Planned Spending Rollover: Share your feedback here!
Comments
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@Coach Natalie yes, I think the "principle" is what is different from my expectation and people have different methods to achieve the same goal, so not saying one is right or wrong. Thanks for digging this up…The way the Spending plan is executed works for me and adding rollovers to it at the moment doesn't. I used rollovers in Mint, BUT Mint did not have a robust spending plan, so I figured out how to make Rollovers work there. Two different sets of "principles"! I really appreciate your follow up on this!
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So far, I'm ABSOLUTELY LOVING the Rollover feature. I am a refugee from Mint, and tbh it took a couple days after getting the announcement for the rollover feature to be an option for me. One thing Mint didn't have was, you can actually adjust the rollover amount here, which I think is great (esp since the calculations feature seems to actually be a little bit off rn now that March has turned into April, maybe a bug that will get fixed down the road?)
I agree with the very first commenter, that it would be nice to have an option on whether or not the rollover overspent is noticed by the spending plan or not. That would be my main criticism, bc implementing the rollover this way makes it difficult to tell if you're actually spending more than you can afford to in a given month, but for now I'm content with increasing the budget to match when that concerns me. I still don't love that the annual bills aren't accounted for in a month-to-month way, but with rollover I just make it its own category and delete the annual bill part, so it bothers me much less now!
But yeah, my only other main issue is that the calculations of the previous month's available rollover appear to be off for some of the categories. I'm not sure why that is, because the "remaining available" from the previous month just didn't match the calculated amount for a couple categories. I input them manually, but would really appreciate not HAVING to.
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Seems to be working pretty good! Although at first it wasn't showing correct numbers, but I'm guessing some items weren't finalized from the previous month or something like that. But it's showing the correct rollover amounts now. 👍️
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Yes, there is a place on the app called Planned Spending. Go to Spending Plan, then at the bottom you'll see a list:
Income After Bills
Planned Spending
Other Spending
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For Planned Spending, go to the three lines in the top-left, then select 'Spending Plan', then down towards the bottom you'll see 'Planned Spending'.
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I've been playing around with the new rollover feature. The part that is confusing me is how the rollover amount is accounted for in your available spending? For example, I started a series for "Veterinary" expenses with a beginning rollover of $350 and monthly expense of $300. But that $350 doesn't seem to be really "accounted" for anywhere.
Am I missing something? My concern is that over time you could accidentally create a huge disconnect between your rollover amount, and the actual cash that you have available to spend. But, maybe I'm just not understanding the functionality.
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The $350 you started with should be showing in the total available for your "Veterinary" Planned Spending category in addition to the current months designated amount. When this month closes out, whatever you have not spent of any of the available funds for "Veterinary" expenses will rollover to the new month as "Rollover" in the new months expense tile.
For example, in March I set up a new Planned Spending category with rollover activated for Annual Fixed Expenses. My annual total for these expenses is $5400 which breaks down to $450/month. I had not spent any of the funds for these expenses in either January or February, so I added those funds to the new rollover category. For March I had the March designated amount of $450 plus the "rolled over" amount of $900 giving me a total available of $1350. I spent $420 on this expense category in March leaving me with $30 of the March designated funds plus the $900 form the previous two months leaving me with $930 at the end of March. When April first rolled around, that $930 was rolled over into my April Annual Fixed Expenses and added to my monthly designated target of $450 giving me a total available for April of $1380. All of this is shown in the "Fixed Annual Expenses" Planned Spending tile.
AS far as whether or not I actually have that money as cash in one of my deposit accounts, well that depends on how well I stick with my overall Spending Plan month-to-month and whether or not I am dipping into the designated funds in real life.
I don't know if this is exactly what you are thinking about as far as avoiding a disconnect between the amount shown in your rollover expense category and your actual cash accounts, but here is a feature request that may help keep things aligned.
Danny
Simplifi user since 01/22
”Budget: a mathematical confirmation of your suspicions.” ~A.A. Latimer1 -
Thanks! I believe that feature request you linked is getting at the same concern I have - make sure your rollovers are accounted for in the available balance for an account, similar to the savings goals.
