Spending Plan Redesign: Share your feedback here!

At least one "Other Spending" bubble does not accurately display bills. For example, the "Utilities" bubble includes our electric bill transaction, but not our water and sewer transaction for the month. Neither are "pending" and they are both already posted to the register of transaction. They are both categorized correctly and paid to the same entity.

We are two days in on the implementation of Simplifi and at the point of judging accuracy of the graphic displays, and therefore Simplifi's usefulness to us.

Why is the Utility bubble not displaying our water and sewer transaction as well as the electric transaction?

Goals in the Spending Plan tab show as due at start of Unix time (Jan 1970) when not configured with a target date in the new Spending Plan experince.

I really like the look of it. Especially having the numerical operators on the left hand side illustrate what is happening with the budget nicely. You guys did great!

I second SRC54's comment - "Spend" should be corrected to "Spending"

Things I like

• It's colorful and looks nice

Things I don't like

• I used to be able to go to spending plan and scroll down to see my transfers. Now I have to click spending plan, click bills, click the dropdown and select transfers.
• I can no longer hide one side of the transfer. The positive side of the transfer is greyed out because I have it hidden from the spending plan but it is still tied to and underneath of the negative side of the transfer. I no longer have the option to completely hide those.

For some added context; I have recurring transfers setup for my credit card bills every month with the average amount for them. This allows me to look at the projected cashflow for my bank account and include the average spend on those credit cards to give me a pretty good idea of projected cashflow. When I originally setup simplifi I wasn't able to find another way to do this. If there is a better more preferred way to accomplish this I'm willing to redo my setup. Looking forward to others feedback here as well.

I liked it much better the old way. I don’t like that transfers are included in bills. They aren’t bills. Also can not hide the positive side of the transfer. I preferred subscriptions and bills to be separate but I can deal with that. Please separate transfers. Thanks

I swear that then I first opening the new Spending Plan on my phone for the first time there was an extra section labelled 'Health' which I thought could be useful for me. But when I came back to in on the web, and looking at the phone again, it's gone. Did I imagine this?

Thanks for the update and new design QS team. Below is Evaluated from Desktop

Like:

• General visual design is pleasant
• "Left this month" pie chart is simple, math makes sense
• "Add to Planned Spend" in the Other Spend section (though I haven't given it try yet)
• "Excluded this Month" in the income section and the ability to include (though I haven't given it try yet)

Don't Like:

• For me, a Bill is a necessity, like electricity or health insurance
• For me, a Subscription is something that's nice to have, like Netflix
  • It's good to see the Bills and Subs amounts when planning future cycles (now I have to select in the menu to see the amounts for each)
  • So, I still wish I could see a single Bills/Subscription list, sorted by Type, (Bills then Subscriptions then Transfer) as in prior version.
  • A Suggestion, refine the menu to say "All Bills" (currently All Types, sorted by date, since a bill is a bill) then add "All Bills by Type" (sorted and includes Regular, Subscriptions and Transfers, sorted by date). You can still maintain the 3 menu items to view them separately.

• Minor, but the Bubbles in Other Spend, visually, don't feel like the design of the info graphs from Other Spend or Bills.

Confusing UI:

• After selecting "Subscriptions" from the Spending Plan Bills, the bottom shows an Excluded Bill. I feel it should say Excluded Subscription instead of bill, since I selected Subscriptions and since Bills are separate section. I realize this box can be closed as it's informational, but it was confusing upon first read.

The Spending Plan redesign took the most valuable part of Quicken Simplifi and made it worse. I am not a fan of the redesign.

Let me start off by saying that the Spending Plan is the reason I use Quicken Simplifi. No other budgeting software I have tried has automatically allowed me to setup Bills and Subscriptions and Transfers as their own bucket in the Budget/Spending plan without having to mess with categorizations of transactions to force create Fixed and Flexible buckets. I want my budget to tell me just three main things:

1) what is my Fixed burn rate (i.e. Bills/Subscriptions and Debt Payments/Recurring Transfers that are out-the-door expenses that I've obligated myself to pay each month and either cancelling the payment is impossible without an asset sale of some sort or cancelling/adjusting the payment requires cancelling/adjusting a service I'm signed up for),

2) how much is left to spend after my Fixed burn rate is subtracted from my expected Income, and

3) how much is then left to Save after my expected Planned expenses (e.g. gas, groceries) and "Other Spending" allowances are covered.

I also want my budget to be easy and nice to look at so I don't avoid glancing at it when I'm making purchasing decisions.

The old Spending Plan covered most of my needs. It had a clean and simple design with the totals/what's left numbers being in large font and bolded where appropriate. The numbers were also the primary focus in the desktop version with its top-down design versus the left-right design of the new Spending Plan which makes you focus on the icons and the words first and so the numbers become a secondary feature that you have to train your eye to find on the page. Ultimately I don't like the new aesthetics/layout and thought the old version aesthetics of the Spending Plan to be much better in the desktop app and better focused on the important information, i.e. the numbers.

