Ability to Exclude Accounts from the Spending Plan [edited] (5 Merged Votes)

myf
myf Member ✭✭
edited September 2023 in Feature Requests

Is there a way to exclude entire accounts in the Spending Plan? I use two checking accounts: One is for bills only, and an exact amount of my paycheck goes into that account, The other is a joint account we use for daily living (food, gas, movies). The "Bills" account is pretty much static each month, but having a spend plan set for the other account would be a boon to see the bubbles in the "Spent so far (excluding bills)" section. To do that I would need to be able to exclude the income from the Bills account. I am sure others have similar accounts that are not "spending" accounts. it may be as simple as having a check box that says "Show in Spend Plan" in the Accounts or Recurring items to toggle for your needs.

40
44 votes

Completed · Last Updated

The ability to exclude an account from the Spending Plan separately from Reports is now available in Simplifi!

Comments

  • Coach Nicole
    Coach Nicole Administrator, Moderator admin
    edited May 2021

    Hi there -- Sadly, there isn't currently an option to exclude an entire account from the spending plan. However, you can exclude specific transactions by selecting the "Ignore from Reports" option on the transaction.

    I'm not too sure if this is something our team has on the current roadmap, but I think it's a great suggestion. I'm going to change this thread into an "Idea" and move it to our feedback section so other users can vote to increase demand for this function. We appreciate the feedback! :smiley:

  • PappaD
    PappaD Member

    I'd like to request a new feature be implemented at the Account level.

    The idea is that we could simply set a setting on our linked account to ignore it from the spending plan or ignore it from reports. Same as if you would do it on a transaction but, on an account.

    The reason is, we have accounts like an HSA Savings that we don't want included in our normal spending plan. When we have regular credits to the account (every pay period) and we cannot assume that is money available to spend on non eligible items like, rent, or a mortgage. We can only spend that money on eligible items. Same goes for expenses from the account.

    It is very inconvenient to have to ignore each transaction manually. I can't just ignore all transactions from Walgreens because I may have used a different account to make a purchase, like Doritos. Where, other purchases would be Rx.

    The only option I am left with is to not include the account at all. However, I now lose visibility on my Net Worth and actual savings.

    Please, let me know if you need additional acceptance criteria. I'd be glad to help.

  • Coach Tappan
    Coach Tappan Retired Coach ✭✭✭✭

    @PappaD I think this is an excellent suggestion! It seems to me it wouldn't be that difficult to implement, as long as we make it clear that it's a powerful option that will affect all transactions associated with that account. Let's see what our other users think about it! Thanks for the feedback!

  • LOB
    LOB Member
    Hello!  This would be a helpful feature it implement in my case as well!

    My partner and I have shared expenses I'd like to be included on our spending plan.  In addition I have a personal card with purchases that are related to self employment or just personal.  I'd like that entire account not involved in our spending plan.

    But I would like to run reports for that account now and then.  Right now I'm faced with having a Mint account for my personal expenses and a Simplifi account for our shared.  

    Idea:

    Have different “profiles” when you log in (Similar to Nextlix asking who’s watching when logging in).  Therefore I could switch between “me” or “shared” or “my partner” could all have individual profiles which would have different account settings.


    This would be the best possible solution!  But just being able to exclude an account from spending plan would be a quick fix.

  • cfoxcvg
    cfoxcvg Member ✭✭✭✭
    This is a GREAT suggestion and I add my vote. I have a couple accounts that I like to monitor but they do not play into my budgeting for many personal reasons. I find it taxing to individually ignore every transaction especially since it take multiple clicks and can not be completed on multiple transactions simultaneously. 
  • I'm going to second the request from both the OP and LOB. There are two different requests for two different purposes.

    Excluding an entire account from the Spending Plan is crucial for those in scenarios who transfer money within accounts for different purposes. This would alleviate the issue of duplicate accounts showing up in the Spending Plan report.

    For example, I use PayPal for many online transactions. The transaction is funded through my checking account and shows up with no issues; however, the transaction also shows in the PayPal account, thus creating a duplicate transaction in the Spending Plan.

    LOB's scenario, and suggestion of "profiles" is similar to how Quicken on the Web allows various Quicken desktop client files to be tracked and viewed online. This allows for the user to create and track two or more entirely different budgets/transactions.
  • Havensd74
    Havensd74 Member ✭✭
    I use my spending plan to track all monthly expenses/bills that go against my monthly income.  Since I use my credit card for almost all monthly purchases, which goes against my credit limit, I only track my credit card payments in the spending plan.  This is an accurate way to determine how much money I have left from my monthly income.  I can then use the reports and watch lists to monitor actual monthly purchases on my credit card.  Its fantastic.

