Overview
With Quicken Simplifi's Spending Plan, you can easily track and budget your spending in real-time and see exactly how much you have left to spend!
You can access your Spending Plan hover over the left-hand panel and click on Spending Plan.
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 Spending in the same category.
For more information on how Quicken Simplifi handles planned spending versus recurring spending, click here.
How does it work?
The Spending Plan is a simple budget that accounts for your monthly bills, income, Savings Goal contributions, and other planned expenses, while also tracking any additional spending throughout the month.
Note: The Spending Plan focuses on the current month's transactions, ignoring existing account balances.
The Spending Plan divides your monthly spending budget into six 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.
Locate the Excluded this month section and click the three dots to the right of it.
Select Automatically include.
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 spending, 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 the income amount by clicking the three-dot icon to the right of the Included This Month section and selecting Set Custom.
You can edit a recurring income transaction series within your Spending Plan. You can do this by:
Click the three-dot icon next to the transaction reminder amount.
Click View Series.
Select Options.
Select Edit Series
For more information on how to manage your recurring transactions, click here!
If you need to edit or delete one of the transactions listed in a group, click the three dots to the right of the transaction amount, and choose the appropriate option.
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 a specific group by clicking the three dot icon to the right of the total and selecting Set Custom.
To edit, delete, or link a recurring transaction to another transaction, click the three-dot icon next to the transaction amount and choose the appropriate option.
You can edit a recurring expense transaction series within your Spending Plan. You can do this by:
Click the three-dot icon next to the transaction reminder amount.
Click View Series.
Select Options.
Select Edit Series.
To create a new recurring bill reminder, go to the Bills section of the Spending Plan and click the +Bills button on the right side of the screen.
For more information on how to manage your recurring transactions, click here!
Planned Spending
With the Planned spending 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 used once in the Planned Spending section. Adding a category or subcategory of an already-used top-level category—whether for a monthly or one-time expense—will not work.
Once you believe you've finished spending in a category for the month, you can release the remaining funds back to your available funds by clicking the three-dot icon in the upper right of the expense and selecting Release Available for Spending.
You can also enable auto-release for Planned Spending. This feature automatically releases any unused funds from all Planned Spending categories—except those with rollover enabled—on the last day of each month.
For more information on Planned Spending Expenses versus Recurring Expenses, click 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 have spent to date in each Category.
You can move the colorful Category bubbles around as you like, and they also expand when clicked on to display all of the transactions for that Category.
Note: The Other Spending bubbles show only your top spending categories for the month. Any additional items will appear under the 'Other' bubble.
Goals
This sections displays any Saving Goal that you're including in your Spending Plan.
You can also create a new Savings Goal by clicking the +Goal button in the upper-right corner of the section.
For more information on how Saving Goals work with your Spending Plan, 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.
Projected Spend
Quicken Simplifi lets you manage your Spending Plan up to 12 months ahead, showing Recurring Income, Bills, Subscriptions, Transfers, Savings Goals, and Planned Spending, with the option to add new items easily.
When it comes to projecting your Other Spending 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 Spending?
Why am I not seeing a transaction in Planned Spending?
If you're missing a transaction in Planned Spending, 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 Spending expense of the same Category. Learn more here!
Can I customize the Columns in my Spending Plan Transaction Activity?
Can I customize the Columns in my Spending Plan Transaction Activity?
At this time, the ability to customize Columns in the Transaction Activity registers of the Spending Plan is not available, including the 'Reviewed' Column.
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 easy! You can exclude them directly or anywhere transactions appear. Quicken Simplifi also auto-detects and excludes Transfers to save you time. 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 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 set up 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 excluded" mean?
What does "Including excluded" mean?
When viewing your Bills and Subscriptions in Quicken Simplifi, you may see an "including excluded" total. This indicates that some Recurring items, such as a Recurring Credit Card Payment, are excluded from the Spending Plan. These items will appear grayed out in the Spending Plan, and the "including excluded" total will show your overall total, including 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!
If you have early access enabled, you will be able to contribute to your Savings Goals in previous closed months. To learn how to enable early access on your account, click 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 Spending funds?
How do I release unused Planned Spending funds?
When resolving outstanding items in the Spending Plan, you may see that you need to release unused Planned Spending funds. This means that you had leftover funds in at least one Planned Spending 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 Mobile App, please click here!