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 by hovering over the left-hand panel and clicking Spending Plan.
Things to note:
Deleting a recurring item from the Spending Plan will remove it entirely from Quicken Simplifi.
The Spending Plan begins the same month as your Quicken Simplifi subscription start date and is not retroactive.
Your Spending Plan avoids double-counting by assigning transactions linked to Recurring Reminders to the Bills section, rather than Planned Spend 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 a simple budget that accounts for your monthly bills, income, Savings Goal contributions, and other planned expenses, while also tracking additional spending throughout the month.
Note: The Spending Plan focuses on the current month's transactions, excluding existing account balances.
The Spending Plan divides your monthly spending budget into six parts:
Income: Shows the total expected income for the month. Income is calculated using your recurring income transaction series.
By default, non-recurring income is excluded from the Spending Plan. 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-dot menu to its right.
In the menu, click Spending Plan (under Exclude From).
The income now appears under the Included This Month section.
Bills: Displays the total for all recurring bill and subscription transactions.
Planned Spend: Covers your variable expenses, such as 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.
Left This Month: Shows how much you have left to spend after subtracting your planned spend items, 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 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 Amount.
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 managing your recurring transactions, click here.
If you need to edit or delete one of the transactions listed in a group, click the three-dot menu 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 information on how to include them in your Spending Plan.
You can adjust the amount for a specific group by clicking the three-dot menu to the right of the total and selecting Set Custom Amount.
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 managing 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 costs you plan to incur that month, such as birthdays.
Note: A top-level category can only be used once in the Planned Spend section. Adding a category or subcategory to an already used top-level category, whether for a monthly or one-time expense, will not be available for selection.
Once 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 menu in the upper right of the expense and selecting Release Unspent Funds.
You can also enable auto-release for Planned Spend from the upper three-dot menu. This feature automatically releases any unused funds from all Planned Spend categories, except categories with rollover enabled, on the last day of each month.
For more information on Planned Spend Expenses versus Recurring Expenses, click here!
Other Spend
You can review and manage the remaining spending for the current month in the Other Spend section. This section displays the monthly expenditure for each category.
You can drag category bubbles to rearrange them, and click any bubble to expand it and see all transactions in that category.
Note: The Other Spend bubbles show only the top spending categories for the month. Any additional items will appear under the Other bubble.
Goals
This section displays the Savings Goals included in your Spending Plan.
You can create a new Savings Goal by clicking the +Goal button in the upper-right.
For more information on how Savings 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.
When projecting your Other Spend for future months, you can choose from three options: Don't project, Use a custom amount, or 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 to go to calculate the average (up to 12 months) and also 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, check to see if it has been linked to a Recurring Reminder.
Because Quicken Simplifi is designed to avoid double-counting transactions in the Spending Plan, once a transaction is linked to a Recurring Reminder, it will be included in the Bills and Income sections of the Spending Plan. It will not be counted towards a Planned Spend expense of the same category. Learn more here.
Can I customize columns in my Spending Plan transaction activity?
Can I customize columns in my Spending Plan transaction activity?
Yes, the columns in the Transaction Activity registers of the Spending Plan are customizable with the web version, but not the mobile version. The column width and order can be adjusted in most columns by clicking and dragging the column borders. The Reviewed column cannot be adjusted at this time.
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 gray 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 that you've excluded from the Spending Plan. Although you'll see this item listed in the Spending Plan, it will be grayed out since it is excluded from all Spending Plan calculations.
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 income or expenses, but rather 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 Withdrawals handled in the Spending Plan?
How are Savings Goal Contributions and Withdrawals 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.
Withdrawing funds to use for the Goal will not affect the Spending Plan, since that money has already been set aside for it. Withdrawing for another purpose will remove the withdrawn funds, 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, at least one Recurring Reminder was not linked to a transaction during that month, and it is now showing as 'past' in the Spending Plan. See this Support Article for more details.
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 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. See this Support Article for the steps.
To learn about using the Spending Plan on the Quicken Simplifi Mobile App, please click here!