Award-Winning Personal Finance App Simplifi By Quicken Raises the Bar Again
Simplifi by Quicken is the latest personal finance app in the Quicken family. Launched in January, Simplifi has already been named the Best Budgeting App of 2020 by The New York Times Wirecutter and received recognition in Fast Company’s 2020 Innovation by Design awards. But we’re just getting started.
Throughout 2020, we’ve been listening to you, our customers, asking what we can do to help you get the most out of Simplifi. What we heard is that you love seeing everything you need to know about your finances in one place, and you want even more features and insights to help you stay on top of your money.
Specifically, you told us you’d like to get a richer, more in-depth historical perspective on your finances with the ability to import data from other sites. You wanted more tools to help you keep your finances on track, including alerts and notifications you can turn on or off, with the flexibility to choose what you need. And you wanted more help looking ahead, so you can reach your financial goals with confidence.
So we built it—using the same core principles we’ve used for our award-winning app from the beginning: understanding not just what you need but the real-world scenarios in which you’ll use it. That’s how we built a modern personal finance app that’s designed for real life—easy to use, while offering you ultimate control over your money.
Adding to Your Historical Data
Simplifi lets you connect all your financial accounts and downloads your transactions automatically. For many banks, your downloaded data goes back about 3 months. Then, moving forward, Simplifi continues to download your new transactions for you, keeping track of your complete financial picture.
For most customers, that’s all they need. But some of you let us know you wanted to be able to go back even further, seeing more of your historical data than automatic downloading provides. So we added the ability to import data from a .csv file.
Because you asked specifically to import data from Mint, Personal Capital, and Apple Card, we’ve added each of those options, making those imports as smooth as clicking your choice and uploading your file. But we’ve also included a more general option that walks you through the process of uploading any financial CSV file, so you can import historical data from any source you might want to use, like that personal savings account.
Now, Simplifi lets you see all your money—and all your financial history—in one place, going backward in time as far as you like.
Keeping Your Finances on Track
Simplifi customers lead busy lives, turning to the app to help them keep their finances on track. They love how easy it is to check their personalized spending plan to see what they have left to spend. And they love how watchlists help them track the spending they care about without having to watch every dime.
But you told us you wanted even more—asking us to send Notifications and Alerts to let you know when your finances need attention. At the same time, nobody wants reminders they don’t need, so we built those reminders according to our core design principles of control and flexibility, letting you choose the notifications you want from an “a la carte” menu.
We built reminders to let you know about upcoming bills, or even specific bills; notifications about suspicious activity to help you detect fraud; alerts about low balances; and alerts to let you know when you’re getting close to the limits you’ve set for your watchlists.
Because you can choose which ones you want to receive, and because Simplifi by Quicken doesn’t include any advertising, you’ll always know that any alert you get is one you asked for. That cuts down drastically on the chance of accidentally ignoring something that really matters.
Planning for the Future
Last but not least, we’ve heard throughout 2020 that our customers want more help planning for the future. It isn’t enough to know where your money is today. When you’re making financial decisions, you need to know where your money is going to be tomorrow—like how much you’ll have left at the end of the month after you’ve paid your bills and added to your savings.
That’s why we designed Simplifi with a personalized spending plan, so you always know at a glance how much you really have left to spend, not just what’s in your bank account today. To make it even more powerful, we’ve also added the ability to set aside your planned spending, so you can tell the app to make sure you have that money when you need it.
Let’s say your friend invites you on a day trip to wine country, planned for the end of the month. You want to have a certain amount of splurge money available when the time comes. With Planned Spending, Simplifi lets you earmark that amount, setting it aside from your plan so you won’t spend it on other things. As you make small buying decisions throughout the month, Simplifi keeps track of that trip money for you, calculating it into your spending plan automatically.
We’ve also recently introduced enhanced reporting, letting you filter reports by category, payee, tag, account, and more. Want to see how much you’ve spent this year on groceries? Filter your spending report to show you just that category. Want to know how much you’ve spent on Amazon? Filter your spending report by that payee.
We’ve added a monthly summary report that shows your total income and expenses for the month with insights into where you spent the most money outside your regular bills. It also highlights progress on your savings goals, so you can wrap up each month with a report that celebrates your achievements while helping you do even better.
What’s Next for Simplifi by Quicken?
The world is changing faster than ever, and your needs are changing with it. That’s why we have dedicated coaches you can chat with in the app (or even call on the phone) and a dedicated product team constantly rolling out the new tools and features you need most.
Soon you’ll be able to use the new Bill Presentment feature to see “inside” your bills and track their status without having to leave the Simplifi app. You’ll have access to advanced savings goals, and you’ll have even more control over setting up rules for Simplifi to follow. Don’t like the name your bank gives that one gas station? Change it. Don’t like the automatic category Simplifi assigns to that local store? You can change that too.
Better yet, Simplifi will remember those rules moving forward, like a virtual assistant for your finances, remembering your preferences and showing you what you need to know exactly when you need it. With Simplifi, our goal is to make sure you can always see your money your way.
Quicken has made the material on this blog available for informational purposes only. Use of this website constitutes agreement to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Quicken does not offer advisory or brokerage services, does not recommend the purchase or sale of any particular securities or other investments, and does not offer tax advice. For any such advice, please consult a professional.