The old design looked much better on the Mobile version too with the pie chart front and center instead of being squished at the bottom like the new version has it since the left-right buckets are taking up 2/3 of the screen. I'll argue that when you are out shopping and want to quickly glance at how much flexible money do you have left to spend, the pie chart and the "Left this month" number are the only information you need in the moment to make a decision. So this should have front and center attention on the mobile version and the bucket details should go back to having a small focus on the page so you can go dig in if you want but aren't distracted by the clutter if you just need to know "how much do I have left this month and is it enough to splurge on a Starbucks coffee".

I also loved the collapsible sub-categorization of the Income/Bills bucket in the old Spending Plan. You got each sub-category (Bills/Subscription/Transfers/Income) sub-total in big font numbers and you could leave the categories collapsed for normal glancing through without the transaction clutter or if you wanted to dig in you could expand to see the transactions easily. The new Spending Plan destroyed all of this by creating a cluttered mess of a transaction register that is now everything that is a Bill/Subscription/Transfer and tried to pawn off a Filter drop-down as a viable solution to having messed up what was a good thing with the collapsible sub-category view. Also the sub-totals for each sub-category if you do Filter the Bills bucket are in TINY font. The individual transaction number fonts are much bigger than the highly valuable sub-total number. A budget should be simple to use which means total numbers need to be the focus of everything and detail views there as supporting actors for detailed monitoring and troubleshooting.

Now to get into some mechanical changes. Removing Savings from Bills/Income was the right move and will always be the right move. I approve of this entirely. When budgeting, I need to make sure my obligations (fixed expenses) are covered and that I can buy groceries and gas and pet food (Planned spending). After that, I can assess how much I can allocated to Savings versus giving myself free reign as Other spending. So while savings needs to be a priority when managing finances, it is also is one of the most flexible buckets that will ebb and flow as Fixed expenses change month-to-month (e.g. less available for Savings in months where semi-annual insurance bills hit or annual subscriptions like Microsoft 365 hit) or if emergencies happen (e.g. roof replacement). I usually keep my Savings goal automatic monthly allocation to zero and then may set custom amounts each month based on how much is indicated as "Left available" for the month. Or I just have a savings target in mind for the month and aim to keep my "Left available" above that target (e.g. if I want to save $2k then my left available needs to stay above $2k for that month).

Splitting Income and Bills/Subscriptions/Transfers is more controversial to me, and I ultimately do not like it at all. The only thing I think was missing on the old version was a total number on all the expenses sub-categories in the Income/Bills bucket. But you could easily math this yourself by subtracting the "left to spend" number from the Income number. Savings being in the mix in the old spending plan could make this more complicated if you didn't have your savings set to zero. But other than Savings being in the wrong bucket (always needed its own bucket), the old Spending Plan was NOT BROKE. That's my opinion, of course. It is nice seeing the Bills total number emphasized in the new version, but now I have to math the "left to spend" number myself. Which makes cross checking the Planned and Projected Other spending buckets against what is left after Bills a bit more annoying. I'd rather see the old version re-introduced and simply add that "Bills total" number somewhere (like an extra collapsible bucketing around the Bills/Subscriptions/Transfers).

If there's absolutely no going back to combining the Income/Bills buckets in the Spending Plan, then at least go back to the old view's collapsible sub-category bucketing for the Bills. Or add a toggle button so people can have that old view or the new transaction register hell view if they prefer.

Last complaint, there's no quick navigation button in the desktop version that I can find to jump you back to "Today" (i.e. current month) if you are looking forward many months in the Spending Plan. Did confirm the Today button is alive and well in the mobile version, but I don't see it in the desktop version. Would be a helpful add if this is a miss and not just me being blind.

TLDR overview of change requests on the new Spending Plan:

1. Lean back towards the aesthetic of the old desktop version Spending Plan to focus more on numbers and less on unimportant details (i.e. less on words)
2. Revert the mobile version back to the old aesthetic with the focus on the "Left this month" number and pie chart
3. Keep Savings separate and everyone wins (i.e. don't change what you've changed; it's perfect)
4. Lump Income/Bills back together but give Bills an extra collapsible total category that gives Bills total sum
   1. Or show somewhere the calculated "Left to spend" after Bills section expenses so we don't have to manually calculate that ourselves going forward
5. Go back to collapsible sub-categories in the Bills section instead of a filterable register that is horrible to look at and use
6. Add the Today quick navigation jump back to current month button in the desktop version

Edit: We also need a view option in Bills to hide the "Excluded from Spending Plan" side of transfers. I excluded those for a reason and don't want them junking up my Spending Plan views. A button or setting option to hide those would be perfect.

I'm loving the new spending plan interface. My one issue is that the "Available to spend per day" number disappeared from my Spending Plan tile on my dashboard. This was the primary metric I used to make budgeting decisions—would love if it was brought back.