Planned Spending Rollover: Share your feedback here!

Fadiest · March 23

Great Feature! But what about the other spending transactions. It would be extremely useful and would complete this to have that rolled over as well.

Fadiest · March 23

Also noticed a bug where I can no longer edit my expense series initial amount. Every time I do it reset it to the old value.

DannyB · March 24

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/32402#Comment_32402

I’m not sure what you are referring to by “other spending transactions.”

UrsulaA · March 25

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/32462#Comment_32462

I believe you are referring to transactions appearing in the Spending Plan, other spending section. Is that correct @Fadiest ?

https://help.simplifimoney.com/en/articles/4212702-using-the-quicken-simplifi-spending-plan#h_656df4b253

UrsulaA · March 25

Yay! I finally got rollover. I am trying it out with gifts. I set up an annual budget of $1320, divided the number by 12, and added the unspent funds for January and February under rollover opening balance. Looks good so far.

https://help.simplifimoney.com/en/articles/9029030-using-rollover-in-planned-spending#h_dd6d6bbef4

Blackbird · March 25

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/32528#Comment_32528

@Fadiest, By definition, only expense categories included in the Planned Spending section of the Spending Plan can be a “planned” monthly expense, which now can also include an optional rollover feature. The Other spending section in the Spending Plan includes expenses that are left out of either the recurring section of the plan (bills and subscriptions) or the Planned spending section. These are typically small miscellaneous expenses. If you regularly have a significant amount of expenses in this section, it probably means that you need to consider either creating additional monthly planned expense categories or recategorizing some of them under existing categories in the spending plan.

Bgz · March 26

I have access to it now. However, this is a feature I will not use. IF I overspend a month, it is fine but would like my spending limits to be the same month to month. I am glad it was not turned on by default.

misha142 · March 29

Love this feature! Especially the ability to set the current rollover amount to anything, rather than just being able to reset it to 0

skriss · March 29

I tried out the rollover feature and there are definitely benefits but it could also use improvement. I overspent this month by about $30 on my food planned spending. That's fine as I needed groceries and I'll spend less money on food next month by starting my month off with a fridge full of food. But while that overspend is rolling over to the next month (that's the good), this month doesn't give any kind of red ! or note that I'm over budget for the month in a spending category. I was looking at it so I noticed and was able to move some extra money I didn't spend on gas this month to food but it still should have told me that I was overspent even if its rolling that extra over.

Max1223 · April 1

When I change the Rollover amount, say reset it to zero or change to $50 when I have $100 of rollover, where does that money get accounted in Simplifi? Last months plan? or?

Thanks

DannyB · April 1

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/32998#Comment_32998

Since this is all taking place in the Spending Plan, that is where these moneys come from and go to.

If you take note of your Available amount I suspect you will see that what's available will change based on how much you change the rollover amount or if you do a reset to zero.

The Spending Plan is a "virtual" budgeting feature in Simplifi. Whether you actually have the real world funds or not is not necessarily visible in Simplifi until there are actual transactions that apply to your Spending Plan. The rollover feature for Planned Spending depends on what you have set up in the income section of your plan.

Hope that helps.

Coach Natalie · April 1

@Max1223, you can learn about the "reset rollover" in our support article, which states that this function clears the rollover value for the current month: https://help.simplifimoney.com/en/articles/9029030-using-rollover-in-planned-spending#h_f75eeda533

I hope this helps!

-Coach Natalie

Blackbird · April 1

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/32999#Comment_32999

Hi @DannyB and @Max1223, I believe the change of the rollover amount should affect the Available amount. However, after a quick test, I can see that it does not do that. I believe this is something that must be corrected. Also, I see now a new nice improvement in April that allows you to pick the calculated rollover amount using the previous months of current year by adding all your expenses in the category and subtracting the budgets for those month and then devices by the number of previous months. It is a nice feature that helps you validate your current set amounts, especially if you decide to change the budget for the current month. Finally, I think what you @DannyB are saying in your last sentence above is incorrect. The rollover feature is not dependent on the income or other sections of your Spending Plan. It is just dependent on your individual budget categories you set and any rollover amount offsets you enter on each of them.

