
YNAB doesn't carry forward negative balances and this screws up everything
I've been using YNAB since their version 4 Desktop App days, and quite frankly the Desktop App is still my favorite. I have an almost constant problem with the web app version because it will not carry forward negative balances, and this screws up all my tracking.
Yes, yes, I'm well aware of YNABs rules and why they think this is a "feature" but it's not. It's a limitation that doesn't allow one to properly account for reality.
Just about every month, at the end of the month, various bills are due, and when those bills are deducted from the account can vary by a few days, and I don't have any control over this.
Sometimes a bill will be deducted on the 31st but then the next month, it might happen on the 1st. My lease payment is particularly fickle in this regard, but without going into all my personal finances, suffice to say I have a handful of bills for which it is normal for the bill to be withdrawn by autopay either on the last day of the month or the first day of the next.
The problem arises when a bill is taken on the 1st day of the month but then again on last day of the same month. That causes the budget in question to be overdrawn, with a negative balance.
If I don't catch this, YNAB rolls over to the next month, and suddenly none of my numbers make sense. The money listed as available is less than it should be, and....well I this plagued me for months until I realized what was going on, and now I know that after the first of the month I have to go back and change the dates of a hand full of transactions to make this work. This is very frustrating.
There are other realities of life that cause negative balances to occur as well, such as needing food for the weekend, but the months budget is spent, but the weekend is next month, but you have to buy the food today. Again the budget gets into a negative and I have to go manual edit the date to fudge things to balance out.
THIS SHOULD NOT BE NECESSARY. Simply rolling over the negative balance into the balance of the budget in the new month should be normal behavior. This is why we are all a month ahead in our budgets. It allows things to be seamlessly transition from month to month. The desktop app did this correctly. The web app does not and so causes the end of each month to be a constant hassle instead of a seamless transition.
I'm posting here because I have reported this issue multiple times via YNAB support and have been politely ignored by support telling me this lack of functionality is a deliberate feature.
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Green Piranha said:
I just want the money I saved for tires, oil, etc to stay in those categoriesThe potential problem is that you used some of that money to fix the bike, and you don't have it at the moment. And yet, you're pretending you do in your plan.
This error is probably fine if the missing money is a small fraction of total remaining cash. It's a serious problem when that is not true. YNAB chooses to play the conservative card and tries to get you to adjust the plan because not doing so would be a problem for the majority of their target market.
The truth if the matter is you are not 2 months ahead immediately following a crash. If this doesn't happen a lot, it can be convenient to ignore this. If it does, though, it really is less effort to stop fighting YNAB.
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Brandon I totally agree. I tried to switch from v4 to "new" YNAB the second time and it simply is not possible. There are two main reasons:
1) Negative category budget is not possible anymore and it totally kills my import of about 5 years of budgeting. Bad things happen and I want to see, where my negative budgets are and I want to deal with it correctly. That means going on in the next month and eliminate some part of the negative while planning the rest of my categories like they need to. Yes, this is dept, and YNAB was always the best way to deal with it correctly. Paying the one negative category with money from something else is totally wrong in my opinion, because it hides the problems or moves them to another place.
Not having this possibility anymore and not respecting my way by not taking the budget as is when switching to web-based version ist already a blocking point.For me, the "make a fresh start" answer is nothing more like "we screwed it up, so we make our problem yours".
2) Web-based YNAB is a pain. It is slow at first, I don't like it. It needs to save my data on nab server, which I don't like, too. Native applications are very much faster than anything running in the browser.
I tried to get the good old view of a few months side by side, but I couldn't find it.Switching some months back and forth ist slow as hell, it kills productivity.
It's very sad to have to look for something else, especially because v4 works perfectly for me but there is no support anymore and it is just a matter off time, that somethings brakes with next iOS or macOS updates. Using the 32/64 Bit hack will just move the inevitable a bit forward.
In the end all I would like to see is a v4 based native 64bit solution with iCloud support to eliminate Dropbox, that's it.
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The reality is YNAB is choosing ideology over more subscribers. I'm not a huge fan of the web based YNAB 5 but I'd subscribe in an instant if negative carryover existed just because YNAB 4 is getting to be more and more of a pain to use. Sadly, like many others in this thread if I'm going to loose 5+ years of budget history and have to completely rework how we use our budget categories I might as well switch to some other company.
