Hi Kha-ai Nguyen-Wilk !

In the account register, you can minimize the Pending Transactions section by clicking on it. Those Pending Transactions won't enter your register unless you choose to enter them at that moment, if you minimize the section and ignore them, they won't enter your register until they clear your account (like regularly imported transactions). 

Faness The desire is to have a more accurate category balance, including at least the pre-tip amount. Since YNAB entered both, it should be able to correct when the cleared version imports.

In other words, match on more than amount. Perhaps authorization code or transaction ID.

dakinemaui If the Pending Transaction is entered into the register, it can be re-entered into the register once it clears. If a YNABer chooses to later match the Pending version to the cleared version, the cleared balance will be saved.

Faness Get ready for the feature requests, then. Lots of people will approve the pending or even make a mistake adding in the tip, and the cleared will not auto-match. My point is there's probably enough information so that *it could* auto-match -- even with a different amount.

Doing that would remove the main reason (as I see it) that people feel shakey about this. It would work if:

* pending is ignored,

* approved by mistake

* a mistake is made while trying to do the right thing and update to include the (wrong) tip

* updated with the correct tip

It sounds like it will only work correctly in 50% of the cases upon release. Of course people are shakey!

dakinemaui To my knowledge, these transactions don't share the same identifying information on the back-end. They're still separate transactions taken from the bank, but matched based on the logic that was already in place for transactions in YNAB (date and amount). 

This has been a slow ramp, there's still only a small percentage of YNABers that have this feature as we tackle any questions or confusion as we go along. We've been digging into the feedback we've received so far, but I tend to hear more from the YNABers who don't have the feature yet. I'm hoping that's a good sign, that once the feature is in place it makes more sense, but we're still taking things slowly.

Faness and dakinemaui thanks for the suggestions and thoughts. I get the workarounds, but ultimately am not a fan of any of them. I don't like ignoring pending transactions or manually matching/editing transactions, and I don't think the extra day or two of visibility is worth the hassle. Hopefully a feature to turn off or opt out of pending transactions might be in the works?

Kha-ai Nguyen-Wilk Minimizing the section is the current equivalent to turning them off (you won't see them in the register and they won't import until they're cleared). If you want the option to completely remove them from the register, so that they don't appear as an option at all, you can use the Feature Request form to submit that feedback. :)

Kha-ai Nguyen-Wilk If you just match them when it comes in, then the correct amount will overwrite the other amount. No manual work required.

Faness Just want to let you and others know that I have done that.

bobbucy Thank you! We're still rolling this feature out slowly, but no changes to report as of now!

dakinemaui The problem with that is finding the auth code (which can be long and annoying to enter) or the transaction id may require me to login to my bank. 

Kha-ai Nguyen-Wilk 

Don't blindly accept pending transactions. If you left a tip, edit the amount to include the tip.

dakinemaui Yup, get that. I just don't like having to edit / delete the pending transaction since when it actually clears the bank, it's base + tip. Not a fan of the extra step / reconciliation.

Kha-ai Nguyen-Wilk It's supposed to be a prompt to enter into the actual register for the correct amount, including tip if you know there is one. If you do that, there will not be any more manual steps and nothing to delete. 

dakinemaui But what if I don't remember how much exactly I tipped? If I'm off at all or don't add tip, when the full transaction hits, I'll have two lines. I'll either have to delete the original or edit it to match the exact amount.

Kha-ai Nguyen-Wilk or manually match. Time will tell.

Kha-ai Nguyen-Wilk Don’t accept it. Problem solved.

Superbone Correct me if I'm wrong, but then the category balance is less accurate.

dakinemaui Sure, but it’s just as accurate as it would be if the pending transaction never showed up like before this feature. The whole purpose of the pending transaction feature is to shorten that gap between when the purchase was made and when it shows up in YNAB for users that don’t want to input their transactions.

If it were me and I didn’t remember the tip, I’d put it anyway and either guess at the tip or enter it as is and then match it when it clears. But this person says they don’t want to do that. So that answer is, don’t do it.

It’s like the old joke, Patient: “Doctor, it hurts when I do this.” Doctor: “Don’t do that.”

Superbone Sure, but in this case, I would think there's enough information to self-correct. Isn't the entire point of the feature to help the user who didn't manually enter that transaction?

dakinemaui Yep, which is exactly what I said.

Superbone said:
If it were me and I didn’t remember the tip, I’d put it anyway and either guess at the tip or enter it as is and then match it when it clears. But this person says they don’t want to do that. So that answer is, don’t do it.

dakinemaui Pending transactions don't have to be used in the register at all. If they're minimized and ignored they'll have no effect on the register. They won't enter the register until they naturally fall out of that pending status and enter the budget as cleared.

We have a lot of YNABers that are shakey about this new feature but it's completely optional. Ignoring them will keep your budget functioning as it was before they were an option, but choosing to interact with them can give YNABers a touch more awareness on what's coming into their register.

Faness I really like the feature for my use case. It's silly people are complaining about it before they even have it. On the web app, you can hide the section and everything will work like before. Not sure about the phone app as I normally approve on the web app but if there's not already, there should be a way to turn them off there too.

Superbone You can hide it in the Apple app.

Krys There ya go then! What's the big deal?

Superbone yes sometimes we have guessed amounts where someone forgot the actual amount and threw out the receipt. We enter what we think is correct and then when the transactions import, I manually match them and the amount that imported is the updated amount. 

MXMOM Haven't all  of us YNABers done that?  Maybe other people are much more organized than I...I just put a ? in the memo field so I know it's questionable, but usually I'm close enough that it keeps my category balances from being too off for too long.

PhysicsGal The one flag we use is red for an estimated amount.