Coach Natalie · April 1

The rollover amount does not impact the Available amount in the Spending Plan totals. I encourage everyone to read our support article here, as it goes over all of these details: https://help.simplifimoney.com/en/articles/9029030-using-rollover-in-planned-spending

I know it's the 1st of the month so we finally get to see how rollover will really impact the Spending Plan, so don't hesitate to post any questions!

-Coach Natalie

ScribblyAnn · April 1

Now that we've 'rolled over' to the month of April and I can see more of it working, I wanted to leave some feedback on the feature.

Inside the spending plan, it's working great. I'm liking the feature and will be using it going forward!

However, on the web app dashboard, the spending plan widget doesn't show the rollover correctly. I had $1.80 (rounded to $2 on some of the displays) rolled over in my Dining & Drinks category from March to April, which shows accurately in the spending plan window. On the dashboard widget, it shows my entire budget from last month plus the $2 left over rolled over into this month. This should be fixed to match the actual spending plan.

For clarity: my dining & drinks plan per month is $400. I spent $398.20 last month. This month in the spending plan, I have $401.80 available in dining & drinks. On the dashboard widget, it shows $801.80 available.

I would include screenshots but it's not letting me paste them in and I'm not sure how to use a media URL for a screenshot…

DannyB · April 1

@Coach Natalie I was just pulling a little "April Fools" joke on everyone…. NOT!!!

I think you are correct that I'm not correct with my last sentence above. Let me try to clarify what I was thinking with that last sentence, if you care to hear it. When I first set up the Spending Plan the first thing I did, or that Quicken Simplifi did, if I recall correctly, was to identify any recurring income in the data my banks first downloaded and I went through and made sure all the recurring income was identified correctly and then once I had something to work with, I was prepared to work on all my various expenses. Once again, Quicken Simplifi had identified fairly accurately and fairly thoroughly all my recurring bills/subscriptions (don't remember if QS sorted out bills and/or subscriptions during the initial set up but not really relevant here). After deducting these recurring fixed expenses I had an Available balance to work with to create my various Planned Spending expenses. After setting all those up, QS did the math and let me know how much I had available for any extra spending or savings I wanted to do.

What I meant to say above, is that the money I assign to Planned Spending is taken from what is available after recurring expenses: Bills/Subscriptions, transfers & CC payments, savings goal contributions and that led be to suspect that if I changed the amount of rollover, either resetting to zero or reducing the amount it would go back to available. Reading @Max1223 more closely I see he mentions whether one option is for that money to go back to a previous month or where.

Now that you have brought some enlightenment to the conversation, I realize that indeed, the rollover amount, if any, in a planned spending bucket is NOT coming from the available in the current month. Instead it came from previous month(s) available that didn't get spent and has been added ONLY to this months rollover planned spending bucket and IS NOT a part of the available for the current month. That makes sense if I'm getting what is going on here.

If this is the case, then would that mean if I deleted or reduced the rollover amount which came form previous months, in the current month's manifestation of the bucket, the reduced or deleted rollover is simply eliminated… it simply disappears? It's not returned to the previous months from whence it came? Of course, that begs the question of whether or not QS knows which month/months any of the rollover amount came from…

Oh, never mind, I'll just enjoy having the rollover feature and not mess with the rollover amount except when I actually spend it.

emmoswmr · April 1

I'm so happy to see this feature. Lack of a rollover feature was one of the things that turned me off from Simplifi for awhile. I've been back for a few months and when I logged in to see that a few days ago, I was like, "FINALLY!!! WOOP!!"

I'll be using this feature in two ways: one, to replace the Spending Goals feature that just never worked for my brain, and two, to best budget for and track actually variable expenses.