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TheMadTurtle said:
We don't simply keep going negative. We hold ourselves accountable to paying ourselves back.Instead of fluctuating between, say, $200 and -$50, why not make the one-time adjustment so you fluctuate between $250 and $0?
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TheMadTurtle said:
I have a fund "rainy day" that I'll take this money from and keep track in Excel of which envelopes took money from there.Why not just keep track of this in the notes of your rainy day category? Why the need for an external tool to track this? I'd want it all in one place if I was going to do it this way.
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dakinemaui said:
It's also a bit of a faff to record since the Payee field is occupied with the Transfer instructions. However, this is the approach I personally use as well. My spouse, OTOH, prefers the category approach for more "traditional" transaction entry.This is the biggest issue I have with this approach and why I can't use nYNAB. I have expenses that expand into the thousands of dollars and cross months, and I have to have awareness of the payee. Losing the Payee information by transferring is a show-stopper, and if I have to manually note each payee, that's the point where I say to myself, "Why am I leaving a perfectly functional YNAB4 behind to jump through silly hoops?" I want to use the new one, I really do. I want to give them my subscription money, I really do (a lil' sarcasm in this one). But, I can't make it work.
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Pink Piccolo said:
Losing the Payee information by transferring is a show-stopper, and if I have to manually note each payeePink Piccolo There is nothing to stop you adding the Payee in the Payee field then adding the transfer as a split transaction, this gives you the best of both worlds.
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Attention YNAB: Please allow the option to carry over a negative balance in a category! Our state (Alaska) offers a generous reimbursement program for homeschoolers. However, it often takes a couple weeks and sometimes more for reimbursement requests to be processed and deposited into our bank account. Furthermore, we allow expenses to accumulate before processing a reimbursement request so that we are not always nickle and diming our poor homeschool administrator. Since YNAB zeros the homeschool category each month, our budget does not reflect the accumulated expenses beyond for that month. It may be a few months after an expense that the reimbursement check arrives.
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Navy Blue Elk said:
our budget does not reflect the accumulated expensesCorrect. The budget is the plan for future expenses.
Have you looked at the recommended approaches, specifically the offset category (budgeting for the expense up front)? The reality is that money is gone, and if you have enough cash on-budget to implicitly rob categories -- as is the case with a negative balance -- then you have enough to explicitly offset the category (cover the expense).
OTOH, if cash is too tight to allow you to plan that way, then it would be quite risky to run a negative category (again, missing money). In which case, I'd recommend the temporary debt approach, also described at that link.
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Wow, this thread! I find it very interesting how different people view YNAB. I've noticed a few points come up that I have to admit I'm a little confused about.
My husband and I use our credit card for the rewards and the miles. I have a goal set on my credit cards to pay them off monthly. My credit card category shows yellow in every month I don't fund that goal. When I see the yellow, I know that I have a negative balance on that card that has "carried over." If I don't set this goal, it doesn't tell me. You want it to "alert" you, you have to set this goal.
Next, lots of people mad about negative balances within categories... Haven't you noticed that if you had negative balances from the previous month and no money TBB, that your TBB is in the red the next month? This is if you made those purchases using debit. If you used a credit card, but don't have a goal set to pay it off it looks like that responsibility disappeared.
With the reimbursement issue, what would happen if you entered that transaction in a future date? Wouldn't it reflect on your budget? I tried it. I added a future transaction for income and in that month the upcoming transactions showed a positive amount. The category did not show yellow because it knows that I will be getting funds for those transactions. Then when the transaction hits, that category will show green and I can leave it there or move it to another spot.
When I learned that I could input all my scheduled expenses it completely changed how I budgeted. I am now aware of all the yellow spots where I need to fund bills. If I overspent in a previous month, that carries over. It reflects that I will have more to fund in that category that month because I stole from the future. The negative balance doesn't carry over visually the same way because YNAB looks at all your assets combined. If you used a credit card to pay for that reimbursed expense, then you have to make a goal on that credit card to show what you owe. When you get that reimbursement, that money is actually going to your CC payment and not to the original category. Leaving the negative balance doesn't make sense to me if you're using a checking account. If it's paid for then that money came from somewhere and your budget should reflect that movement.
