Overview
The Quicken Simplifi Spending Plan takes the worry out of your monthly spending decisions by keeping track of your finances for you! The Spending Plan will show you at a glance just how much money you have left to spend, updated in real-time.
You can access the Spending Plan from the Dashboard of the Quicken Simplifi Mobile App or via the Menu icon (three lines) in the upper-left corner. To access it from the Dashboard, simply scroll down and tap the Spending Plan tile.
Things to note:
Deleting a recurring item from the Spending Plan will remove it entirely from Quicken Simplifi.
Your Spending Plan starts on the same month that you started your Quicken Simplifi subscription and is not retroactive.
Your Spending Plan avoids double-counting by assigning transactions linked to Recurring Reminders to the Bills section, rather than Planned Spen in the same category.
For more information on how Quicken Simplifi handles Planned Spend versus Recurring expenses, click here.
How Does it Work?
The Spending Plan is designed to be a simple budget based on your monthly expected bills and income (Recurring Transactions) and Savings Goal contributions, in addition to other planned expenses for the month, and it also keeps track of any additional spending that occurs throughout the month.
The Spending Plan uses actual transactions you’ve received or expect to receive for the current month, meaning it does not consider existing account balances.
Note: The Spending Plan avoids double-counting. For example, if a transaction is linked to a Recurring Reminder, it’s counted under Bills and Income—not as a Planned Spend expense in the same category. Learn more here!
The Spending Plan divides your monthly spending budget into four parts:
Income: Shows the total income you expect to have for the month. This is calculated with your recurring income transaction series.
Non-recurring income will be excluded from the Spending Plan by default. If you want to include non-recurring income in your Spending Plan, follow these steps:
Navigate to the Income section of the Spending Plan.
Tap Options at the top.
Select Automatically include each month.
Bills: Displays the total for all your recurring bill and subscription transactions.
Planned Spend: covers your variable expenses like gas, groceries, and one-time monthly costs.
Other Spend: Shows the real-time total of your remaining monthly expenses, updated with each financial activity in Quicken Simplifi.
Goals: Displays any Savings Goals you've included in your Spending Plan.
Click here to learn how to add Savings Goals to your plan!
Left this month: Shows how much you have left to spend after subtracting your planned spend, bills, and other expenses
Each section—except Left This Month—can be expanded to view the included transactions and easily edit any that appear in your Spending Plan.
Income
View all sources of income set as Recurring Income—such as paychecks—along with any additional deposits added throughout the month.
You can adjust your income amount by setting a custom income amount. You can do so by:
While in the Income section of your Spending Plan, tap Options on the top right of the screen.
Tap Set custom amount.
Enter the custom amount and, on the bottom of your screen, tap Update.
You can edit a recurring income transaction series within your Spending Plan. You can do this by:
While in the Income section of your Spending Plan, tap on the reminder you want to edit.
Tap Edit Transaction.
For more information on how to manage your recurring transactions, click here!
Bills
View the total of all your recurring bills—such as your mortgage, rent, or utilities—and subscriptions, like memberships and streaming services, for the current month.
Credit card payments and transfers appear in the Excluded this month section. Click here for more information on how to include them in your Spending Plan.
You can adjust the amount for your Bills section by:
While in the Bills section of your Spending Plan, tap on Options on the top right of the screen.
Tap Set custom amount.
Enter the custom amount and, on the bottom of your screen, tap Update.
To edit, delete, or link a recurring transaction to another transaction simply tap on the recurring bill.
If you need to add a new recurring transaction to your Bills, tap the plus (+) icon on the top right.
For more information on how to manage your recurring transactions, click here!
Planned Spend
With the Planned Spend section, you can budget for your fluctuating month-to-month expenses, such as gas and groceries, or for one-time expenses that you are planning for that month, such as birthdays.
Note: A top-level category can only be counted once in the Planned Spend section. Trying to add a category or subcategory of a top-level category already in use will fail, whether it be a monthly or one-time expense.
Once you think you've spent all you're going to spend for the month in each area, you can release the funds for that expense back to your Available funds by clicking the three dots to the upper right of the expense and selecting Release Available for spending.
You can also enable Planned Spend for auto-release! This feature will automatically release all unused funds for all Planned Spend expenses (except rollover-enabled expenses) on the last day of each month.
To learn about Planned Spend Rollover on the Mobile App, please see here!
Other Spend
You can review and manage the rest of your current spending for the month in Other Spend. This area shows how much you've spent to date in each Category.
When you click on this section, Quicken Simplifi will bring up a graphic display of what you've spent so far that month, shown as a group of colorful Category bubbles. The bubbles can be clicked on to display all transactions for that Category.
Note: The Other Spend bubbles will only display your top areas of spending for the month; any additional items can be found under the "Other" bubble.
Saving Goals
This section displays any Savings Goals that you're including in your Spending Plan.
You can create a new Savings Goal in your Spending Plan by tapping the plus (+) icon in the Savings Goals section.
For more information on Savings Goals, click here!
