Matthew Excellent. Thanks!

 RIP_MSMoney If all goes well, everyone will have it in the next few weeks! Currently, the running balance is available in the web app only. 

Nicole Hope it comes to mobile too!

Matthew , perfect is the enemy of done.

Matthew Interesting and engaging explanation. Thanks!

Matthew  50 times a few days is 50 few days. Four years is 1,461 days. 

WordTenor Haha I did that mental math too, but I figured if I said anything it'll just be a story of multiplying it by hundreds of new features in the pipeline.

Matthew This answer motivated me to make my very first post.  I'm the CEO of a software company, I get the difficulties in shipping code.  But this situation is clearly and totally a failure by the Product & Eng teams at YNAB to properly ship code.  THE TOOLKIT HAS HAD THIS FEATURE FOR-EVER AND DONE IT WELL AND IT'S OPEN SOURCE, YOU COULD HAVE SIMPLY COPIED THE CODE.  Good grief, you even apparently created a sorting issue that's throwing off all of your initial users.  Clear fail. 

Superbone I don't understand, either. I have fairly solid math fundamentals, or so I thought.  But this is very illogical. I prefer the Toolkit's running balance. It went in order.  This screenshot has outflows in column 1, inflows in column 2, and some unrelated number in column 3, which is supposed to be the running balance. Oldest transactions on bottom.  Assuming the bottom-right number is correct (it's not), the running balance directly above it should read 2645.5 (which is 4845.5-2200), above that should be 2240.08 (which is 2645.5-405.42), and the top right number should read 2890.08 (which is 2240.08 +650).  Right?  Am I crazy?

Ok, sorting by "Balance" makes the numbers work.  But why doesn't sorting by date get the same order?  Logically? 

*Edit* My husband thinks I should add that other people might be interested to know that sorting by date puts the transactions on the same day in order by amount.  My question still stands.  Why should sorting by date and sorting by the balance column be different?

Move Light Sound Life Sorting by balance makes the numbers work because it puts whatever the result of the calculation is in ascending or descending order. It doesn’t mean they’re calculating correctly. 

WordTenor Sigh. My husband just came back over and said the same thing.

Conversation:

Me - "The Toolkit didn't do this - it was in order."

H - "They should just look at the toolkit and see how they did it.  Now the comment about the developers needing time to perfect the feature is more funny."

Y'all...

Hi Superbone !

I'm not sure how the transactions are sorted in the screenshot above, but the running balance reflects how a specific inflow or outflow affected the current balance when it was entered. After searching and/or filtering your transactions, you will want to make sure to select the Balance column - which will reset to the default (and correct!) order. 

Faness The dates are all in order!  That looks nuts!!!

Faness OK, so you're saying it's due to the search? What about when I'm looking at my normal account which defaults to being sorted by date? Do I have to click on the balance column in order to see the running balance in the correct order?

Annieland Superbone The sorting feature in the account register uses multiple factors to sort. For instance, if you click to sort by category and then sort by date, the budget will show transactions by date and sort by category within each date. So clicking to sort by category then by date could yield different results than clicking to sort by payee and then date.

Clicking the balance column returns the transactions to the default transaction order, which is by date and largest inflow to largest outflow.

I know the sorting logic can be a bit confusing, so please don't hesitate to ask any questions that come to mind!

Faness The problem is that your brain expects the running balance to be 

Balance before transaction + transactions = Running balance after transaction

However, the running balance doesn't recalculate if you change the sorting order so it looks like you have utter madness.

monkeyhanger Running balance is only relevant when transactions are in date order. It shouldn't recalculate on the fly, nor should it recalculate if they are filtered.

That said, the sorting order appears correct with nothing filtered... the balances are just out of order inconsistently. If the transactions were reversed, you would expect all of the running balances within a specific date to be out of order the same way for each date, but they are not.

The Running Balance is reversed for the 2 transactions on 9/22 but correctly ordered for the 2 transactions on 10/28. They are reversed for the 2  11/1 transactions.

nolesrule Indeed but the sorting within date order is out of sync on the original sample from Matthew. There's no filtering there. I assumed that was the one that was causing the problem.