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Rollovers only affect the spending plan - which has nothing to do with any account balance.
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Rob Wilkens1 -
This is true but having a way to see how much of my balance is designated or set aside for future use would, in my opinion, be helpful.
Danny
Simplifi user since 01/22
”Budget: a mathematical confirmation of your suspicions.” ~A.A. Latimer0 -
This is one of those things that "i agree with" but as things are it just doesn't make sense … To me this seems like, just use savings goals when you can because they already do this.
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Rob Wilkens1 -
Yes I totally agree, and those other transactions are not planned in the budget for the month and they are typically minimal. I guess I personally care more about my end of month + or - balance over all rolling over (Total Income - Total Spendings) and less about the category balance rolling over if that makes sense. The only way to have those numbers be correct from a month to the next is if the "other spending" is also rolling over
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How would you rollover a cleared expense?
Anything that lands in Other Spending is paid for out of the Available cash. Are you asking about rolling over Available to the following month?
Danny
Simplifi user since 01/22
”Budget: a mathematical confirmation of your suspicions.” ~A.A. Latimer0 -
The way to solve your problem is to create a category to catch all “Other” expenses. Like “Miscellanous” or “Other”. Then, once a month or more often, you go to the Other spending in the spending Plan and you categorize all your expenses there under that new category. Then you end up with all the Other expenses under a single category that you can add to the Planned Spending for which you can set a budget and rollover for that single “other” or ”” category. The ideal plan should have all expenses captured by the Planned spending and not have any expenses falling into Other spending. I hope this makes sense to you.
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Hello, the new rollover feature is great. But could it possibly be aggregated for the whole month? So for all of the categories that I've set a spending plan for, could it give me the progress for all of those categories, combined? E.g., your total planned spending was $1,000, with $300 rollover. So far you've spent $1,150, with $150 remaining. Those numbers being a summation across all categories. It's hard to scroll through so many categories and get an overall general sense if I'm within spending plan for a given month in aggregate with the current view of the rollover.
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Hi @BudgetNerd such a summary feature was added to Planned Spending maybe a month or so before the rollover feature was added. There was some kind of mismatch between the two features so the summary feature was taken down until the team can figure out how to get.the two features to play nice together.
Danny
Simplifi user since 01/22
”Budget: a mathematical confirmation of your suspicions.” ~A.A. Latimer0 -
Planned Spending Rollover is live for everyone!
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I really appreciate the work that went into getting Rollovers up and running, as well as fixing the previous issue of amounts displayed being inaccurate in some cases. I now use rollovers in several (but not all) of my planned spending categories to help me budget things that fluctuate or are periodic, like groceries and quarterly taxes.
One request I have moving forward is to allow a rollover of the "Available" money at the end of each month. Right now, that money doesn't really go anywhere at the end of the month, and the next month starts over. It just disappears into whatever account holds that money. As far as keeping a positive net income, that is fine, but if you are using rollovers in other categories to make sure you are keeping a balanced budget both within and between months, it would make sense for that money to at least have the option of rolling over as well. This would be especially helpful for those of us who have variable incomes from month to month, as it is sometimes the case that I have a substantial amount of money left over one month, have overspent in the next, but between the two months have come out even.
What I would prefer is if that "Available" money was accounted for in the new month's "Available." For example, this month I currently have $355 "available." Let's say I don't spend any of that between now and May 1 - shouldn't May start with my usual "available" PLUS the leftover from April?
Currently, my strategy is to make a manual (fake) transaction on the first of each month with either the positive or negative amount "leftover" from the previous month on which to base my "available" money for the new month. Having this be automated and not require a fake transaction would be amazing.
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I've never gotten much traction or reaction when I've asked about the "left at end of month" money. Another way to move that money forward into the new month would be to use a custom income entry to set your available income for the month. I've looked doing this a time or two but so far haven't tried it.
