Quicken Simplifi: Budget Smart

The developer team is bringing this app around nicely! This has become my main finance app - I shut down my Mint account after years of use. I really like the concept of a spending plan instead of getting bogged down in multiple categories. This approach holds you accountable while providing the flexibility to manage finances “as you go”. No need to sweat moving 10 bucks from one category to another because you overspent in one and underspent in another. The way they do it here yields the same supervision of finances but in a much more efficient manner. Wish there was an iPad app - the web app is cumbersome and still prone to crashing, especially in the reports. The iPhone app works great however, and I just noticed notification on income deposits- that’s great! Please add manual import of AppleCard statements directly from the wallet, like the way CoPilot does it, which works really well. AppleCard supports now multiple export formats.

I recently found out that the computer based Quicken was more than my old MacBook could take. So I was left to either spend $$$$ on a new one or try out a web based tool like Simplifi. I tried Mint and multiple other tools and just did not like them. I needed something that would show me how my expenses will affect my overall balance and that would give me a good view of the month or months ahead. Then I tried Simplifi. And, for the most part, it is a perfect tool. It has so much financial planning packed in it - it really makes an impact on how I plan my spending. Not much more to say other than give this app a try. Oh, the web based experience is really what makes this work. You will love it.

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Honestly it’s missing some of the basics and it has been out for a while. This app is great for budgeting by categories, but it goes no further. You cannot see cash flow, you cannot see a P&L report, you cannot export any of the reports (which is honestly important and needed for accountants). The cash flow is useful so you can see a quick breakout of all your expenses vs income and the net income. For the reports that are there you can’t click on it to view the data broken down at a quick glance. You’re relying that you categorized it correctly to begin with. Dashboard doesn’t let you view cash flow which is worthless. Having to push the back button multiple times to get back to the dashboard is obnoxious. No dark mode. App can only pull 4-5 months prior when syncing for the first time. Yet there is no way to import financial statements to fill in the missing months. So when you start this app you cannot see a full annual account report. Etc. If you just care to monitor your budget only you’re better off using something like spendee, wallet or that envelope app. This is not worth $40 annual. For that sum I expect a fully usable personal finance app.

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What a waste of time, I was excited to download a new app from Quicken a company I used to love. In the old days it was all about simple easy accounting software but now it’s all about complicated worthless information. It seems like the app spends all its time predicting the future and not telling us the past! I want to know what I spent for tax purposes and for my knowledge not to have a machine tell me the future. So now I want to cancel and I wasted time trying to find where to cancel? How do I cancel? Someone please tell me?. Years ago, yes I’m that old when Quicken really cared about their customers they developed great simple software, sold it to us and it kept our records, now this new quicken company wants to harvest our info, sell it to marketers, predicts our future spending and keep us confused about our current numbers and recharge us every year for the same software. All I need is simple record keeping software. Why is that so difficult to produce Quicken you did it in the past?

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This app has a lot of things to love but it still has some bugs to work out. I stopped using quicken awhile back because it was more than I really needed to manage my expenses. This app gives me everything I want from seeing my spending plan for the month, to tracking savings goals, to analyzing spending and tracking regular bills, without the extra clutter that quicken has. The bugs I’ve experienced are mainly around the savings goals. Adding or taking money out of the savings goals doesn’t always work and I’ve also seen it show an incorrect balance in the savings account summary screen on the account I added the money from. We should also be given the option to either show the savings contributions in the balance of the account summary or not. And there definitely needs to be an option to set up an automatic savings contribution to the goals that is also captured in your spending plan. The investment tracking doesn’t offer much other than adding in your investments for net worth tracking. It would be nice to see some analysis on the mix of investments and set target assets to monitor against what you actually have. Overall I’m very optimistic about Simplifi and will continue using with the hope that they work out the bugs and add the enhancements that I’ve noted.