I used YNAB4 years ago and could not wrap my head around it. Every month showed red because back then we used credit cards to pay for everything and couldn't fund them. In the new version, I appreciate how I can acknowledge my debt without it completely impacting all my categories. With the old version, it looked like I never had any money, ever. I came back to YNAB after the update and everything clicked. I lack the experience to empathize with those that got used to this formatting. So far, I haven't found any issue with the current version that there isn't actually a method for. What's wrong about embracing a new method if it gets you to the same place?
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Yes. They should have an option to make this feature available. Also, when a recurring transaction comes up on another date from that that is originally entered, there should be an option when you change the date for that one transaction that won’t affect the future dates. Another app I use to use, when there was a recurring transaction and I want to change the date or amount on it, it would give me the option “change this on the repeating event or only for this transaction”. If YNAB would have that option that would be great then you wouldn’t have to change the info for the future recurring transactions.
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THIS IS 100% ON-POINT!
I do retail arbitrage as a side gig. I sometimes use my credit card to purchase merchandise knowing that I will pay it off and make profit and never pay a finance charge or interest. But I buy something on my CC in, say, March, then slowly sell my products from March to April. At the end of March my category for Retail Arbitrage is negative by THOUSANDS of dollars. And that just gets erased. Like it never happened. Then I finally get to a point in April where I've sold enough that I'm in a net-positive situation and low-and-behold YNAB makes it look like I've now MADE THOUSANDS of dollars. But that's because it didn't let the negative from March carryover.
My wife love YNAB. And I mostly am okay with it. This is the number one reason I think it's just dumb and want to move on to something that tracks reality and doesn't call stupid ideas like this a "feature".
Go out and ask 500 accountants what they think about this feature and at least 750 of those 500 will tell you it's just. Plain. Flat. WRONG. PEER. EEEEE. UD.
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I'm a soon to be former user of YNAB4 for at least 4 years. After several weeks of sitting here yelling at the computer because the numbers don't make sense and there is no explanation of where they came from, looking through the records with a calculator to make sense, getting paid this month but struggling to get it to allocate to next month, not being able to see if I overspent or underspent, I am really at my wits end. If I could only get YNAB4 to work again on Catalina I would be happy but that won't last long. Looks like it is time to go back to the spreadsheet. Such as shame you really destroyed a great product with your discipled way of working.
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Lavender Piranha said:
You aren’t thinking of the expense you were planning on and about the only green column to borrow fund is from expense X and you take the money without thinking. Next month is the 4th month and b you don’t have that money there.Don't take money without thinking.
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They could just adjust the software so that you can only "red arrow" when you have a forward buffer to pull money from to cover it. Stops people who aren't buffered from having a negative envelope, and allows people that ARE buffered to have an "owed enveloped" that is covered by the buffer. This still allows people to have the functionality they want while staying true to the core principals.
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Lavender Piranha said:
i like red numbers, they give me big pause moments when I see them and I take care of them, for example the case above if it were eating out that I’ll put money back into that category having to sacrifice eating out the next month or two to get that category back in the green, and I know it’s a MUST do at the beginning of the month that gives me the right mindset. So now comes the question at next months budgeting, ok because I went red will I have enough money in my checking now or will I need to do a transfer from savings or credit card to hold me through until I get my red category down, the expense X is never a worry to cover but just anxiety over my true problem. I just see pushing money around as creating new problems and not a focus on the real problem - to not have offered to go into the red in the first place with eating out- I’d rather give that a problem of focus.I am bolding the above for extra emphasis. This is precisely the reason why Rule 3 exists in the first place. If you get to this point, you aren't self-disciplined enough to actually ignore Rule 3.
