Can anyone experienced with YNAB explain something please

[Nearlychristmas123]

I’ve recently discovered YNAB and am loving it. Have watched lots of YouTube videos and seem to be getting the hang of it. BUT, one thing I don’t understand is the following . . .

if I have assigned money to a bill - say £100 for car insurance. How does YNAB know when they payment has come out? I have it linked to my bank account but will it know what is for car insurance, what is for Amazon music etc… or do I have to manually update that the specific payment has been made ready to reassign money to it?

I've used it for years but not linked to my account.

I go online banking everyday, screenshot what has been taken then go through and clear on YNAB. once they're done o reconcile.

Does that help? If not I can try again!

I had YNAB but it’s not linked to my bank accounts. However I I put the payment on the account it’s come out of and then it’s to do with the category the payment is assigned to in your budget. If you don’t assign a category the payment should appear with a coloured line around it (I think yellow…). If the automatic update doesn’t recognise the category I reckon you have to update manually.

Thank you both - that’s helped me to figure it out

Ynab changed my life! Stick with it

I'm not sure if this is allowed at all but does anyone have a referral code they wanted to give me? It gives you one free month and me one free month? I love it but it's a lot £90 a year or £12.99 a month

Sorry no, I bought it when it was a computer download.
However it will save you the money it costs in the first few months

You'll have to manually assign it to the correct category when it comes out. If it's regular - it seems to learn that that specific payee name relates to which line in your budget, or if it's a regular DD it learns. But if it's a one-off yearly payment, it will need manually assigning when it shows up in your reconcile list.

I don't think there is a code? It's just free for 34 days then pay.

I just paid in the end as I felt it was worth it

You either put the transaction in yourself, saying £100 to Direct Line (or whatever) You can then set this up to repeat yearly, monthly, etc.

Or you can just wait for it to be imported from your bank. When it imports for the first time it will ask you to pick a category. Then in future if it sees a transaction from that payee, it will automatically select the same category. That's fine if it's McDonalds or something but if it's Tesco, then it might be food shopping / clothes / kids' toys - you just have to adjust manually in that case.

Referral links only work if you haven't signed up for a trial yet but just in case you can use mine.

ynab.com/referral/?ref=soiKTevMASnp4xke

It is expensive, but it's the only option that does everything I want and it honestly does save us more than it costs. I have no idea how but it does. We were on a fairly low income when we started as well. DH is earning more now so we are more comfortable to the point that the cost is not so painful, but it was worth it even when the yearly cost was out of reach (I paid monthly for about 5 months until saving up the total).

It also helped me see money as a resource rather than an emotional thing, which is absolutely priceless.

Thanks so much for the replies. I got about 25 transactions come up on the app today, from over the past week Xmas shopping etc. it’s messed with my balance and categories and a bit overwhelming. It on the other hand I’ve seen so many people say stick with it so it must be good in the long run

I think linking it to bank account would confuse me.

Like a PP said - a transaction on Amazon might be gift/dog food/air fryer or toilet roll. I'd have to manually assign it anyway.

Linking it to bank accounts is very useful one and massively speeds up reconciling.

TBH I found importing overwhelming to begin with. I find it is better to have it not linked initially while you're learning the software. I started it before they added linking for EU/UK and used it for about 12/18 months without. I tried to remember to add transactions as they happened but when I forgot I just tried to catch up every few days anyway. It was such a novelty at first that I never waited very long because I wanted to have something to do on it! Not like today when I had to spend an hour this morning sorting out 2.5 months' worth of ignored transactions (oops!!)

If you have a laptop or tablet, the website is the easiest way to fiddle around with the budget and reconcile.

I would go back to manual entry until you're used to it. Then if you want to try linking bank details, make sure it's up to date and then add them on so that transactions come through one at a time. When I first added DH's bank, there was a month's worth of unentered transactions to import and it was really confusing.

You were probably just unlucky with timing - unusually high number of pre-Christmas transactions plus multiple bank holidays meaning they all got saved up and dumped on you at once.

If it was too confusing you can always do a fresh start and start again.

You have two areas for assigning. Your budget is the first - you set your categories. Some people like really broad categories like 'bills' 'groceries'. Others like slightly narrower categories such as 'utilities' 'household goods' 'insurances'. I personally am a control freak, so I like a category for each direct debit, household goods, admin/stationary, car repairs, etc.

Then, in your accounts section, each transaction needs to be assigned to a category in your budget.

If you put £100 in your budget under groceries, then when you spend £67 at Tesco and assign the spending to groceries, it will deduct the £67 off your budget and your grocery budget will only be £33.

In that situation, I go back until the last point that I reconciled, then match the transactions 1 by 1. It's often that the shop is 'Londis' but the bank account says 'YMS trading LTD', so YNAB didn't know it was the same transaction and it's duplicated.

It's so much easier if you can spend 5-10 minutes each day reconciling your account, so you only have a few transactions to deal with at a time.