Starting balance -500

1st transaction on 09/22/19    -150 => running balance -670

2nd transaction on 09/22/19    -20 => running balance -520

Obviously, the running balance at the end of 09/22/19 is -670 but it looks weird because of the resorting of the transactions. That's all I was trying to explain very badly. Playing around with sorting orders and then putting back into date order doesn't seem to mess with the running balance in the Toolkit.

I wasn't saying it should recalculate, I was saying I could understand why people might think the system was spurting out rubbish.

monkeyhanger I understand your point - it took me a moment to learn this new feature. The logic here is that if the running balance column were to recalculate each time the register was sorted differently, it wouldn't be helpful.

The screenshot above is showing the transactions from largest outflow to inflow - which is the opposite of the default. So, in default order (largest inflow to outflow), it would show as $500, $520, $670, $682, $722, $622, $807, $847, $859.90. The dates with multiple transactions are where the balance doesn't align.

Faness Yes. I get it. I was trying to explain to the people who didn't get it. It turns out that trying to explain things at 02:40 when on heavy painkillers post-surgery might not have been wise. I'll delete the posts I can but I stand by my comments that I'm not sure how useful a feature that requires this much explaining is going to help the people who really need it rather than confusing them.

monkeyhanger Sorry about that - I didn't see your next comment before responding! I understand your concerns here. We haven't yet published the Help Doc for running balance, but I hope it will better explain the feature to others.

Hope you feel better soon!

Edited to add a link to the Running Balance Help Doc. 

nolesrule I think where it gets out of sync sometimes is if someone sorts by payee or category and then goes back to sort by date. It leaves transactions in a different order to the default order. I seem to remember that causing a problem somewhere else recently. 

It's mainly an issue because of how people 'read' numbers and expect things to behave which is just likely to confuse. If you're confident with numbers, it's relatively easy to work out what's happened. If you're not, it just looks like voodoo.

I use running balance in two ways. One to look ahead at scheduled transactions and just check there's nothing out of the ordinary coming up which would require me to move money back from checking. This shouldn't be an issue. The other time I used to use it was when reconciling some of my husband's accounts monthly because he'd been slow in updating. If there was a discrepancy, then a quick change of running balance at the end of each date let you narrow down where the issue was. This could  be an issue there.  I don't really need a running balance, I just am used to seeing one from the old days of monthly paper bank reconciliations during my training. The Toolkit running balance works as expected so I shall stick with that.

monkeyhanger FYI.  You can't pick and choose.  Once the native Running Balance appears in your account, the Toolkit one won't work, whether you've got the native one selected or not.

Move Light Sound Life Wow ok, did not know that.  Good grief!

Faness What if we forget to click the balance column before clearing the search/filter?  I could see that happening as this would be a new workflow.  Once you clear the filter sorting by balance would be a disaster.  So then what?  Would sorting by date at that point show the mess in the original screenshot?

Annieland Clicking on the balance column returns the register to the default transaction order - it does not sort the balance column from largest to smallest or vice versa. If you click on the balance column at any time, the running balance will be in the correct order.

Faness if the Balance column only has correct info in a certain sort order, it should not be shown when the data is sorted differently.

adriana01 The running balance column shows what the account balance was after the transaction in question took place. When the sort order is changed, that balance is still accurate as far as that transaction is concerned, but appears in a different place in the transaction list. 

Faness Having the correct running balance however sorted is the entire point of having a running balance column. Forcing the user to reset the search order by clicking the Balance column is a nonsensical, non-intuitive action. Therefore, it it either a bug, poor design, or both.

Faness Ok thanks, I do understand.

monkeyhanger You're making excuses for bad implementation. The toolkit does it right. You can't even click on the running balance column to sort with the toolkit version. It just sorts it correctly in the default Date order as it should. I am very good with numbers so I want to see it correctly with each transaction affecting the running balance in the way that it should.

Move Light Sound Life Thank you. I shall try to avoid updating that release for as long as possible because running balance as it stands is worse than useless.