Danny
Simplifi user since 01/22
”Budget: a mathematical confirmation of your suspicions.” ~A.A. Latimer1 -
Yeah, this is almost exactly my preferred use case as well. I can see the rollover expenses being useful for categories that are flexible but semi-frequent expenses… like maybe tracking a shopping category that can help you determine if you spent a lot one month and cut back the next month. But for the most part I don't care to plan my budget like that for most discretionary spending categories… if I don't spend a lot in one category I may spend more in a different category for that month, and there's no easy way to shift money back and forth with the way it currently works.
My preference would be to plan for the more regular expenses, then track the rest of my spending in the "other" category as a general slush fund that I can choose to manage however I want for the month rather than category by category. I would love for the "available" amount at the end of the month to be carried forward to the next month so that I can then either allocate it to savings goals, or additional spending for the month. Right now it just kind of disappears and once the month is complete there's not really any way to go back and re-assign those funds.
Other comments regarding the rollover feature:
* Adjusting the rollover amount just makes the funds disappear. These funds were budgeted for somewhere in a previous month, they should be able to re-allocate elsewhere.
* It won't let me adjust the current month planned spending to $0 (and just use rollover amount), it requires a non-zero amount for the month.
* Might be nice to have a notification icon or some indication that you've exceeded the "planned" portion of your expense for the month. The text below just says "Spent: $50 of $10" which is easily missed.
* If the previous rollover is negative it bundles the rollover with what was spent this month. For example, if my rollover amount is $-50 and have spent $50 so far this month, it displays "Spent: $100". It would be more clear to have "Previous expenses: $50, Spent: $50"0 -
Thank you for implementing rollovers for spending categories! I love the new feature, and was able to calculate my Jan/Feb over/under spend so my current rollover amounts are accurate. This was a huge need for me after moving over from Mint, and I was seriously considering trying a different product (Prior to rollovers in Simplifi, I was manually calculating my under/over spend each month for all my variable categories & then manually increasing or decreasing the next month's budget accordingly. This was too much manual work for a fee-based product). Now with rollovers, I will stick with Simplifi. Thank you!
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I love the idea of the rollover funds and really will make the spending plan a good budgeting tool.
I ASSUMED that the "Planned Spending" within the Spending Plan would increase by the amount rolled over where if I plan to spend $25.00 monthly and did not spend any last month my planned spending for this month would be $50.00 and the Planned Spending category would show the full $50.00 that I plan to spend this month, but this is not the case.
The rollover amounts are not deducted from any account balance, not shown in the Planned Spending total either so I cannot find where I would ensure that this money is actually available to spend. (This feels like a spreadsheet that adds where it should subtract and very quickly has nothing to do with checking, making it really easy to overdraw. Personally I like that Simplifi can pull my actual balance from accounts so that this information is helpful and real.)
After setting up several Planned Spending categories with rollover and waiting a month for the auto-rollover to kick in I now have more than 2x the planned spending that shows in planned spending. I have added up all kinds of numbers and I cannot find out where the planned spending number comes from. This used to be the total of the current month's planed spending amounts, but now it does not seem to be at all close to this.
If I plan to spend an average of x dollars a month in a category then I may spend more than that in one month, so it would make sense that the Planned Spending should show the total set aside by the planned spending categories. This would provide a monthly budget that shows the average amounts spent on expenses that are not always monthly. Then again, I don't PLAN to spend all of it every month so maybe the rollover amounts need to show as a type of savings goal where the funds are earmarked in a savings account to show that the funds are spoken for? (By taking budget amounts from Savings Goals and converting them to Planned Spending with rollover all I have done is increased the available balance in savings and replaced that with imaginary numbers that I need to keep up with manually.)
What is the "best practices" approach to show the monthly budgeted amount for periodic or annual ongoing expenses? My goal is to show the amount set aside every month even after any target date as these are regular expenses that do not fit a savings goal.
Quicken for Windows user since 1994 (After MYM for DOS)
Simplifi by Quicken since 20230 -
If you're not spending outside of your Spending Plan - that is incurring expenses that you have not included in your Plan in a given month, year or 10 years - then funds that are "rolled over" into the next month in a given Planed Spending category will be in your cash accounts. This will be true no matter what finance management app or method you use. Remember, the funds that cover your Planned Spending is NOT included in the "Available" or "left at end of month" balance. This is money that has been designated for a specific expense and has been removed from the Available/left at end of month pool.
