mjrudolphi I'm not missing the point at all.  YNAB defines the method they want to follow.  They have said consistently for 5 years that this is not what they want.  It has been discussed on here dozens if not 100's of times.  Seems you are missing the point.  

mjrudolphi it is called integrity.

Herman so by your definition integrity is any company that makes a bad call and sticks with it no matter how many call them out on it. 
 

I know you think it’s fine, but that doesn’t make my point less valid. 

mjrudolphi  I think the ones being obtuse are those that continue to not accept the companies consistent response to this request because "they want it.". Move on to another product. 

mjrudolphi They have made it clear that having it available is a problem for some current users.  It would not be a problem for me but others are apparently not as sophisticated as you.  Keep asking all you want but your own statement says it is not costing ynab customers or money.

mjrudolphi said:
I get you and others want to  convince me I don’t have a situation where this feature would help me.

 Nobody is trying to  convince you this wouldn't be helpful for you.  They are explaining why you are not going to get what you want. 

mjrudolphi Have you actually used the product as recommended? I'm not talking about covering overspending after the fact -- I'm talking about moving funds BEFORE spending, avoiding overspending in the first place. (Either that or realizing the purchase was not as important as any category that would be impacted, so you skip the purchase entirely.)

Your comments this far strongly suggest you haven't. If that's true, then you are arguing from a position of ignorance.

mjrudolphi they could but they don't want to. 

Herman Perhaps if there is ever enough of us they will.  So I will keep asking for it until they do or until something better comes along.  No skin of your nose Herman - no need to comment here.

mjrudolphi I really appreciate your permission but I think I'll go ahead and keep commenting when people continue to beat this dead horse.

Herman Thats fine.  You just keep it alive.  Thanks for doing so.  Helps me.

WordTenor I finally opened this thread up and wow, it's a doozie!  But I learned a new trick for reimbursements, a reimbursement account, so yeah, these forums are so helpful for my YNAB, even ones full of arguments over a topic I don't really care about, the red arrow thing.  I think it's bizarre how obsessed some people are with the red arrow thing, when there are so many possible workarounds, but when people get used to doing something one way for years, then I can see that they would get upset by a change.  But at some point you just gotta let go when they repeatedly tell you it's not going to happen.

mjrudolphi Tracking spending isn't actually accountability. It's just tracking.

The accountability comes in keeping your budget free of fake money so you can rely on your category balances to make spending decisions. Fake money happens when you have negative categories or negative TBB.

mjrudolphi said:
by forcing it on the user, YNAB is enabling bad behavior of a lacks in accountability.

That claim simply doesn't follow since the user makes the decision of where to budget funds the following month. The lowest priority category -- according to the user, not YNAB -- will naturally receive less money. That sounds like a good thing to me and is right in line with their methodology.

mjrudolphi I don't have any issues tracking reimbursements across the month boundary. Perhaps one of the recommended approaches would work better than whatever you are currently doing.

mjrudolphi Clearly you know about carrying negative values. I specifically asked whether you have experience doing it DIFFERENTLY than that. You seem to have inferred a great deal more than I was saying.

dakinemaui Yes I have experience which is why I'm advocating to allow for the user to decide.

mjrudolphi Perhaps speaking to those experiences would be better received. Remember, the methodology is the goal here, according to YNAB. If you have reasons why facing consequences up front results in bad spending decisions, perhaps they'll change the methodology.

At present, my opinion (based on nearly a decade of listening to them) is they believe carrying negatives results in poorer decisions. If that is, in fact, their belief, then of course they aren't going to implement such a feature.

dakinemaui do you have a significant other that you manage the budget with?

mjrudolphi yes

dakinemaui Ok good.  So do I.  I also have children that I will buy stuff sometimes on their behalf that they reimburse me for.

So my spouse and I view my income as our income.  She does not work (well sometimes but wont go into that here). 

There are some categories we share, like groceries and such and then we each have things we spend without the other needing  say (like my lunches and her clothes shopping just as an example).  She has her budget for things which we fund up front for the year.  She likes  this because she knows up front what she can spend in the year.  We are well off enough we don't have to worry about it month to month. Each year we decide what our priorities are and then fund those priorities.

