Leave a Review Quicken Simplifi
Disappointing but few alternatives
I use Simplifi because it’s the only personal finance app and web app I can find that gives you a projected balance based on schedules transactions. I don’t understand why this isn’t built into every personal finance software. Instead most of them fill your screen up with useless ads and pie charts, when all I want know is am I good to go until my next paycheck.
Unfortunately Simplifi is buggy and unresponsive. It also doesn’t sync reliably with USAA. Because who’s ever heard of that bank? It also likes to randomly double what I owe on my mortgage which I manually enter because of course it won’t sync with my mortgage servicer. The app occasionally just freezes. The web app is better but not by much. There is no iPad app so you’re stuck with the web version.
Disappointing and I will jump ship as soon as I can find an alternative that doesn’t involve Excel.Show lessTodd64268
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!Show lessTiffodo
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 @Simplifivery slow and unresponsive
The app is very slow and unresponsive almost like mint. you have to wait awter each tap. seemingly endless loading spinner in the center of the screen very intrusive. no payee name autocomplete. No way to reset name of transaction to the original value AFTER you noticed some strange renaming perforned by app, for ex.: when you want to create the rule for rename but app already renamed transaction into some nonsense an obviously now it can not find any matches and can not retroactively apply just crrated renaming rule. Ineractive brokers import shows zero balance. Very limited options for custom schedule of repeating transactions: for ex. i have a course which i pay for each five lessons and i have two lessons a week. No Spending Plan widget, just useless "available to spend widget" which really sould be zero because you better plan for your spending and better don't have free money. Every dollar needs a job.Show lessAlexander.V.V.
I want to love it
I have been using this app for about a month now and I really like all of the features, design, and simplicity. It has the potential to be an all in one tool and I foresee it being useful for beginner budgeters who want to take control of their finances if it didn’t have so many connection issues like transactions taking forever to appear, causing inaccurate balances. One feature that I wish it had was an option to switch the Spending Plan from a monthly view to a biweekly or fixed period view. If I want to budget biweekly I have to hide transactions from the spending plan to try and get a clearer view. Even then, balances are not correct and I can’t use that feature to its full potential. The app only works for people who budget monthly it seems and I have a better understanding of my finances if I hand write it out every paycheck vs. using the app which is my goal.Show less👎👎😫😫👎👎😫😫👎👎😫😫👎👎
Love it, with one big exception
I love this app, for the most part. It’s the only app that I found that gives a really clear way of (with a little bit of setup) automatically tracking the breakdown between recurring, expenses, income and discretionary money. However, the same glitch has occurred twice since I started using it, and it’s a big one: when I make a credit card payment from my bank, my bank’s balance reflects the change immediately. For some reason Simplifi interprets this balance as *not* including processing transfers and deducts the transfer again from the balance the bank is showing. This primarily happens with credit cards, but there are always a few hours where the cash balance is completely inaccurate. This has been OK for me because I keep fairly good track of my balances, but I can imagine that for someone who is solely relying on this app it could result in a terrifying situation where they think they have less money than they do.Show lesscaveatemptor82
Ok but still has bugs
This app isn’t bad. It’s helped me pay attention to my spending, especially in certain areas. However, on several of my bills it will automatically “remove from report” and sometimes you can’t link it to a transaction. It’s finicky so I definitely don’t trust the amounts it says. It is also hard to tell what is a reminder bill and what is an actual bill. So I have to use a different app to keep track of the bills I need to pay. Also, the savings contributor is awful. It can’t track transactions and if you try to “contribute” after you have already moved the actual funds from you account, it will show insufficient funds and won’t let you contribute that money in the app. My bank does a save as you spend, so with every charge some money goes into my savings but the app can’t track that. A big reason I bought this app was to track my savings so it’s disappointing.
Edit: the bugs caused the app to get so behind with everything that I canceled my subscription and deleted the app. It wasn’t worth all the work I would have to do each month to keep up.Show lessGinger44
Buggy transaction data ruins all benefits
Like many personal finance apps, this one is good in concept until you connect your banks and cards. Then you get all these gibberish transactions that you have to decipher and rename yourself to get the simple spending breakdown categories. I use chase and Amex, not obscure banks even. Yet more than 50% of my transactions landed in uncategorized. Worse, when you check the “always apply this category to transactions like this” it doesn’t seem to go through and retroactively update. Had high hopes for this app because it seemed nice and simple but it’s a ton of manual work for a small amount of insight. Back to using gSheets on my computer which is surprisingly less time consuming to categorize.Show lessbythebay10
This would be a fantastic app if it weren’t so buggy!
The design of the app is fantastic. The features are well thought out. From a design and feature point of view, it is THE BEST financial management app available. And it’s not ready for prime time. I feel like I am paying to be a beta tester. Nearly every day some issue crops up. While their help desk is responsive, I would prefer not to have to contact them! The biggest issue for me is the integration with AMEX credit cards doesn’t work. It’s constantly not updating which requires disconnecting/reconnecting them as a biller. And on the rare occasions when that is working, it incessantly asked for MFA validation. While the features of this app, eg watchlist, recurring transaction planning, refund tracking to name a few are the best available, they need to get MFA “known merchant” working like Mint has and get the bugs fixed.Show lessEks2
Feels like DOS in the wrong century found wanting
The app compared to apps from smaller nimble, less funded companies show how tired quicken once the powerhouse of financials has sunset into the life of being old.
Simplifi compared to quicken s definitely not yet living in the fully staffed nursing home of old tech as it’s brother quicken is but both need a jolt from the fountain of youth.
To use this app, I have to MFA on several accounts each time. Whereas their competitors have addressed this with proper api connections leveraging modern auth methods that require very little expertise to implement by a developer.
They could even use services such as plaid which essentially performs all the middleware, established the relationships, and provides excellent guides for integrating into their service.
To Solve:
Bring billpay to Simplifi
Build an iPad app
Offer a basic app on macOS or allow iPad version to run on m1 macs
Bring app to windows store. It could be a wrapper around edge and some basic hooks into os notifications
Get these basics then start catching up and working on a niche as brand loyalty is not what it was.Show lessWJN78
Does not deliver on its promise
I am a decades-long user of Intuit products (Quicken, QuickBooks, and TurboTax) so when I saw the teaser for Simplifi - 5 minutes a week! - I was in.
Not so much. I was able to link my checking account and investment information, but so far have been unable to link the data from the only two credit cards I use: Apple Card and LLBean, issued by Chase. Given today’s financial world in which credit cards are used for nearly every transaction, this renders Simplifi useless to me.
Yes, there is a ghastly multi-step workaround, in which you download a CSV file, transfer the data to a database template, and then paste (!!!) the data (column by column) into your Simplifi account, but it is hardly Quick or Simple, and not always reliable. (I’ve only been able to incorporate one month of data from one account.)
For me this is an epic FAIL and unfortunately after multiple tries to make it work, I exceeded the free trial period so I am now stuck with this turkey and my only hope is that they get the respective banks to play nicely with their software so I can use it.Show lesssbsatty
