Quicken Simplifi: Budget Smart Ratings and Reviews

Update showing excluded transactions is so annoying!!

The latest update has been driving me nuts. To hide an item from reports or spending plan you have to scroll around until you find the right arrow to expand, previously the options were just showing. But what’s really leaning of the verge of being unusable is no longer removing items in the spending plan that you exclude. Based on their FAQs this is intentional but why?! It’s just noise, I don’t want to see what I’ve chosen to ignore. I get wanting to make it easier to find excluded items to change but there is no options to hide them (like there is in income, just do that in the spending plan too!) and it doesn’t group it at the bottom which would at least get them out of the way. Instead they are just hanging out there to have to scroll through and confuse you (the little gray eyeball is there but I still want to filter out). Really makes it way less usable. Other things- connections to banks don’t consistently work, it’s missing some flexibility like splitting an item and ignoring only part of this split. And you have to open and close the app at least twice for it to fully (very slowly) update, and I know when it’s worked because I’ll get batched email notifications that are obviously playing catch-up. Overall it’s a pretty good app but those little things start to add up and make it frustrating to use. I will continue to use it but I don’t recommend it to other people, fwiw

Super frustrating

I love this app. I am not a zero-based budgeter at this phase in my life, and that’s why this app is so stellar. It allows you to prioritize the things you need, prepare for certain things that may come up in the month and then still have a lump sum leftover that’s flexible for whatever your life turns out to be that month.

It’s just so frustrating to use, and I’m holding out hope the developers will really put in the elbow grease to make it run smoothly. Debt payments on cards that are carrying balances (on a debt payoff journey) are not intuitive to the app, you have to work against it to make sure they don’t just count it as a transfer and not money “lost” to a debt balance. Your current balance seems to never reflect what’s actually reflecting in your bank statement, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why this is. It always seems like my available to spend does not line up at the end of the month with how much money I still have in my account. I feel like I am constantly making workarounds to get the best accuracy possible.

Truthfully, this review should probably be a 3 star but I just love the concept of the app and it’s function to see the future, make “buckets” and not force you to do zero-based budgeting like so many others. Also, it’s account integration is heads and shoulders above a lot of other apps I’ve used - it tracks all kinds of accounts for you. I really hope it gets improved soon!

Developer Response ,

Thank you for your review and honest feedback! We actually released a new version of Simplifi this week which not only comes with significant speed improvements, but hopefully helps eliminate the need for some of those manual workarounds.

Those are great call-outs regarding debt payments too — I'll bring it to the product team to see what can be done. If you haven't yet, also consider contacting the support team through the in-app Help Center as they might also be able to fix that experience for you. — Jonas @Simplifi

I thought I had no money but now I know for sure

I was obsessed with Simplifi for a few days when I started with it. It’s a game changer. The features - transactions, watch list, reports, savings goals, and spending plan - especially the spending plan - are intuitive. All the ways I would think I’d want to understand my money are all here. It’s not 5 stars because it’s got a lot of little quirks that I think mostly come from the complicated nature of tracking money from various accounts that all behave differently. They’re so unique that I would need a few paragraphs to adequately explain any one of the examples. I’m hoping Simplifi gets better at handling all the weird situations it finds itself in. Simplifi is quirky but I still really love it. It’s given me a lot of peace knowing how much money I actually have to spend.

Edit: I don’t know any money tracking app with similarly useful features as Simplifi, so there is no replacement. But the mobile app has been so hard for me to use lately. Categories and tags and planned spending budgets are missing. The way pending transactions work sometimes is clunky and it throws balances off. Spending from a savings goal is awkward. I’m going to uninstall and reinstall to see if that helps.

Lots of editing

This is the second year I’m using this app and since then I’ve have not seen much change. I don’t have many issues linking my accounts. The transactions are fairly accurate. The one constant problem is that you have to do a lot of editing which makes the stats and numbers inaccurate. I don’t know if there’s a certain amount of bills you can have in the app but it’s definitely not showing up on a month to month basis. If I pay a bill early i expected it to roll over the next month but some don’t even roll over it just a disappears under the spending plan. The recurring series I have set up with subscriptions and bills and transfers are all there but almost half never show up on the spending plan. I guess there’s a limit on how many recurring series can be categorized as a bill as I set up 8+ series as bills every month and it’s always missing a few each month. So with that you have to spend time making sure you paid each bill or subscription and half the time you have to link the transaction because it’s being ignored. Also a lot of transfers are also ignored which always has you making more adjustments.
Overall a 3 star app but it would be best if one didn’t have to spend time making adjustments because of ignored or hidden transactions that could fall under a bill or subscription. It’s too inaccurate

Bank is now connected!

I was ready to leave Mint, decided to go to Quicken Simplifi. Then I found my bank was not connected! I sent the bank login URL to Quicken as suggested, first time it did not find my institution. That was weeks ago. Well discouraged as I was with trials of FaithFi (would log in to bank, but not import transactions from my institution), Ramsey Easy Money (no way to filter transactions by account), Empower and Monarch (would not find my bank), and the disappointments with PocketGuard, You-Need-A-Budget, and Nerd Wallet, I have now settled on Quicken Simplifi. I like - Manual as well as online accounts - customizable categories - ability to rename accounts - It’s fast to update, too. - Works okay iPad if you can stand to forced portrait view. I may update my review to 5 Star later, but for now, I am just a little disappointed in the reports function, but expect that to get better as I learn to negotiate and customize a little better. This is a good replacement for Mint, and, while there are some things about Mint I am sure I will miss, there are some things about Simplifi that I like lots better.

