Simplifi by Quicken Review: A New Money Management App

Simplifi by Quicken aggregates all your personal finances into one tool. It allows you to set up a spending plan, see upcoming bills, set goals, and see all your bank account and loan balances. And since it’s a paid service you’ll get an ad-free experience

It’s a brand-new service and is still working out some of the kinks. But we suspect that as it does, it’ll do what all Quicken products do, and become one of the leaders in the space.

What is Simplifi by Quicken?

Simplifi is a mobile and web app serving as a financial aggregator and money management platform. If you’re familiar with apps like Mint and Personal Capital, you already have an idea what Simplifi does. It assembles all your financial accounts on the app, giving you a 360° view of your entire financial picture in one place.

It might be tempting to dismiss Simplifi as just another financial aggregator but it’s important to recognize it’s a Quicken product.

The company has been in business for over 30 years and is one of the most well-recognized names in the financial services industry. While the Quicken product has been around for that long, Quicken itself was sold to H.I.G. Capital in 2016. Intuit no longer operates Quicken and Simplifi by Quicken is not affiliated with Intuit.

The app lets you set up your own categories, financial limits, watch lists, and spending plan, all in customized formats. And since it’s a paid service, you won’t be pestered by a blizzard of ads popping up on your app and distracting you from your primary purpose.

Simplifi has a rating of 3.5 stars out of five by nearly 100 users on Google Play, and 4.3 out of five stars by 140 users on The App Store.

How Simplifi by Quicken Works

Simplifi is available in both the web version and mobile app. It offers the following capabilities:

Organize your money: You can automatically connect with financial accounts at more than 14,000 institutions.

By adding those accounts on the platform, you’ll be able to know exactly what your financial situation is at any point in time. This will help you to identify patterns in income, spending, and net worth.

Track spending and budgeting: You can create a simple budget to better manage your income and your expenses and to make sure you’re not spending more than you earn. The service also enables you to categorize your spending and to monitor it on an ongoing basis.

Set and accomplish personal management goals: You can set goals for specific purposes, like retirement, saving for the down payment on a house, saving for an upcoming vacation, or even saving for your wedding. You can set your goal, and Simplifi will help you accomplish it.

Get insights on spending and savings. By having all your cash flows – income and expenses – assembled on one platform, you’ll be able to determine where your money’s going. With that information, you’ll be able to make changes that will help you to redirect funds to finance your goals.

Family Sharing. The mobile app can be used by up to six family members when Family Sharing is set up.

Simplifi by Quicken Features

Availabilty: US-based consumers only. You can also link only US-based financial institutions. The app is not available to non-US residents and cannot accommodate non-US financial accounts.

Simplifi Dashboard: You can customize your dashboard to meet your own personal preferences. But you’ll start out with a default titles that will help you to organize your finances:

1. Account List (Net Worth)
2. Spending Plan – breaks down spendable income, bills and subscriptions, with money available for discretionary spending.
3. You Have Sent (in the last few days)
4. Upcoming
5. Top Spending Categories in the Last 30 Days
6. Spending Watchlists (you can create multiple spending watch lists and all are accessible from the Dashboard view)
7. Spending Over Time
8. Income by Month

Projected Balances Tool: One of the most valuable tools offered by the platform, it provides you with a visual representation of your estimated balance over the next 30 days. Projected Balances are estimated using your recurring transactions, and will give you the ability to know what your account balances will be ahead of time.

Customer support: No phone, live chat or email contact indicated. But the platform does offer a comprehensive Help Center with articles and resources to address your concerns.

Mobile app: The Simplifi Mobile App is available on Google Play for Android devices, 5.0 and up, where it has already been installed by more than 10,000 users. It’s also available at The App Store for iOS devices, 9.0 or later, and is compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

Account security: This is always a concern when you are aggregating all of your financial accounts on one platform. Using the Quicken system, data is securely transmitted from your bank servers using 256-bit encryption. The information is downloaded from your bank accounts and kept completely confidential. It is used only to update your accounts.

Simplifi by Quicken Pricing and Fees

First, you can try Simplifi completely free for the first 30 days. Take a trial run, and if you like it, you can sign up for the service using two options. You can either choose the monthly plan, at $5.99 per month, or pay annually at a flat $47.99 ($3.99 per month).

If you sign up for the annual plan, you’ll save $23.89 per year over the monthly plan.

Please be aware that Simplifi is a separate Quicken product, and subscribing to it does not automatically provide the services of Quicken itself or any other product offered by the company.

Similarly, membership in Quicken doesn’t automatically entitle you to a Simplifi subscription. In fact, the two services aren’t even compatible!

How to Sign Up with Simplifi by Quicken

To sign up for Simplifi you must be a US citizen or resident and be willing to put your credit card on file. The service is currently unavailable to non-US residents. And as a financial aggregator, you will also be limited to US-based financial institutions too.