Left this month
The amount displayed under Available in the bottom left of the Spending Plan is the total amount of money you have left to spend for the month, also broken down into a per-day average and updated in real-time.
Projecting into the Future
Quicken Simplifi lets you manage your Spending Plan up to 12 months ahead, showing Recurring Income, Bills, Subscriptions, Transfers, Savings Goals, and Planned Spend, with the option to add new items easily.
When it comes to projecting your Other Spend for future months, you can choose: Don't project, Use a custom amount, and Use my average spending from the last 'X' completed months.
If you choose to use your average spending, you can tell Quicken Simplifi how far back you'd like to go to calculate the average (up to 12 months), as well as allow yourself a buffer!
Note: New users won't have past data for Quicken Simplifi to project for future months and may need to use Quicken Simplifi for a few months to have an accurate projection.
Frequently Asked Questions
Learn the answers to frequently asked questions for this topic!
Why am I not seeing a transaction in Planned Spend?
Why am I not seeing a transaction in Planned Spend?
If you're missing a transaction in Planned Spend, you'll want to check to see if the transaction has been linked to a Recurring Reminder. Since Quicken Simplifi is designed to not double count transactions in the Spending Plan, once a transaction is linked to a Recurring Reminder, it will be included in the Bills and Income section of the Spending Plan and will not be counted towards a Planned Spend expense of the same Category. Learn more here!
How do I exclude transactions from the Spending Plan?
How do I exclude transactions from the Spending Plan?
Excluding transactions from the Spending Plan is super easy! Not only can you exclude transactions from the Spending Plan directly, as well as anywhere else you see your transactions, Quicken Simplifi is also designed to automatically detect and exclude 'Transfers', meaning less work for you. Find out more here!
How do I exclude an account from the Spending Plan?
How do I exclude an account from the Spending Plan?
You can easily exclude an entire account from the Spending Plan, which will exclude all of the transactions that reside in that account. More details are available here!
Why do I see excluded transactions in the Spending Plan?
Why do I see excluded transactions in the Spending Plan?
While excluded transactions are not included in the calculations, they will still appear in the Transaction Activity of the Spending Plan. Still, Quicken Simplifi will show you which ones are being excluded by graying them out and adding the Excluded icon (a grey eyeball with a line through it) to the left of the amount. That way, you can easily change whether or not to include the specific transaction!
Why are some of my Recurring Transactions grayed out?
Why are some of my Recurring Transactions grayed out?
If you see Recurring Bill, Subscription, Transfer, or Income transactions that are grayed out in the Spending Plan, this means that they are being "excluded" from the Spending Plan. For example, you may have a Recurring Credit Card Payment setup that you've selected to exclude from the Spending Plan -- while you will still see this item listed in the Spending Plan, it will be grayed out since it's being excluded from any Spending Plan calculations.
What does "Including ignored" mean?
What does "Including ignored" mean?
When viewing your Bills and Subscriptions in Quicken Simplifi, you may see an "including ignored" total. This means that you have Recurring items that are being excluded from the Spending Plan, such as a Recurring Credit Card Bill. Although you'll still see these items in the Spending Plan, they'll be grayed out, and you'll see an "including ignored" total telling you your total including all of the excluded items.
How are Credit Card Payments and Transfers handled in the Spending Plan?
How are Credit Card Payments and Transfers handled in the Spending Plan?
Since Credit Card Payments and Transfers aren't considered an income or an expense and are instead a transfer of money from one account to another, Quicken Simplifi automatically excludes them from the Spending Plan. However, you can easily include your Credit Card Payments and Transfers in the Spending Plan by following the steps here!
How are Savings Goal Contributions and Withdraws handled in the Spending Plan?
How are Savings Goal Contributions and Withdraws handled in the Spending Plan?
When you elect to include a Savings Goal in the Spending Plan, the 'monthly contribution' amount will automatically be used. However, if you end up contributing more, the extra amount will also be included. When it comes to withdrawing from a Savings Goal, withdrawing to spend for the Goal will not impact the Spending Plan, as you've already saved this money to spend for your Goal. Withdrawing for another purpose, however, will remove the funds that have been withdrawn up to the standard 'monthly contribution' amount. See more details here!
How do I link or delete 'past' scheduled payments in the Spending Plan?
How do I link or delete 'past' scheduled payments in the Spending Plan?
When resolving outstanding items in the Spending Plan, you may be prompted to link or delete 'past' scheduled payments. When this occurs, it means that you have at least one Recurring Reminder that was not linked to a transaction during that month, and it is now showing as 'past' in the Spending Plan. We have a Support Article available here that goes over how to resolve these items in Quicken Simplifi!
How do I release unused Planned Spend funds?
How do I release unused Planned Spend funds?
When resolving outstanding items in the Spending Plan, you may see that you need to release unused Planned Spend funds. This means that you had leftover funds in at least one Planned Spend expense for that month that can be released to your leftover funds. Our Support Article here has the steps to do so!
To learn about using the Spending Plan on the Quicken Simplifi Web App, please click here!