excluded from my Spending Plan and reports, I can still see them as greyed out entries under Transfers & Credit Card Payments.
But if you do want your credit card payments included in your Spending Plan as you indicate that you do, you can always set them up to be included in the Spending Plan. So that you don't have to edit each payment to deselect the Exclude options, you can set them up as recurring transfers and when you set up the recurring payments just make sure to deselect the Exclude options for one or both sides of the transaction.
Here are a couple of support article for Transfers:
Here are a couple of screenshot examples for creating a new recurring transfer:
This is the default settings for a recurring transfer. Both sides of the transfer are excluded from the Spending Pan and Reports by default.
You can change the default behavior by deselecting any or all the Exclude options.
By changing these selections, you will change how these transactions will appear in your Spending Plan and Reports.
I do have an example of in which I want several monthly recurring transfers to be included in my Spending Plan and Reports.
These are the transfers I make to several custodial brokerage accounts I manage for my grandkids. I want the money leaving my checking account to be counted since once these funds are transferred to the custodial accounts that money has passed from my ownership to the ownership of my grandkids and is no longer part of my net worth. I have the Money Out exclusion deselected for these transfers and since I don't want the Money In included in my personal net worth, I leave the Money In exclusion selected. This way the money shows up as leaving my accounts but doesn't show up as being added to my bottom line when the transfer is credited to the brokerage accounts.
I have no idea is any of this helps with what you are trying to do, but maybe it will give you some ideas.
Danny
Simplifi user since 01/22
”Budget: a mathematical confirmation of your suspicions.” ~A.A. Latimer0 -
Thanks @DannyB - yeah that's the thing, I don't want to treat the money spent ON the cards as part of the spending plan, because they're mostly used occasionally for 0% offers (so they're more mini-loans), beyond a couple keep-alive subscription uses that I pay off each month. I want my spending plan to only see the checking accounts - even my monthly transfer to savings (pay yourself first!) I want treated as a bill. If all that isn't detailed out in my earlier posts on this thread then it may be in another thread.
One gripe I have about QS's UI, is that some actions are nebulous.
- Actively checking a box (positive action) to EXclude something is not intuitive.
- Separating Money Out and Money In is sensible, but it's also not intuitive because on that screen it doesn't show "out of" which account or "into" which other account.
- And with QS you can't test or simulate these things right there in the screen to see how it would impact the connected moving parts on the dashboard or reports.
- Plus, you can't Undo, so if you do something and it breaks something else, you have to go try to find, and figure out how to rebuild, whatever you broke.
EDIT your point about Net Worth is a good one, which actually illustrates my point about credit cards - When you have a balance, yes, that brings your net worth down, and then as you make a payment your net worth in that moment doesn't necessarily change, BUT, once it's all paid off you're not going to have the value of the now-available credit line included in your net worth, so I fundamentally think it's erroneous to just treat it as an account transfer.
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The spending plan tracks.. spending. Not cash flow or account balances, and paying a credit card for example doesn't count as spending. I wouldn't expect it to track anything else. Spending at 0% is still spending. You can always hide what you don't want included. Transfer (money account to account) is shown in the 'transfers bucket' but most people agree it's confusing how that is displayed.
-Rob
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Rob Wilkens1 -
EDIT your point about Net Worth is a good one, which actually illustrates my point about credit cards - When you have a balance, yes, that brings your net worth down, and then as you make a payment your net worth in that moment doesn't necessarily change, BUT, once it's all paid off you're not going to have the value of the now-available credit line included in your net worth, so I fundamentally think it's erroneous to just treat it as an account transfer.
I've never thought of available credit lines as part of my net worth. Simplifi certainly doesn't include credit lines in its net worth calculations. I don't remember Quicken Classic doing that either. Is this something that is done elsewhere? This has never come up in conversations with my financial advisor over the years either and I've never given this any thought.
Now that you have dropped the idea into my head though, initially, my thought is that my current total credit line is a bit north of $50,000 but I can't quite get myself to see that as part of my net worth since it's doesn't seem to me to be a tangible asset under my control and that I could pass on to someone else.
I do think of my credit card accounts as "reverse" checking accounts though. Or as "pay-before-you-play" (checking) and "play-before-you-pay" (credit card) accounts. Credit card accounts become liability accounts in my mind only if I carry a balance… which I haven't done since around 1990. My current justification for using credit cards at all is to take advantage of the rewards and or cashback programs.
I'll just add one more bit of thinking related to how I see Quicken Simplifi. I have never expected QS to be a full-blown power accounting app along the lines of Quicken Classic or even a number of the current crop of personal finance apps. When I first tried out QS, I found it to be a quite refreshing experience that met my needs and organized my personal finance dance quite elegantly as it stood. I have appreciated a number of the enhancements that have been added and improvement that have been implemented, but all-in-all I had no problem with embracing the (what I called) "budgeting philosophy" that QS was built on.
Many in this forum have expressed frustration over how QS is set up and functions often bringing up how differently Simplifi did things. For me that's exactly the point and the whole reason for using QS - It's DIFFERENT! And for me that difference is a very good thing.
I don't know if you will be able to get QS to work similarly to how you are set up with your spreadsheet workbooks, I'm guessing probably not, but within its own ecosystem, I find QS to be an app that works well for what I need in a personal finance app.
Danny
Simplifi user since 01/22
”Budget: a mathematical confirmation of your suspicions.” ~A.A. Latimer0
