YNAB support thread (2)

[HouseofHolbein]

Just a continuation of the previous one before it fills up!

We don't get paid until 25th and 27th but June is looking pretty healthy so far!

We get a £500 additional income on about 10th of each month. Normally that gets frittered away but this time I've used it to forward fund into July.

We also had a large refund on the credit card which stumped me for a while as we'd already paid the credit card off between buying the item and then getting a refund. This meant that my category for that item was massively overfunded (I'd allocated it back to the original category) but if I tired to move it out of that category it turned orange!

All the videos I watched about credit card refunds centred around getting the refund before you'd paid off the balance. In the end I decided to re-allocate the refund to Ready to Assign (ie treat it as a statement credit) and have used that to fund into July as well!

Woohoo July is now fully funded my savings pots are topped up and I have a bit of spare cash for end of year treats 😊 onto August from next money in 👍

Wow @HouseofHolbein that's impressive! I've got some of July funded but not all - rest will get done with payday.

I currently get paid 4 weekly which is why I like YNAB because it helps me budget monthly if that makes sense. It's also given me the cushion to change jobs to something that suits me better and I still have money put to one side to pay for hotels and tickets for gigs etc which is important to me 😊 might take me a bit longer to fully fund August but I have money I can pull out of savings pots that will help in the short term.

Actually because I wasn't sure I'd work my notice I pulled some money out of savings that are for something in just over 2 years time and then given myself a monthly target to achieve them when I need them and I have fully funded August.

Feel better doing it now because potentially my tax is going to be cocked up in the short term so I may end up on a bit less money so at least I don't have to worry and can start gradually filling September.

My brain is fried..please help!

Acc balance on banking app is £15
I'm waiting for a refund of £5.93 to drop which will take that balance to £20.93.

Acc balance on ynab (left hand panel under account list) is £15 so matches bank balance. (I havent added the refund to it yet as not received.)

Acc balance on main budget (main part of page where all categories are) is £20.93.

So the £5.93 has already been allocated to a category but the money isn't in yet.

If I add the £5.93 payment with today's date, I then have ANOTHER £5.93 to allocate. Which isn't right.

How do I remove £5.93 from my category list without it affecting the account balance?

I know it's something straightforward but I just can't see it. Thank you.

Can you find where it's been allocated into and remove that without impacting it? Has it actually come into a different account meaning you need to do an account transfer? I don't actually know the answer but these might be worth looking at.

@AddictedtoCrunchies Has the £5.93 original payment come out? Is that somewhere in the account screen? I would look for this.

Or is it a partial refund e.g. transaction was for £30 and £5.93 of that £30 will be refunded?

However I do think what you're seeing here is a side effect of having your categories grouped by bank account - this does confuse things slightly.

Usually when you get a refund, the refund will come back into the category.

So for example if it was an amazon purchase of household items, you'd have this scenario.

Account balance: £45
Category "household" balance £30

Make purchase of £30 at amazon, category "household".

Account balance is now £15, household category balance £0

Refund gets applied - this shows up as a transaction for "inflow" £5.63 - payee amazon, category "household".

(NB, if you have had another transaction in the meantime at amazon perhaps for "books" - it will automatically categorise this one as "books" too and you'll need to change manually).

Account balance should now be £20.63, Household category balance should be £5.63 - which you can move to another category if needed.

If this hasn't happened, maybe it helps to identify where in the process it went wrong?

Thanks both. I'm sure it'd something obvious but I cant see it. Will look again tomorrow.

@BG2015 Yellow means "some attention needed" - most often it's overspending on a credit card, or an underfunded target.

What is the target on the groceries category and what is the target type?

With your transactions not being automatically pulled in, what's happening? Sometimes the Payee is a bit messed up but by correcting it the program generally learns what to correct and what not to. (My annoying exception to this is Google Pay/anything going through Paypal!)

In terms of putting transactions in manually with auto-import on, don't worry, you don't get duplicates as what you do is you select both the manually input

• "Sainsburies / Food Shopping / £142"

and the auto-imported

• "J.S. Sainsbury Store 983 / Select Category / £142.64"

and click the option "Match transactions" and it will link them, update the category and Payee properly but use the amount from the imported transaction.