You can sign up for the service using the following steps:

1. Sign up at simplifimoney.com, then click “Start Free Trial”.
2. Select your preferred plan.
3. If you have previously created a Quicken ID, you can sign in using that ID and password. If you haven’t, you can create one by entering your email address, mobile phone number, and creating a unique password, then click “Create”.
4. Enter your billing details and click “Subscribe”.
5. After your order has been processed, click “Let’s Get Started”.

If you don’t put a credit card on file, Quicken won’t let you use the 30-day free trial.

Simplifi vs. Quicken

Are you wondering what’s the difference between Simplifi by Quicken and Quicken itself, you’re not alone.

The key difference is that Simplifi by Quicken is meant to be an app for basic financial tracking and budgeting whereas Quicken is meant to be a more comprehensive software tool. Quicken is a full featured desktop software package – which is best designed for folks with more complex financial situations.

If you are managing an investment portfolio on top of balancing a budget and setting savings goals, Quicken may be better. If you have a complex tax situation, Quicken may be be better at handling that too.

If you have a simpler financial situation that can be easily summed up in an app, perhaps Simplifi is a better fit. This is reflected in the cost too – Simplifi is a bit cheaper than Quicken.

The two are similar but there are some edge cases where one shines over the other.

Simplifi by Quicken Pros & Cons

Pros:

• Though it’s a new product, Simplifi is offered by Quicken, one of the most respected companies in the financial services industry.
• Assemble your entire financial life on one platform – bank accounts, loans, credit cards, and even investments.
• There are no ads appearing in the app, as is common with free money management and budgeting applications.
• Simplifi lets you customize your financial management. You can create your own categories, spending limits, goals, and watch lists.
• Helps you meet your financial goals by encouraging you along the way and celebrating your successes.

Cons:

• The Simplifi app is brand-new and may yet have a few bugs to work out. But with Quicken as the driving force, you can bet that will happen quickly.
• Simplifi is a paid financial aggregator, in a market that has a few free providers.
• Currently available only to US residents.
• Simplifi cannot read Quicken data and the two are not compatible, you can’t import Quicken data to Simplifi.
• As a new application, Simplifi does not support the ability to import data, but adding that capability is in the works.
• No live customer support.

Much like Quicken, Simplifi by Quicken is not free. If you don’t want to spend money on a budgeting app, check out these free budgeting apps for more ideas.

Simplifi by Quicken Alternatives

Simplifi is not without competitors, and some well-established ones at that.

For example, Mint is a financial aggregator as well, and it’s been popular for many years. Part of that is because the app is available free of charge. Not only does it provide the ability to reduce certain expenses, but it also offers free credit score monitoring.

The main disadvantage with Mint is that as a free app, you will be subject to advertisements.

Here is our full review of Mint if you’d like to learn more.

A somewhat more advanced alternative is Personal Capital.

If you know anything about Personal Capital, it has a strong orientation toward investing – which is exactly what its users are looking for. The company provides a premium Wealth Management service for those with investment portfolios of at least $100,000 to manage. But they offer a free version that provides aggregating your financial accounts, as well as investment tools.

For example, they have a 401(k) fee analyzer that will help you find unnecessary fees in your employer-sponsored retirement plan. However, if you’re looking primarily for an app that will help you better manage your finances, Simplifi does provide more tools and resources to help.

Personal Capital works best for those who are looking for a financial aggregator and at least limited investment assistance, or the ability to get professional investment management for larger portfolios.

Here’s our full review of Personal Capital.

Should You Sign Up for Simplifi by Quicken?

What we like about Simplifi is that it’s more than a simple financial aggregator or even a budgeting tool. It’s a full-on financial management platform, that gives you a complete picture of your financial life in one place. Armed with that information, you can analyze your income and spending patterns, then make allocations to meet chosen financial goals.

It’s the perfect app if you’re looking to get total control of your finances from every direction.

What Simplifi won’t do – at least not yet – is provide investment guidance, or some of the other bells and whistles that come with other financial applications, like free credit score monitoring. But then you can always connect your investment accounts, like Betterment or Ally Invest to Simplifi, and use the app to track those balances and activity.

In that way, Simplifi concentrates on doing one thing well – financial management – while you rely on others to provide more specialized services, like investing. As well, it’s generally true that apps that attempt to be an all-in-one service end up instead of being an all-in-none. Specialization does have its virtues!

But it has to be remembered that Simplifi is a new product and one provided by Quicken. For that reason, we can expect good things to come in the future as the app is further developed.

If you’d like to get more information, or you’d like to sign up for the service, visit the Simplifi website.

Simplifi by Quicken

$47.99 per year or $5.99 per month

8

Overall

8.0/10

Strengths

• Created by a highly respected company in the financial space.
• Assemble your entire financial life on one platform.
• No ads
• Highly customizable

Weaknesses

• Brand new service, so it may have bugs
• Doesn't currently import information
• Is not free

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