Developer Response ,

Thanks for sharing. Look for even more functionality in our reports soon!

Best finance app ever

I’ve never been good at budgeting. In fact I pushed myself to make more and more money in my career so that I didn’t have to learn to budget. Then I realized my wellbeing isn’t for sale and changed to a job that pays a reasonable amount for a normal amount of hours. At that point I had multiple properties, mortgages, auto loans, rental income….. but I had NO IDEA how to manage my money on a daily basis. I did a TON of research on apps and websites that could help me and landed on Simplifi. I’m so glad I did. It’s made it so easy to see what’s coming in and what’s going out, set budgets for regular categories, and savings goals for large expenses. I love that almost every single company that I have accounts with can automatically sync- credit cards, bank accounts, mortgages, auto loans, retirement accounts, brokerage accounts, even utility accounts! I am not overstating things when I say that Simplifi gives me the peace of mind I need to not stress about money. (It’s worth noting nobody is paying me to say this, though if they wanted to I’d happily take it 😆). Just do it. Spend the money and give yourself some much needed control over your financial life.

Why?

I’ve tried really hard to like this app. It has a lot of potential and could someday be the premier app. First, it does not try to get you open credit card accounts or sign up for investment accounts or save money on car insurance. It is focused on your finances and budgeting. They are fairly responsive and will work with you to fix issues, it may take an extended period, but they will work with you. What’s holding it back? Glad you asked. First, connectivity. Every week, sometimes multiple days you will see messages that you have to fix connections to financial institutions. It is painful. The app doesn’t fix the connections in the background. You have to sit there and take it like a champ. Second, it does not support property accounts. Simplifi’s sister company has full integration with Zillow and will show you estimates of your property value to help calculate your net worth. Not here! If there is a change in property value, you’ll have to delete and set up your account again. Third, there is no native support for iPad. It claims to work on iPad until you use landscape orientation. Watch out for the crick in the neck.

3/3/22
Took this down a star because there are no reports to see how you are doing over time. For example, the most basic of charts, net worth is missing.

Best budgeting app out there but for one major flaw

This app is fantastic. I’ve used Dave Ramsey’s envelope system with all cash, graduated to EveryDollar, dabbled in Mint and settled with YNAB over the past 12 years before reading about Simplifi in Wirecutter. Started using four months ago and is hands-down the best app I’ve used for budgeting and money management. Easily saved me hundreds in first few months by getting me back on the money-management wagon. There are loads of unique features which make it a cut above the rest.

A few weeks ago, arguably the best feature of the App, the Spending Plan, just stopped working correctly for a day or so. Annoying, but not the end of the world. Well, three weeks later, the bug has returned and the Spending Plan has been out of sync and offline for the past four days…right at the end of the month when money needs the most active managing. Needless to say, this is a criticism issue that needs to be addressed. I’m hoping the developer gets this fixed ASAP and this does not become a recurring error.

Hoping for the best, but expectations have officially been lowered.

Best Personal Finance App Online

I’ve been using Simplifi for about a year and a half now and can say that it’s the best personal finance app currently available online (and I think I’ve tested them all). It’s bank connect feature saves a huge amount of time but if your bank isn’t supported yet you can still manually upload your transactions so it essentially supports every bank and credit card accounts you have. You can track your recurring bills/subscriptions/transfers and what’s really helpful is the Spending Plan which determines your available “to spend” for the month after breaking down your income, recurring bills, planned spending and more. I’ve personally never seen this before in any other app. Since Simplifi is still relatively young you do run into the occasional bug, but the support and developers have been quick to help and seem to be right on top of things. They have many new features still in development (which I’m looking forward to) do the software will continue to get better. I highly recommend giving it a shot!

Glitchy, laggy, and slow

I love the service, accounting system, and website. But this app really needs general UI improvements. If I don’t swipe left or right on a transaction absolutely perfectly straight, the side menus don’t pull up right. Sometimes transactions don’t load right when I'm scrolling through and I have to scroll up and down. Loading icons seem to always be present and it takes forever to load transaction lists. Sometimes the list just jumps around randomly.

Its easier to be patient with features that I use just to check in on finance numbers, but I need to properly categorize transactions with the transaction list so I spend a lot of time scrolling through and swiping things. These glitches mean that I can’t do it on my phone reasonably and I have to put it off until I’m in front of a computer. If I can’t fix transaction categorizations on the phone easily, then none of the finance numbers are up to date and there’s no point to the app even being on my phone. Please stop all work on new features until the app UI is fast and bug free. New features are pointless if I can’t quickly categorize transactions to bring the finances up to date.

Developer Response ,

Thank you for being a customer! Based on your feedback and many others — we did prioritize making the app much faster and more responsive. This week we released a new version that is quicker and resolves any of the bugs; please update the app to ensure you're on the latest version! — Jonas @Simplifi