In fact if you've got the amount exactly right it often does this automatically. If you have estimated the amount, then you'll always need to match them manually.

Ok. Totally newbie question. Do you all have your day to day spending (so groceries, petrol, household etc) set as targets?

I've overspent on my health category. Dd has a bad cold and the cost of the items I bought her meant I went over what was left. I have plenty on the groceries category so covered the overspending from that. This has now turned my groceries category yellow though despite still having more than enough for the rest of the month's food. Is this because I set those categories as a target?

If I remove the target from those categories will YNAB still rollover any money that's left into the category for the next month or does it send it up to RtA?

I don't want any yellow on my budget!

I keep it simple with categories... shopping fuel socialising in my current account. Shopping covers everything really 😊

@HouseofHolbein - but do you have them
Set as targets? Or just general lots with no amount to aim for monthly?

Oh I have a target for each every month. I've had to top up fuel this month due to an extra visit to my mom.

Although I think it's better not to stress about categories being yellow sometimes... it's a true reflection on your budget. You've had to borrow from groceries to pay for health stuff. That's life. It doesn't have to be perfect and green at all times but it may suggest that you need to rethink your budget amounts going forward.

Does that make sense?

@QueenMabby I also have mine as targets, and have come to terms with the yellows! As @HouseofHolbein says, it can be quite useful to see where you're having to move money from and to over time to see if your targets need adjusting.

I definitely need to think about budget amounts this month too

Imho once the category isn't red I'm happy, and if it's often yellow then I need to change something

What do people do when someone gives them cash to transfer to them?

I keep a cash account on-budget, so if I withdraw cash from my current account it knows to put it "into" the cash account. In your situation I would put it as a cash withdrawal from my own account into my cash account and not record the transfer. That way, my overall balance won't have changed but that money will be recorded as being in cash rather than in my account. Although I do mine manually, not automatically. If yours is automatic, can you manually override?

That makes sense because I don't want to add it to their pocket money because it'll skew my reports at year end of how much I gave them.

It's not money laundering by the way!!!

I do mine manually too

Coming towards the end of the month so how is it going? I'm in work at the weekend otherwise I'd ask the question then 🤣🤣

As I said earlier I've reorganised some of my categories to give me an extra months expenses in hand as I am in the process of changing jobs and my wages are going to be a bit unpredictable for the next month or so. I need to top up some spending pots before my next trip away but that'll be fine.

I've actually taken the decision to move to one savings account for all my savings pots and one current account for all my spending and to trust the YNAB information 😱

I do have a separate bills account plus 2 locked in savings accounts but those two aren't included in my categories as I can't access them until march. When I can access them I will stick them in chase and use them to future fund a few months. Does that make sense?

Anyway. It's a relief being able to swop jobs without worrying about money too much. I was even able to get my boychild some concert tickets because he couldn't access the website 😭😭 which he needs to pay me back for... but I could afford it because I have a tickets and hotels category 😁

Have to say I am loving this freedom 😊 wish I'd stuck with it when I used it before instead of deciding I could go it alone. I mean I could but it took much more effort 🤣🤣

Sounds highly organised @HouseofHolbein - hope the job move goes well.

All looking ok here too. We have one current account for all bills and spends and then a separate current account for our "annuals" (YNAB true expenses) and then a couple of savings accounts which have a few "goals" in each.

I was wondering what everyone does for holidays? We have a general "holidays" pot but when we go next month I'd quite like to know how much we spend on food, travel, sightseeing etc. I don't want to set up a load of categories that I then have to hide so was thinking of just spending from my holidays category but then flagging each area a different colour. Would that work? Is there then a way to see the colours grouped together so we can see how much was spent under each colour? Thanks.

@QueenMabby not sure about that! If anyone has a way I would be interested. Currently I transfer my fun money into my current account and categorise everything out of that. Would be interesting to see a breakdown tho... mine would be beer mostly 🤣🤣

I've just spent a bit of time adding up my accounts and moving stuff so my YNAB current and savings accounts match my actual ones. All tidy ready for next month 😁