As far as tracking these funds, here is a feature request to develop a method for showing "rollover" funds in the way SG funds are tracked now:
As far as best practices, here's what I'm doing for now (whether this is a best practice or not, time will tell):
- For FIXED non-monthly or annual expenses that I am now attempting to prepare for using the Planned Spending rollover feature, I have set up a monthly transfer to a savings account equal to the amount I need to set aside each month to cover those expenses (annual insurance premiums, bi-annual property tax payments, annual subscriptions/memberships, auto registration, etc. These are set amounts due at set times just like my monthly recurring bill and subscriptions.) I pay these expenses out of this savings account. Theoretically the balance of this account should match month-over-month the sum of the monthly designated amount plus the rollover from previous months.
- For FLEXIBLE irregular but known expenses, for now, I leave these funds in my checking account since these are more fluid expenditures and I want the funds to be immediately available. Since most of these expenses will be charged to a credit card it will be a little more difficult to "reconcile" the balance of the actual funds with what is showing in my Spending Plan.
Right now, I have a separate Planned Spending category for each of the fixed expenses and may breakout my flexible expenses either this month or next - I'm experimenting.
"I ASSUMED that the "Planned Spending" within the Spending Plan would increase by the amount rolled over where if I plan to spend $25.00 monthly and did not spend any last month my planned spending for this month would be $50.00 and the Planned Spending category would show the full $50.00 that I plan to spend this month, but this is not the case."
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by what you describe above. Where is it that you are expecting the rollover funds to show up?
Here is one of my rollover planned spending categories.
I "plan" to spend $95.00/month on auto registration (see "allotted" upper right corner).
I had $380.00 rolled over from previous months. $380 + $95 = $475 that I have available to spend in this category this month.
I spent $320 this month.
I spent the $95 I had allotted and dipped into the rollover amount to cover the rest of this expense.
This leaves me with $155 allotted for Auto Registration for future use.
However, the only part of this Planned Spending category that affected this month's, income is the monthly allotment of $95.
This is consistent with how, in my understanding, the Spending Plan is designed to work - This month's income and this month's expenses and savings goal contributions. Is there somewhere else you are looking for these funds to show up in Planned Spending?
For me this is the genius of Quicken Simplifi and why I have been successfully and happily using this app for going on 3 years.
I pretty much see the same info on the summary entry in the Planned Spending page.
Danny
Simplifi user since 01/22
”Budget: a mathematical confirmation of your suspicions.” ~A.A. Latimer0 -
Hi all, I set up rollover last month so this is my first time seeing how it really works. Mostly I'm loving it! I did notice one potentially major issue. Anywhere the accounts list is shown, you get the following breakdown:
Account Balance: $5000
Savings Goals: $2000
Available Balance: $3000
Am I correct in thinking that any amount rolled over from last month is part of that $3000 available balance? For instance:
Planned Spending (with rollover enabled) -
Groceries: $100 monthly, $20 rolled over from last month, available to spend this month is $120
The $100 will come from my current month's income, but the $20 comes from my account balance left over from last month. Which means I actually only have $2980 available to spend from my account (assuming I don't want to dip into the grocery category).
Is this correct? If so, it may be useful to add another line to the accounts screen to represent money rolled over, something like:
Account Balance: $5000
Savings Goals: $2000
Money Rolled Over: $20
Available Balance: $2980
Thoughts???
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Danny, Thank you this provides some guidance. I up ticked your idea "Accounting for Rolled Over Planned Spending Cash" as I read this it would ensure that the rollover funds would be set aside in a designated account, which is really ideal. I'm not sure if this needs to be one account for all rollover funds or a specified account per designated rollover, but it would mean that there is money held aside for these expenses.