Pushing money around is having your budget align with your priorities while not allowing yourself to have to take on debt or overdraft. When you choose to overspend, you have made a decision about how to prioritize your money. Own it, don't hide behind it. -
Lavender Piranha said:
Rule 3 comes around and you get that surprise family visit (using the example ynab gives) and do the borrow funds method.It seems that you have misunderstood Rule 3, or at least injected your own connotation into it. Money should move from lower to higher priority categories. "Borrowing" is not a consideration of the methodology and never mentioned in any of the Rule 3 educational materials. You've merely changed the plan for those dollars.
If you choose to take from a true expense category with a hard date/amount, that is your call, but understand that every reallocation has consequences, and you need to be OK with that. (There will be increased contributions if you still intend to incur that hard date/amount, at the least.)
As Herman succinctly put it, "Don't take money without thinking."
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Lavender Piranha said:
will I have enough money in my checking now or will I need to do a transfer from savingsLook at the running balance against scheduled transactions to verify this. The budget is the wrong tool to assess the location of your money.
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Lavender Piranha said:
I just see pushing money around as creating new problems and not a focus on the real problem - to not have offered to go into the red in the first place with eating out- I’d rather give that a problem of focus.Sorry, I'm afraid the decision to eat out is long gone. You cannot do ANYTHING about it now. Focusing on that as a problem is useless.
The real problem is what will you do with your remaining money moving forward. On what will you base your next spending decision? Will it be on an inflated category balance that is not backed by cash? That's what any red in the budget means -- missing money.
Or will it be on an accurate category that ACTUALLY has that money available to spend is says it does without impacting anything else? That's why you're supposed to immediately clear the red (and why YNAB won't let it persist) -- so categories are accurate allowing you to make informed decisions -- not misinformed decisions.
I mean, why not enter a fake $1,000,000 inflow transaction into your checking account and budget that? Hopefully it's obvious that causes categories to not be backed by cash you can actually spend. It's the exact same problem.
I'd rather base my decisions on reality. YNAB encourages you to do the same.
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kevinf said:
People like the functionality, give it to them in a way that aligns with the core principals,The #1 fundamental core principle is that the budget is the plan for the cash you can actually spend, so I really don't see it happening.
They might implement an "auto-cover-and-return" feature from a user-nominated category someday (e.g., Emergency Fund). That's about as close as you're going to get while remaining aligned with the core principles. BTW, that was submitted as a feature request shortly after launch. No traction to date.
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dakinemaui said:
The #1 fundamental core principle is that the budget is the plan for the cash you can actually spend, so I really don't see it happening.By pulling from the buffer, it IS cash you can actually spend. You created the buffer for a reason, to handle these kinds of things... emergencies, reimbursements, floats, planning ahead. If you've got a nice cash buffer, there is no reason to to be able to have functionality that benefits from it. Clearly the red arrow has a place, even if the first implementation wasn't holding to the ideal. There's a way forward that gives customers what they want while staying the course.
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kevinf said:
By pulling from the buffer, it IS cash you can actually spend.No.
You already spent the money. Some of the money you gave the merchant was part of the "forward buffer", which is money that is wrapped up in categories called Rent, Groceries, etc. That leaves one or more of those categories (depending on the magnitude of the overspending) without the funds that YNAB says are present (the category Available value).
Again, that money is already gone, and YNAB wants you to correct the erroneous/misleading category balance(s). Ignoring that error is identical to planning to spend money you no longer have. Violation of the #1 principle.
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kevinf said:
they need better tools to represent everyday financial issues that aren't currently being handled in an intuitive wayThat's an interesting choice of word, "intuitive". I really can't imagine anything more intuitive than pulling dollars out of the Emergency Fund envelope when Eating Out doesn't have enough to pay the bill on its own.
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dakinemaui said:
Do you agree that money is missing from one or more categories when any category (or Available To Budget / To Be Budgeted) is red? In other words, the budget indicates $X is available to spend when you do not even have $X in your possession?kevinf said:
Sounds like they need better tools to represent everyday financial issues that aren't currently being handled in an intuitive way that is satisfactory to swathes of their users.kevinf said:
Sounds like they need better tools to represent everyday financial issues that aren't currently being handled in an intuitive way that is satisfactory to swathes of their users.kevinf said:
Sounds like they need better tools to represent everyday financial issues that aren't currently being handled in an intuitive way that is satisfactory to swathes of their users.