Missing Inflow category
I can't find "To Be Budgeted" in my transactions categories. It's supposed to be there, right? I have transactions that have used it still in place but I can't add a new one manually. What am I missing?
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To Be Budgeted is a special category that lives at the top of your screen (the $359 in your image). When you go to add an inflow, you’ll be given the option (ignore the amount, it’s a pretend budget I use to trying stuff out)
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Tomato Tamale Here’s a slightly better image, got a little carried away with the crop tool
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Hi Gold Thunder !
Tomato Tamale is right - all income should be categorized as Inflow: To Be Budgeted.
There are definitely some things you can do on your end to label the different types of inflows. Below are a few examples.
- Adding some sort of distinction to the Payee (e.g. "Reimbursement") will alert the Income v Expense report that it was not earned income.
- Using the memo field will allow you to easily filter these inflows out.
- The flag feature in YNAB allows you to mark a transaction or group of transactions with a particular color. This is most useful to highlight certain types of transactions that aren’t necessarily the same category, but you could still use it for reimbursements inflows.
So while all inflows will be categorized as "Inflow: To be Budgeted", there are different ways for you to label those inflows and easily filter them out.
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Faness said:
Payee (e.g. "Reimbursement") will alert the Income v Expense report that it was not earned income.Reimbursements should ALWAYS be categorized back to the original category used for the outflow rather than TBB. This cancels the previous spending in reports/averages (it's their spending, not yours, right?) and simplifies the process.
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dakinemaui **Payee** is different from category- just so that OP doesnt get confused.
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Til Debt Do Us Part Thanks for the elaboration. My main point was the categorization to the spending category prevents it from even showing up on the Income section of the report at all. Not to mention a newbie would be confused by the "all inflows will be added as TBB" blanket statement (in a post using reimbursement examples, no less).
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Thank you all very much. It was a bit of a mind slip on my part, that I could kick myself for, but it turned out to be very valuable with all the great advice! I really appreciate everyone's input.
Thanks
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Here's a partially real and related example that I'm unsure of: I send $100 for a fun thing to an Online store using Paypal which, in turn, taps my checking account for the funds. The item is defective and the store subsequently takes the item back for a full refund to Paypal which, 4 days later, returns the money to my checking account.
This is how I see it, with some confusion regarding PayPal mixed in:
Purchase >> Account = Checking, Payee = [Paypal or Online Store? ], Category = [Online Broker (Paypal) or "Fun Things"]?, Outflow $100
Return >> Account = Checking, Payee = [Online Store or Paypal]?, Category = [Online Broker (PayPal) or "Fun Things"]? Inflow $100
Question: How do you handle Paypal in this situation?
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Gold Thunder Since I never keep much money in Paypal, at worst a couple 100s from a reimbursement, I just ignore Paypal. So:
Purchase >> Account = Checking, Payee = Store, Category = Fun Things, Outflow = $100
Return >> Account = Checking, Payee = Store, Category = Fun Things, Inflow = $100
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Ceeses That's a great suggestion. I'm all for keeping it simple.
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Gold Thunder I have PayPal as an on budget account because I occasionally have a balance that is used for budgeted purchases. In the case of mixed funding (partially paid from checking or CC), or even a complete pass-through (entire purchase pulled from checking or CC), I used to record in the PayPal account with a net appropriate to the PayPal portion ($0 for pass-through), with offsetting splits for the purchase (outflow) and transfer from checking (inflow). I did this to ease reconciliation, as if I saw a transaction in PayPal, I wanted to see a transaction in my YNAB PayPal account.
At some point, however, I decided there was no overwhelming benefit to this, even to reconciliation, and I went through a period of a lot of pass-through transactions. So I simplified where possible. I still have the PayPal account, of course, which is used when there is any PayPal balance used (either fully or partially funding a purchase).
Long story short: For a completely pass-through transaction, I now just record it in the relevant account (e.g., checking) and tack on a "via PayPal" at the end of the memo. (Nothing is recorded in the PayPal account.)
WRT the other fields: Payee -- typically the online store, and category is whatever it's for (as you might expect). In this case, if the purchase is "for Joe", you might have a "Reimbursement - Joe" category if this happens a lot. If it's a one-off, you might consider a more generic "Reimbursement - Other" category. As previously mentioned, the most important thing is that the category is the same between inflow and inflow.
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