WhoMovedMyCheese I'm not arguing with you about your base argument point. I had the very same one at the time of the transition. Even before we saw that changes came at the speed of molasses and that they didn't live up to their promises. I've been a user for over 10 years so I've seen it all.

However, I don't agree with you about the base YNAB system. Maybe I used to be in a hole and YNAB helped me dig out. But I am now in the opposite position to what you describe and I still find YNAB helps me to optimize my savings better than any other system out there. I am much more than stable and I don't have any bad behaviors, just priorities.

Superbone Yeah, I hate the model of paying subscriptions for software when I used to just pay a price once and get to use it as long as I wanted to, but I also think YNAB is the best investment in my entire life in terms of ROI.  

I've been using YNAB continuously >1 year, since summer 2019, and they've done quite a few additions while I've been using it.  They added the running balance (which really should have been there all along) and did two overhauls of the goals.  Nothing overwhelming, but not nothing. 

YNAB is still totally worth it IMO.

PhysicsGal totally agree.  And there is a lot of discounting of updates because it "should have been there all along".  I'm fine with pushing them to improve but feeling like you are being cheated is ridiculous.  The product either provides enough value or it doesn't.  Be a better consumer. 

PhysicsGal Totally agree regarding ROI! And it's not. Even. Close.

As far as when you started, let's just say it was the optimal time when it comes to new features. 🙂The ones you mentioned are probably the best value added since the beginning of nYNAB.

PhysicsGal And yet still won't do something as simple as give us back the check number field because Jesse doesn't think that anybody still writes a check (because he doesn't).  I agree that it's the best budgeting tool available right now and that's why I keep using it, but they remain just completely tone deaf to their customers.  It probably took them more time to create their CSV doodle during import then it would take them to give us back the check number field that we had in YNAB4.

bobbucy A partial reason for that could also be trying to reach broader international audience. I for one live in a country where no-one ever uses checks and I know there a lot of other countries like mine in this aspect. I would have felt mighty confused about a field like this.  (Tough to be honest, I did already feel quite confused about the fields in the beginning regardless...)

Superbone Ah, I didn't realize my luck in my timing.  I do know I was using YNAB3 in 2011 and when I started using nYNAB last year it was definitely a huge improvement over YNAB3.   I've tried Every Dollar and,  the paid version costs more annually than YNAB and is much less fully featured than YNAB.  Unlike YNAB, there is no real connection between the money in your accounts and your budget and it's much easier to mess up and get out of whack.  I quit using Every Dollar when I realized the sum of my sinking funds was above the total of my accounts, so I had missing money.  It's much harder to have missing money in YNAB as long as you are reconciling your accounts.  Other than that, there's not much competition, I guess there mEnvelopes but I see people are switching over from it a lot so I don't think it's so great.  I've seen a google drive spreadsheet that is basically doing YNAB's calculations, but I don't want to give up automatic imports and make my budgeting more work than it needs to be.

I also think they focus the most effort on on boarding new customers  to help with the learning curve so they become long term customers.  Most people, if they can successfully use YNAB and get control of their finances, will keep paying the annual subscription if they get hooked on it and realize how much an ROI it's giving them and how wonderful it is to have money sitting there waiting to pay for unexpected car repair or home repairs and other TEs, which is really life changing IMO.  And just the calm of knowing your finances are in order is totally worth it.  But I honestly don't have many complaints about the software, since I've been lucky to be here for these pretty big improvements.

Rakuna It's unlikely it was to make international audiences more comfortable. YNAB4 had the feature and allowed you to toggle it on and off.

nolesrule Exactly.  And more than a few of us have asked that we just have the same ability in the current version of YNAB.  

bobbucy in all honestly, they are in the BEST position now then they have EVER been for bringing that field back. They already have a dropdown to show/hide running balance. Add the chk field option there.

RIP_MSMoney Agree completely and that's exactly what I suggested to them.  At least they were honest in telling me that they had no plan to do so.

Yes I can  I also don't have a problem with the SAAS model.  The browser based solution has actually been helpful to me when traveling for work.  My issue is the same as already expressed with regard to little functional improvement, and I continue to find the overall attitude toward something as simple as the check number field to be completely condescending.  YNAB is able to get by with this approach because of a lack of meaningful competition in this space.

