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 panel on the left and selecting Spending Plan.
Things to note:
Deleting a recurring item from the Spending Plan will delete that item as a whole 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 and Income 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 four parts:
Income after bills & saving: what's left after subtracting your bills, subscriptions, transfers, and savings contributions from your monthly income, both received and expected.
Quicken Simplifi uses the Recurring Transactions and Savings Goals you have provided to determine the totals.
Planned spending: covers your variable expenses like gas, groceries, and one-time monthly costs.
Other spending: real-time total of your remaining monthly expenses, updated with each financial activity in Quicken Simplifi.
Available: what's left after subtracting Planned Spending and Other Spending from Income after bills and savings.
Each section (except Available) can be expanded to show what transactions are included and easily edit any transaction displayed in your Spending Plan!
Income after Bills and Saving
View how Quicken Simplifi calculates your Income after bills and savings by selecting any of the five budget areas. These expandable lists let you view and edit items in each group.
Income: includes all the sources of income set as Recurring Income, like paychecks, and updates with any additional deposits throughout the month.
Bills: includes expenses you have set as Recurring Bills, like utilities and mortgage or rent.
Subscriptions: includes expenses that you have set up as Recurring Subscriptions, such as memberships, streaming services, and other non-essential bills.
Transfers and Credit Card Payments: includes all the expenses you have set up as Recurring Transfers, such as Credit Card Payments and Transfers to other accounts.
Savings Goals: includes any amounts you have set aside to save toward your goals, such as emergencies, weddings, and vacations.
You can view or update any information for each of these areas by clicking on the drop-down arrow to the left of each group. Quicken Simplifi will display a list of the items included within that group.
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. 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.
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 counted once in the Planned Spending section. Trying to add a category or subcategory of a top-level category already in use will fail, whether a monthly or one-time expense.
Once you think you have 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 Spending for auto-release! This feature will automatically release all unused funds for all Planned Spending expenses (except rollover-enabled expenses) on the last day of each month.
For more information on Planned Spending Expenses versus Recurring Expenses, click here!
Other Spending
You can review and manage the rest of your current spending for the month in Other spending. 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 will only display your top areas of spending for the month; any additional items can be found under the "Other" bubble.
Available
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 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!