 Within her budget are several envelopes (10 or so).  Now sometimes throughout the year she spends more than allocated on some.  No big deal, she can spend as much as she wants up to the total (or if we agree to spend more).  She will then shift monies around or just not spend in other areas ensuring the total doesnt go negative.  We dont turn it into a science project for her and I dont want to hound her spending or make her go into the system before the first of the month like a child.  She knows what she is doing, she can handle it.

So now if one of her buckets goes negative, it automatically replenishes on the first.  Now she is spending more than what we set aside.  But we have to then go back and look for the month it happen and go through this whole thing.  Not necessary if the balance stayed negative until she decided at her own pace and time.

I have similar situations in my categories as well. 

And of course then there is the whole reimbursement thing. Right now I'm using an unlinked cash account to manage reimbursements.  All reimbursement related transactions become a transfer to and from this unlinked account.  Works but is kind of a pain.  You also lose the payee as it now says transfer (yes you can hover over it).

I'm sure there are all sorts of work arounds for these scenarios to force us into how the software wants us to do it.    That is not the point of this thread though.  I get everyone is just trying to help.  But the only solution is to do something that is not natural to me (and others).  I would simply ask you realize that what works for you doesn't equal works for everyone.  I appreciate that you see this software as working for you.  I'm happy that it does.  I to think its a good application, but it has flaws that make it annoying to work with for some of us.  As I've said many times, I would love to use a different product.  If you are aware of a product that has all the features of YNAB please let me know, I would love to hear about it.  For reference I have used Mvelopes, Tiller, Quicken, Mint, Simplifi, Goodbudget, Everydollar, buxfer, just to name a few.  YNAB beats them all with this one exception.

mjrudolphi For your reimbursement, I suggest one of the recommended approaches. Your current approach doesn't work well with expenses put on a credit card, and you lose the Payee field as you mentioned.

The first (offsetting the category with some of your ample reserves) is especially easy as the budget takes care of itself. You might as well make it easy on yourself, you know, until YNAB adds negative carryover. 😉

https://docs.youneedabudget.com/article/183-reimbursements

iwaddo  Ha!

RIP_MSMoney Thank you for the reasoned response. We value your feedback ever since you've been here. Please don't hold back.

jenmas And technically all they would need to do is give you an option for negative balances past the 1st - poof problem solved.  

Someday though I'm sure they will have a "work around" to the problem created by auto clearing negative balances.

jenmas Covering reimbursements upfront and in full is the preferred method of handling them. I understand that doesn't work for everyone and every situation but there hasn't yet been a decision on the best way to "improve" this functionality. We don't want to support carrying negatives forward in the budget, so an alternative to address those debts is necessary. The current functionality isn't considered as broken, since it works as intended, but we do recognize there's room for improvement.

Faness YNAB is likely to continue in the future to have these types of complaints - especially for those coming from other envelope based software.  I applaud YNAB for looking at this and paying attention.  Most companies in this space dont even have direct communication with their customers.  You guys have a really good product and customer service👍👏.  I dont agree with your "preferred method" as I think it creates all sorts of problems, but I'm patient.  

jenmas We do have some vastly-improved processes that we're working on for handling Splitwise and similar apps, if you use any of those. This doesn't involve any changes to the YNAB product, just better ways of making sure that what's happening in Splitwise is reflected in your budget. If you use a splitting app, let me know (or get in touch with support), and we can talk about it!

Matthew I use Splitwise and am interested in hearing about improved processes that are in the works. How can I find out more? I've started digging into using Zapier to connect Splitwise and YNAB, but I'm wondering if I should hold off because reimbursements in YNAB makes my head spin...

Maroon Violin My colleague Sarah has developed a way of entering Splitwise-related transactions into your account register that captures what's happening in Splitwise and keeps your budget up to date. However, we haven't finished turning that into public-facing documentation yet, and Sarah is on vacation at the moment. I've made myself a note to get in touch with you when she gets back!

Matthew I use Splitwise also and am interested in this feature!

PhysicsGal Hey, folks, I haven't forgotten about this. I spoke to Sarah this morning and we're talking about a succinct way to share the in-process work. Might be a week or so, though!

The basic gist is that there are two types of things that happen in Splitwise that have an effect on your budget: you pay for something and will be reimbursed for part of it by one or more people (represented as a standard outflow split transaction in YNAB) or you settle up in Splitwise (represented in YNAB as a split transaction with inflows and outflows, which might total up to an inflow, an outflow, or zero).