WhoMovedMyCheese You're correct, they do buy that from several import providers. Yet, it still consumes much of their time. I would guess partly because they have to support each provider's (different) API. I just wish there were more of a balance to the development. There's lots of things that could be done that would benefit ALL users, not just those who import. However, if the masses "need" importing, they do have to keep the primary revenue providers happy. (I have no idea the proportion of importers to the entire userbase. I have heard the number of users outside the USA is fairly small.)

dakinemaui yes I agree.  The integration clearly isn't working and given the discussions here, its a major problem so maybe WhoMovedMyCheese you're right some change is required.   It sounds from what I've read that these problems have got a lot worse since the move to Plaid? 

I spent a chunk of my career as a senior marketer at a couple of different insurance and financial services companies (including large, medium, intermediary based, plus one startup) and  we always faced major integration and API issues.   This was especially true  the case where we had links between an old legacy pricing system, more user friendly website front end and mail house systems,  Every time anything was updated teams of people tested and crosschecked and something usually broke. 

If there were ongoing and chronic problems with  a feature that seems so important to many customers, as importing seems to be to YNAB customers, I'd have been making business cases with the product manager for focus to be on fixing that one major problem not other features.    That said, if I was a marketer focussed on driving  acquisition and retention focussed, I'd be worried about making such a big change (eg. switch importers) as it would suck up all the dev focus. 

Some of the readers here may be aware of the history (I had YNAB4 but didn't follow the change)?  It does make me wonder if rebuilding the system to address legacy issues  was a major driver for the change the new YNAB from YNAB 4?

Yes I can The previous product was on a dying platform (Adobe Air). However, make no mistake, the reason for nYNAB was the SAAS income stream. 

The software at launch was the "minimum viable product" (their words). No search, no reports, no polish, but it had import. Box checked. 5 years later, they are still on top, so I can't fault their business logic.

WhoMovedMyCheese All true. I don't know that anybody would disagree with any of that.

dakinemaui Every launch product is an MVP.. by definition. Figure out what the minimum product is that will be profitable and build that. Why would any company build something more than an MVP before releasing it?

WhoMovedMyCheese PC has significant revenue from managing capital. YNAB is a much smaller product from a much smaller company, with just one revenue stream - your subscription dollars. Whatever PC is doing that works, they have far more resources to put behind it.

Scott 

Scott said:
Every launch product is an MVP.. by definition.

 No it's not. Product managers/owners often have a really difficult time distinguishing between needed and optional feature sets. nYNAB was a perfect example of that confusion between need and want in a launch feature set.

I see it all the time in my line of work building ecommerce sites. Some fancy feature is a must for MVP, but the reality is all you need for ecomm MVP is find products, view products, add to cart, take payments with accurate order totals, and report the data correctly to an OMS while supporting actual product inventory availability.

I'm working on a project right now where the client keeps insisting they are going to launch in 10 days. yet they still can't load product data correctly and they can't get the orders fulfilled without human intervention in their end to end testing, yet they wasted loads of time trying to implement unneeded features instead of getting their systems to talk correctly to the ecomm platform.

A nYNAB MVP would essentially have been a YNAB4 analog. No direct import, no goals, accurate TBB calculations.

Technically it's still not MVP, because the current month TBB calculation is not always correct. Of course they have hand-waved that away. It's unfortunate, because I'd say not a week goes by where in one of the 3 major YNAB discussion places I frequent this particular issue pops up and has to be explained, when it so easily could have been avoided. 5 years of this ad nauseum.
 

nolesrule thanks. Before I read your post about your current project I was whist fully missing my days as a business systems analyst. Your post reminded me of the annoying parts of the job which often involved a senior manager who didn’t know how things in the business got done, a user who wanted everything to stay exactly the same, and a development team that gave senior managers what they asked for rather than what they needed. I’ll appreciate my boring insignificant government job more now. 

Scott I would GLADLY pay more for YNAB if I was assured of rock solid bank connections.  It would be worth its weight in gold to me. 

WhoMovedMyCheese Yet another of my accounts (Chase) started having problems now.  Right now only 2 out of my 8 accounts are actually still connected properly.  That is 25%. In the image below 2 of them have no icon because I had to manually unlink them so that I would stop getting locked out of my bank! Yes, the connection to RBC was so messed up that it kept locking me out of my bank's website.