Superbone I'm making no excuses for anything. I was trying to answer nolesrule  's response because I'd not been clear in my 'oh I see what it's doing! In the way, that they're doing it, it's doing what they want it to do, it's just rubbish' post.  I interpreted his post as it's only a problem here and it's not that big a problem because... He is good with budgets and can easily see where the problem is, not everyone can. That's all I was saying.

For the avoidance of any doubt, I think it's utter rubbish. That my have just been a difference in translation of British English and American English*. I understand why it's happening but I think it renders it useless as a tool.  Who wants a tool they can't inherently trust. It's also clearly possible to do it correctly because the Toolkit has been doing it for ages.

* and there I was thinking I'd been rude to Faness who isn't the person who developed it badly. Equally, for a feature as simple as a running balance there shouldn't be anything to 'learn'.

monkeyhanger Gotcha! Thank you for the clarification. 🙂

monkeyhanger 

monkeyhanger said:
I interpreted his post as it's only a problem here and it's not that big a problem because...

 If you thought that's what I meant then I guess I wasn't clear. Of course it should make sense on a first glance without having to dig into it to figure out what's going on.

monkeyhanger Your comments haven't struck me as rude, at all! I appreciate you discussing the feature and trying to explain the logic behind it.

Annieland Well I can see what's happened but it does look mad. 

monkeyhanger I don't get it. There's nothing in the search box.  What is filtered??

Annieland It's not filtered. And I don't understand coding so I don't know how they've achieved it. It appears to be down to transaction sorting. The sorting in one column is different from the next. 

It does pretty much render it unusable for reconciliation purposes though.

Annieland Remember the old days in Excel when you had a table set up for sort and filter. And then someone added an extra column of data without revising the area that was selected for sorting, pressed sort and save and then messed your whole spreadsheet up.  That.

RIP_MSMoney I think it'll be a while... 🤣

RIP_MSMoney It's on the Accounts Screen Settings one up from the bottom of the page: Show Running Balance.

RIP_MSMoney Oh sorry, I was thinking the new YNAB feature. 🤪

ynaber2613 Thank you for sharing these ideas! Currently, when the sort order has been changed, a '?' symbol appears at the top of the Balance column. A few users here have mentioned that isn't a big enough indicator, but highlighting sounds like a bigger attention-grabber.

Habanero Salsa Has the second part been confirmed? I guess it has since Move Light Sound Life has the feature available and is the one that reported it. Hopefully, the good toolkit people can fix up theirs to give us a choice of the toolkit version or the native running balance feature.

Hi RIP_MSMoney !

The entity ID of the transaction isn't changing the sort order. Transactions can be sorted by category, payee, memo, inflow or outflow within a date. Clicking to sort by any of those factors and then sorting by date can yield different transaction orders. I can't tell for certain, but on second look it appears the screenshot above is sorted by date and payee (alphabetical ascending order).

Faness Are you saying that sorting by date solely should yield the same result as if sorting by running balance? 

RIP_MSMoney No, sorting by descending outflow or ascending inflow and then date will yield the same results (because that is the default transaction order - largest inflow to largest outflow by date).

Faness When I do this (1) - sort descending by outflow then (2) sort by date , the "question mark in a circle" still appears.  

Isn't it already in the default sort order?  I do not think the "question mark in a circle" needs to appear.

louisw Thank you for explaining what you're seeing! If you sort by any column other than date, that symbol appears in the Balance column - even if you manually adjust the sorting to the default. If you click on the date column to change the sort order the symbol will appear, clicking on date again will undo it and the symbol will go away.

WordTenor The secondary sort factor can be any of the transaction data entries (memo, payee, category, inflow or outflow). Sorting by date isn't yielding different results, sorting by date with varying secondary sort factors changes the result and that is expected behavior. The screenshot Matthew shared appears to be sorted by payee as the secondary sorting factor. 

Faness 

Matthew said:
I previously included a screenshot sorted by date, which can result in the running balance totals out of order because of how we sort transactions that occur on a particular day.

 Right hand, I would like to introduce you to left hand. It seems you don't know what the other is doing. 

Why are the users better at using the software, and seem to know more about the how the software works, than the people who get paid to explain the software? 

WordTenor The screenshot is primarily sorted by date, but secondarily by payee. The secondary factor can produce different results and most users don't know how secondary sorting affects the transactions in the register - sorry for the confusion!