Faness I had the Pending Transactions section minimized and can ignore them only as long as I haven't manually entered any transactions. If I have, then they link (in the regular part of the register) and only after I approve the link do I find out that the imported transaction was actually "pending" since now it shows the gray clock... So is it YNAB's new recommendation that we stop manually entering any transactions??

Faness You missed #4: they make an entry error while attempting #2. It, too, requires further action.

dakinemaui Then you have to add "make a mistake and take steps to fix it"  to every single discussion around process. 

dakinemaui In that case, #4 is a forced occurrence of #3.  Essentially, it's still an incorrect amount that will need attention later. 

Herman This one is special because the error can probably be auto-corrected.

Superbone Funny i love the capital one connection.  It's the only one I get complete control over when i import transactions.

Herman Cool! How does it work these days?

Superbone For me, when i sit down to budget i click the little key thing that indicates the account needs authentication, i select the number to text to, copy the code when it pops on my phone, paste into the box and it connects and updates.  Never have a problem getting it to go through and i don't have to worry about YNAB having checked 5 hours ago before the over night batch posting finished so i have to wait 3 hours for my transactions to load.   It seems ynabs timing is NEVER right for me to be able to pick up yesterdays transactions first thing in the morning when I actually want to update my budget.

eta: that said, i don't think i'm on plaid.  whatever i'm on works pretty well with all my accounts.

Herman Yeah, that’s not too bad. And at least you know your account is safe due to the 2FA.

Superbone True, that's annoying and definitely would give me FOMO if my accounts wouldn't connect (My one account that won't connect also feels FOMO).  But they can still import files I think.  I think I used to do that with YNAB3?  It's been so long...maybe I should try that with my other account?

Writing this inspired me to try it for my one card that won't link and it worked well, but I'll still need to enter transactions manually, it just makes it easier to get the cleared transactions cleared, IMO.  Might be worth doing before I try to reconcile.

PhysicsGal Yeah, I've been doing manual import the last month or so.  I actually prefer it, because I control when the import comes in.  It seems like it was NEVER available (when I wanted it) when I was using the Direct Import.  So instead of being frustrated, "Ok, I'm here, ready to do my updates and reconcile, and there's nothing imported!"  even though when I logged into my account, there were new transactions that "should have" been imported, I just save myself the frustration and import it when I want it.

Nicole I think I understand more about what's happening now based on playing with it some more and also based on what you've written above. I still think that there is potentially some kind of functional regression, or weirdness, but it's not a big deal. The following is all related to the web app:

How I think it used to be

I don't think I ever used to have to click import. Things would just import and when there were new transactions to confirm then there would be a dot next to the account.

How it seems to be now

A dot can now appear next to the account when there are pending transactions to import. So in that case, the dot means that I have to go into the account, notice that there is nothing to confirm and then click on the little import button to import the pending transactions (that I don't really care about right now).

Additional thoughts

Actually, I was already finding it kind of weird how the notifications happen for transactions to be confirmed in the web app. If there were/are transactions to be confirmed then (I think) no transactions would be visible and there would be a big, blue "view" button. Clicking on that would show the transactions to be confirmed. Then once those were done then I would have to click "clear" to see all the transactions again. It seems to me that the whole process had a lot more thinking and clicking than should be necessary. I wonder if there would ideally be some more some user-study work on that process. Disclosure: I use the toolkit, so now I'm wondering if the toolkit messes up some of these things. In the future, when something seems wacky, I'll see how YNAB works without the toolkit.

Nicole I just talked with my wife about this, and she happened to be using YNAB so we looked at it. Actually, I now understand that the big, blue view button on an account page is really a notification that there are transactions to both import and confirm. After clicking it, the transactions are imported and the filter is set to only show the ones that need to be confirmed. I had never noticed before that there were also items to import (as indicated by the little import button). So now I understand more about why this has been confusing to me. Now there are pending transactions to import, but none of them need to be confirmed, so there is no view button, and I've had to learn about the import button, which I didn't know about before. I also understand why after completing the confirmations of imported transactions I need to clear the filter (or rather why there is a filter in place to begin with). From now on, I'm going to just click import rather than view so that I import the transactions and don't apply a filter.

Aquamarine Rhythm I'm so glad they have a User Experience Architect on staff who can predict these various user experiences and prevent developers from implementing these things in a completely unreasonable manner, right?

Nicole A few more thoughts after a few more weeks. I do enter all my transactions manually and I've gotten pretty good at missing them only a few times a year.

I have learned to check the C (cleared) icon when I approve matched transactions to see which ones are matched as pending and which are matched as cleared, which helps to differentiate those. That discovery makes me not hate matching them as much, but I do feel that distinction could be more clear.

When a transaction is matched as pending, and you approve that on mobile (android), nothing visually changes. On desktop there's that column with the clock icon that tells you it's pending. On mobile there's nothing. So the entire thing of approving transactions, for them to look no different afterwards, feels futile. I might suggest you replace the grey C with the desktop's clock icon, kind of like how scheduled transactions get the calendar icon on mobile. That way there's actually something to show for the busy work.

Another annoying discovery: pending transactions that don't automatically link, cannot be interacted with (android). I can't delete them, I can't match them, I can't tap them, I can't select the empty check box square. They are ghosts. If I want to enter now or delete, I need to open it on a computer.

Aquamarine Rhythm I checked with the developers, and this is intended behavior... but we're not sure if it makes total sense to do it that way. It's under discussion—feel free to bug me about it.

RocketBran I know it's been a while, but this should be fixed now—please let me know if you see it again, and thank you for your patience!

Aquamarine Commander Yeah, me too!   Thanks YNAB!

Summer Wilson Yeah, I've been doing manual file import, which granted is a few extra steps, and has to be specifically done (sit down, log in to account, request date range, download, and then match transactions,) but it doesn't pull in pending ones!