Replacing spending goals: Putting aside $20 monthly for renter's insurance, for example. Only comes due once a year, but it's a planned expense that gets auto-saved monthly. Same with holiday gifts, or a few higher-priced annual subscriptions.
Variable expenses: Travel, for example. I travel a few times a year, and there's rarely a month that goes by when I'm not paying something toward a future trip. So it's small amounts here and there, and then a couple thousand when we're actually on the trip. Or expenses for my dog, who some months has zero expenses, and other months has food and a three-month refill of her meds.
For expenses such as groceries, dining out, household things, etc., I have never actually rolled these over monthly, anyway; if I don't spend the full amount, I release it and it just goes back to hanging out as "available" funds (aka sitting in my bank account). This may change in the future, but not likely soon.

I had basically been tracking both of these (the "spending goals" and "variable expenses" above) in "Other Spending" previously, while actually budgeting for them outside of Simplifi (yay for Excel sheets, lol). Adding this feature rounds out Simplifi so I can see the full picture of our budget and finances - it now includes every category we foresee utilizing. The intent, for us, is that nothing will go into "other spending," though there is still an amount of "available" funds if we do have something that goes in there.

Coach Natalie · April 1

@ScribblyAnn, can you provide a visual of what you're seeing, please? I don't personally see any differences in the Planned Spending expenses listed on the Spending Plan Dashboard card versus on the actual Spending Plan > Planned Spending page.

Thanks!

-Coach Natalie

ScribblyAnn · April 1

@Coach Natalie, Sure. I'm not sure why I wasn't able to put in pictures earlier but I can now.

This is the dashboard widget:

While this is in the planned spending section of the spending plan:

Thanks!

-ScribblyAnn

MichaelSGreen · April 1

I went through and setup the rollover feature for all of my Planned Spending Categories last month. At the end of March, I was either on or under budget on every category, but when I woke up this morning the calculations were incorrect in almost every budget or category. I had rollovers from March budgets that had a $0.00 Remaining amount. I also have overspend rollovers for categories for which I was not over budget (see screenshots below). If you look at each of these budgets from March and compare them to April, you will see that the calculations are off.

The math is way off. Am I the only one?

Thanks.

Max1223 · April 2

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/32999#Comment_32999

@DannyB yes, that's what I suspected, just wanted to check here before I changed any rollover amounts. thank you!

Wedo778 · April 2

Now that we've got a month ended with rollovers (I think just if you have early access on?) curious what people expected vs what they got.

For me:
1. As far as setting them up, I think I got what I was expecting and asking for. On a per item basis I can decide whether that is the kind of item I want rolling over. And I can reset the rollover amt to zero any time I want.

2. Seeing my April spending plan, I suppose I didn't get what I expected the result of that to be. For example I have $450 planned for "food" each month. I underspent last month. The base Spending Plan screen still shows my total planned spending as if April's Food was going to be a $450 plan. It just has me starting as having spent -$50. I was expecting April to begin with a $500 plan since money rolled over, and the overall plan and therefore 'available money to spend' would adjust accordingly.

3. This morning I was getting a warning about needing to close out items that I had over/under spent on even though the only ones of those were rollover categories. But I don't see that anymore, so I guess that was a bug they quickly squished?

I suppose I'll have to think a while on whether this is good or bad. Maybe live with it a month or two and see how it plays out. Its not how I was expecting my spending plans to be impacted when I over or under spend.

Max1223 · April 2

@Coach Natalie thanks for the link. Reading it shows how to change or zero out a rollover. I was just curious where the money goes, virtually, if a zero out the rollover. I might just need to experiment with it to figure it out.

Max1223 · April 2

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/33027#Comment_33027

@DannyB yes, I think you get my question now…since that money came from last month, if I choose to zero it out, then theoretically, I would have thought it would go back to last month's budget, then I could leave it as is OR Release it. Either way, the money going back to last month to me makes sense since that's where it came from. But now, seems like it just disappears.

Max1223 · April 2

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/33047#Comment_33047

I am getting similar results where the Dashboard Available amounts do not match the Planned Spending Available amounts. the mismatch is only on Rolled Over categories @ScribblyAnn thanks for spotting.