To address your question, I had expected the rollover funds to be "held" in a similar way that your "Accounting for Rolled Over Planned Spending Cash" idea represents, the rollover funds need to be held from the available balance in the account or shown in the Planned Spending in the Spending Plan. The more I think about the workflow, it really doesn't make sense to show it in the planned spending because rollover funds are not necessarily going to be spent this month. In this respect, I like your idea more but would require the designation of an account to be used for rollover funds.
What I'm really trying to accomplish is a budget and I know that Simplifi has already stated that this is not a budgeting application, so I'm trying to use the spending plan for all ongoing expenses as though it was a budgeting application. It's almost there but every time something changes I find myself resorting to a spreadsheet to make the modifications and then deleting all of my savings goals and planned spending and starting over. Now that I have used Simplifi for over a year all the annual expenses should be accounted for and the budget should write itself. For the annual expenses, I want a monthly amount to set aside so that I have all my expenses represented as a monthly amount, even if I'm setting aide 7.00 a month in some categories.
Out of the box the rollover funds are represented in the spending plan so I could have set aside 3,000 in one category but that 3,000 is still showing as available in savings/checking etc. so if I spend down the available balance in all accounts I may not have money for the funds in my planned spending with rollover amounts that are not connected to any account balance.
I think I'm going to move my monthly expenses back to Savings Goals until Simplifi can offer a way to set aside the rollover funds in some account the way that the Savings Goals do now. There are some expenses that do not work well in Savings Goals, but I just use a year before the name to show that it's this year's savings goal with the same name and introduce a new savings goal with next year's name once this one is paid in full. It's manual, but at least the money is set aside.
Quicken for Windows user since 1994 (After MYM for DOS)
Simplifi by Quicken since 20231 -
You're looking at it correctly. The rolled over money is just part of your existing balance and not factored into this month's Available section of the spending plan.
Whether or not your solution is the one that should be implemented is up to debate, but it is one way to go.
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@DannyB Hi, thanks for posting clear examples!
I have a q about your Auto Reg example. I pay Auto Registration twice a year for two cars. So in this case are you essentially "saving" by rolling over each month, then when the bill comes, you pay it and it takes from that plan? Are there other categories like fuel or other car expenses that you spend under "Auto Registration" or is it solely for Registration?
Sounds like the other way to accomplish this is a Saving Goal for Auto Reg, save money each month and spend it when the bill comes.
Thanks
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My Auto Reg Planned Spending category is for annual auto registration only. I have three vehicles. I was using Savings Goal for these fixed annual expenses but I’m now experimenting with the roll over feature do bring these expenses into my Spending Plan.
The only rollover Planned Spending categories I am using are for my annual and irregular expenses. I do not roll over for my routine monthly flexible expenses, i.e. groceries, dining out, gasoline, etc.
Danny
Simplifi user since 01/22
”Budget: a mathematical confirmation of your suspicions.” ~A.A. Latimer1 -
@DannyB Thanks for the reply.
Do you have Auto Reg as part of your Recurring Bills? I have annual bills Recurring Bills, so if I move to a Rollover scenario in the Planned Spending, I'm assuming I would need to remove Auto Reg from the recurring bills so it does not get double accounted? OR do you keep it in Bills and Exclude from Spending plan?
Thanks
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I gave it a try in Spending Plan but had to abort quickly as Spending Plan allows only 1 selection, the entire category OR a single subcategory, in my case Auto Reg is under Auto and Transport.
So to make this work, you'd have to take out Auto Reg from Auto and Transport and make its own Category right? I like the subcategories as it gives me an easy way to see what I'm spending at large in any given category. I know I could use Tags, but that's more manual input.
Seems like being able to selection multiple subcategories to create a Spending Plan items should be a feature in QS.
E.g. I have
Auto and Transport
- Fuel
- Repairs
- Registration
- Public Trans (i use trains and buses)
- Rideshares
- Parking
Right now, I cannot Select Fuel, Public Trans, Parking and Rideshares into one Monthly Expense. While I'd want Repairs and Registration in separate Expenses with rollovers AND keep them all under the main category of Auto and Transport.
Here is the feature that asks for multiple categories. Give it a vote!
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