    However, in order for this to work, I need to ignore my credit card purchases from my monthly spend plan (but not from the reports).  I see you can "ignore from reports" at the account level, but not "ignore from spending plan".  I need to be able to ignore my credit card transactions from my spend plan.  I can still do it transaction by transaction, but what a pain. 

     
  • Coach Natalie
    Coach Natalie Administrator, Moderator admin
    edited July 2021
    Hello @Havensd74,

    Thank you for taking the time to post your suggestion to the Community!

    I have gone ahead and merged your post with an existing Idea post requesting the ability to ignore accounts from the Spending Plan. Please be sure to add your vote here! :wink:

    -Coach Natalie
  • How about the ability to support budgets at the individual account level, as opposed to across all accounts? 
  • Presently, when Spending Plans are created, they include all accounts and there is no way to exclude accounts. For example, if I want to create a Spending Plan for only my checking accounts, I cannot do this. The only option available to me is to exclude individual transactions, which is a very tedious and not user friendly.

    Moreover, if I set us a manual cash account (envelope system stuff), I cannot create a specific plan for that account. This is useful for showing kids how to budget with tools like Simplifi.

    Please consider adding the ability to include/exclude accounts from plans and/or creating plans for specific accounts.

    Thanks in advance!
  • jondehen
    jondehen Member ✭✭
    @Coach Natalie
    I like the idea of excluding certain accounts from the spending plan, but for my use case (and I'm sure many others), excluding categories from the spending plan would be just as useful, if not more so.

    I have two use cases:
    #1 - misc interest earned in savings/checking accounts.  I would like to exclude the "interest earned" category from showing up in the spending plan.  I'm not counting a few dollars here or there as income even though it technically is.

    #2 - "personal" checking accounts.  My spouse and I both have our own checking accounts (still joint) where we have our "fun money" that is spent on anything we want using various credit cards.  Currently these personal transactions show up in the Other Spending area as our custom personal categories.  We don't want to include our personal transactions in our overall spending plan for the month as this skews things and counts against our monthly budget.  More or less, our personal transactions are outside of the monthly budget.  Our contribution to these checking accounts could also be excluded.  When we make a purchase, we transfer the amount from our personal checking to our joint checking.

    Thanks for the consideration!


  • Coach Natalie
    Coach Natalie Administrator, Moderator admin
    Hello @jondehen,

    Thanks for the feedback!

    I would also suggest adding your vote and feedback here for the ability to exclude Categories from the Spending Plan: https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/133/ability-to-show-or-hide-categories-and-tags-from-reports-and-spending-edited-2-merged-votes#latest :smile:

    -Coach Natalie
  • Coach Natalie
    Coach Natalie Administrator, Moderator admin
    Hello All,

    Just a little side note for this request -- it appears that when ignoring accounts from Reports, they are also automatically ignored from the Spending Plan (as outlined here). So, if you don't use Reports or don't need the account included in Reports, using this option would be a great workaround for ignoring the account from the Spending Plan.

    Please let me know if anyone has any questions! :smile:

    -Coach Natalie
  • bluebonnet
    bluebonnet Unconfirmed, Member
    While I would prefer to be able to exclude accounts from the Spending Plan, using Coach Natalie's suggestion to ignoring accounts from Reports provides the info that I need. Specifically, I have a recurring transaction to log transfers to estimated tax savings account and property tax savings account. That needs to show up in my Spending Plan as an expense so that I see that money as not spendable. (Yes, savings goals are supposed to do that, but I can't figure out how to make that work.)
  • Jeannette
    Jeannette Member ✭✭✭
    I need this as well, I need to be able to ignore an entire account from the spending plan but I don't want to ignore it from reports because there are transactions in that account that I want to report on
  • Coach Natalie
    Coach Natalie Administrator, Moderator admin

    Hello All,

    Great news! The ability to exclude accounts from the Spending Plan will soon be added to Settings > Accounts. This will allow users to ignore an account from just the Spending Plan without also ignoring it from Reports. 🥳

    -Coach Natalie

  • Coach Natalie
    Coach Natalie Administrator, Moderator admin

    Hello All,

    The option to 'Exclude from Spending Plan' has been added to the three-dot menu for accounts under Settings > Accounts! This new option will allow you to ignore an account from just the Spending Plan without also ignoring it from Reports.

    This ability is available for both the Mobile and Web Apps!

    -Coach Natalie

This discussion has been closed.