Blackbird · April 2

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/33021#Comment_33021

@Coach Natalie, makes sense. After all, the overspent or underspent in the previous months that resulted in the rollover when enabled was already accounted in the previous months’ Available amounts. The rollover is only an accounting adjustment to the remaining budget for the future months in the current year. Thank you for helping me understand this better.

Max1223 · April 2

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/33084#Comment_33084

@Coach Natalie I re read the article especially the things to note section. I still have one question regarding the statement below.

while i understand the statement and it makes sense, AFTER the month changed and March's available funds were "moved" to April, which shows amounts in the April plan, I would have thought that "move" would be reflected in March's results. But the bars in March still show the excess amounts as "available" and the "left at end of month" March pie chart is inaccurate as the "moved" funds have not been subtracted from March. Hope this makes sense…

Coach Natalie · April 2

Hey everyone, the Spending Plan Dashboard card not matching the Spending Plan page is a known issue that we are working on resolving ASAP. The ticket number for that issue is SIMPL-20376.

@Max1223, this is the answer I got for you: "This is the principle we are following based on user interviews of what users are trying to achieve with rollovers of targeting a number or EOY for that specific category. User's discretionary “safe to spend” number will not be rewarded/penalized for a given month based on their spending performance within a specific planned spending item; i.e. I spend $50 under target on groceries, Simplifi won’t tell you that you’ve got an extra $50 discretionary to go spend this month overall because you might need it for groceries next month."

I'm not sure that I'm quite following the methodology myself, but I also am not a user who needs or plans to use rollovers so it may just be a difficult concept for me to grasp in general. I think it's because those funds don't technically get added to or deducted from the Spending Plan totals for the following month either, as the Spending Plan will always use the target amount when rollover is enabled. Does this help? 😀

-Coach Natalie

DannyB · April 2

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/33106#Comment_33106

I'm looking at what you describe but I'm thinking it's an fair way to show what's going on.

All the unspent designated funds keep moving forward so the Planned Spending with rollover categories will show the funds as unspent in the previous month(s) but also these funds remain designated for a particular planned expense and thus remain unavailable to the general Spending Plan. If this is the case, the "left at end of month" pie chart accurately showing what, if any, undesignated funds are available excluding all designated funds.

Here are my rollover categories for March. I underspent my monthly target for Fixed Expenses and I overspent my monthly target for Flexible Expenses. But I still have unspent designated money available from previous month that had "rolled forward" into March. However, the rolled over portion is NOT AVAILABLE to my general overall Spending plan - these funds remain designated for specific use only.

Once I closed out my March Spending Plan - all bills/subscriptions paid or accounted for, all transfers completed, all planned savings goal contributions accounted for and all unspent non-rollover Planned Spending funds released back to the general fund, this is what I ended up with for March. This is an accurate picture of what actually happened in March.

Are you thinking that the unspent funds in my two rollover categories should also be reflected in this pie chart? For example are you expecting to see the (in my case) additional ~$8500 also reflected in the pie chart for March?

Or are you expecting that the rollover bar graphs would show solid light blue since the currently dark green unspent amount has been moved from March to April?

Max1223 · April 2

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/33136#Comment_33136

Hi, its getting a little confusing trouble shooting this over chat unfortunately. :( I think my expectations are simple, and probably the only way to look at it.

Viewing March in April:

I have 100 budget on groceries
I actually spent 75
25 rolls over to April

In April

I see that Groceries has a total of 125 to spend, since 25 rolled over
I EXPECTED March view to have reduced that roll over
BUT when viewed March, I see the 100 total budget, 75 spent and 25 rolled over and can't release money per Simplifi's notes.
the PROBLEM was the pie chart in March did not seem to be reduced by the money that rolled over to April, it was still adding up all the budgeted amounts. Made it seem I over spent when I really didn't.

I might be wrong about how I'm reading that pie chart? So, just to see, I turned off rollovers, released funds where I could and manually edited "this months expense" to remove the "available/rollover" amount. The pie chart reflected properly my final results in March.

Planned Spending Rollover: Share your feedback here!

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