WordTenor It sounds like you dont understand how the sort order works, but yes claim that you're wiser than thou and blame support - it's a great look 😉

louisw If you click on Balance (not the question mark next to it), then the transactions will be re-sorted.

Annieland Thanks (sorry for you, though) for confirming it will wreck the Toolkit's version. I will be sure NOT to use YNAB's buggy version.

Hi Annieland !

If those transactions aren't sorted out of order, the running balance should appear as expected. If you click on the Balance column are you still seeing those numbers appear out of order?

Faness If there is any scenario in which the running balance doesn’t appear as expected, the running balance shouldn’t appear... or, at the very least, should be present but grayed out to prevent column widths from jumping all around. 

Faness Ok, I just clicked on Balance and they went back in order as far as I can tell (I just did one test account).  But what the hell??  Should I be paranoid now that my numbers aren't correct unless I re-sort regularly?  I've never even sorted anything other than by date.  It's not the biggest deal for most of my accounts, but Checking, Savings, and a couple of CC's with a huge number of scheduled recurring transactions will require a new workflow.  I'm just not used to darting my eyes around at how I have registers sorted.

Geez, developers.  You had ONE job...

Annieland Sorry for the anxiety there! The question mark icon will appear at the top of the Balance column when transactions aren't sorted as expected. Clicking it will sort the transactions, so you know everything is displayed in order, and remove the icon.

When you have a moment, would you mind filling out this survey? We want to provide our Design Team with as much honest feedback on this new feature as possible.

Habanero Salsa Thank you for sharing that idea. Would you mind filling out this survey, as well? We want our Design Team to know how YNABers would like to see this feature behave. 

Annieland The toolkit did it right. You shouldn't be forced to click on the Running Balance header to get a proper running balance. It should be tied to the Date order like it is for the toolkit. I've been using the toolkit running balance for two years and it has worked perfectly and just as expected. It's shameful that it has taken YNAB this long and then they make it wonky like this when the toolkit has shown the way to do it all this time.

I don't think I should be expected to fill out a survey. Professional UI designers and programmers should do it right the first time. This is not too much to expect at this price point. It's frankly embarrassing.

Faness I just filled out the survey, as I am baffled by this ?-symbol concept. If you KNOW the balance is out of order, why not just reorder it, instead of relying on your clients' remembering to check for a tiny, easily overlooked ? at the top of the column, and having to click it, to do what the app should do in the first place? /smdh

Superbone I just blew up all over the place saying the same thing. Who thought of this ? idea, and why?

JoeDid Yes THIS exactly!  I wanted to post last night “Why not just fix it your damn selves without me having to keep checking and clicking??” but I was too exhausted and ran out of steam. 
 

Superbone  I’m really not a big complainer and have weathered many financial software storms for over 20 years, and I’m sure I’ll weather this one too. But it feels good to have support from this community.  So thank you both!

Hi JoeDid !

Our logic here was that if a user purposefully sorted their transactions out of the default sorting order, we didn't want to change it back automatically. If they want to view transactions by date sorted by payee, we want that to be a possibility, but I see this option is missing the mark.

I assume the problem for ynab is having this available across browsers and versions.  Toolkit only has to deal with the specific browser they create the toolkit for.  

Mina I’m not 100% sure but I think even if you update you still have to turn it on and as long as you don’t do that the Toolkit should still work.

jenmas Thank you.  I sure hope this is the case.

Mina It's NOT the case. I didn't turn it on in YNAB because I was using the Toolkit for RB, and it just worked. Even without turning it on, YNAB blatantly killed the Toolkit feature, so I had to turn on YNAB's RB and it's messed up already.

Not a happy customer here.

JoeDid Thanks for confirming! 

jenmas  Sadly not. I tried to avoid doing the update but my computer refreshed this morning and I've been forced straight into the wonky running balance. I didn't switch it on, it's just there :-(.

To be honest, I probably won't run into too many problems because I don't re-sort my transactions very often but it's galling to have something that worked perfectly replaced by something that I know might show some wonky figures. It's not the trust level I'd prefer.