Forest Green Memory agreed.  Feature requests aside, this is the most annoying situation with YNAB.  No other platform I use has issues with linked accounts like YNAB has.  Either they did a terrible job negotiating sla's and support with Plaid, or they are failing to hold them accountable.  I don't see ynab addressing this issue in any meaningful way.

Agent99 You can't do Direct Importing from banks on YNAB 4 though right? If I recall that was the main feature that encouraged me to pull the trigger and upgrade.  Which is why it infuriates me so much that the headline feature I signed up to nYNAB for is so broken these days.

Forest Green Memory Yea, direct importing wouldn't work for me if I moved.  Most of my bank accounts are with Capital One; from what I heard importing doesn't work (have my theories why).  I enter transactions at POS or every Friday so it's not a big deal for me to do manual entry at this point.   I wouldn't pay $80ish for pretty much the same functionality I have now 

Agent99 Yeah well in my much more complicated world with multiple banks, many credit cards, and other accounts, coupled with myself who is just bad at organizing, and bad with tracking, manually entering transactions just doesn't happen.

Forest Green Memory  I hear you.  I have five checking accounts among two banks and seven credit card accounts  so I get your challenges.   

Forest Green Memory said:
manually entering transactions just doesn't happen.

 Like any habit, it has to be established. The good news is there are many busy people with lots of accounts who have done it, so it's certainly possible if you want it.

Cyan Violin Sure, the gains come from the principles. YNAB just makes it easy enough that you continue to follow those principles.

Cyan Violin And that's just the base level. If you follow the YNAB principles well, you will not go further into debt and you will get ahead (Rules 2 & 4*). Next, you need to add the layer of a plan of action.

If you're in debt, how will you get out of debt? What do you need to do to buy your first house? What's the best way to grow your savings? How much should I save for my kids' education? How does one invest? How much do I need to retire and when will I get there? These are all things you need to learn outside of YNAB for the most part.

The most important part of a healthy tree is a solid trunk and roots. That's what YNAB is to your finances. It's up to you to take it from there.

WhoMovedMyCheese Yup, I'd love to have better analysis tools in YNAB. While not as core to YNAB's functionality, the extremely simplistic reporting isn't in line with what I hope they are building. Frankly when I first visited the reports, I thought I was missing something.

At this point though I've got YNAB to manage my monthly budgeting and I've moved on to PC for planning as you and Superbone suggest. I'd love to have YNAB embedded right inside PC in fact, replacing PCs budget section.

WhoMovedMyCheese And I will return the compliment. This is an excellent post. I have never found that all-in-one financial software product over all my years. I used Quicken for many years before I found YNAB and sure, I knew where every penny went after the fact but by then, it was too late. I struggled paycheck to paycheck for many, many years until I found YNAB.

I think you're right that maybe there never will be that all-in-one software. YNAB has said they're not interested in branching out from budgeting. Let's hope that someday their reporting approaches what those other products you mentioned can do.

As far as business software is concerned, I do think that YNAB has backed off their stance a bit. I don't have my own business so I don't know what all is required but I think  YNAB only suggests it for very small businesses. I was told by one of the moderators that YNAB themselves stopped their own experiment and have gone back to Quickbooks.

I do have a PC account but I don't use it much. Most of my investment accounts have two factor authentication so I have to request a key for each of them anyway so the fact that they are together in one place doesn't do too much for me. I might as well go to each website individually when I want to update my balances. I can get much better detailed info at their own websites.

For investments, what I found works better for myself is my own customizable spreadsheet. Here I can do whatever is particular to me. For example, I balance my overall investment strategy in my 401k account where the bulk of my retirement savings lives. I have it configured to tell me the exact percentages to change in my 401k to balance my stock/bond ratio across all of my investments including my taxable accounts. This way there are no tax consequences as it is unnecessary to do any buying or selling in my taxable accounts.

Tomcad You are right. So much room for growth. It seems to me that an investment in a localization team could pay back in spades. On the other hand, they are struggling just to support their direct import feature as is and to add meaningful functionality to the base software in a timely fashion. But it does seem like a localization team could work in parallel.

Superbone You don't even need a localization team. You build the base localization functionality into your software and outsource the translation work.

nolesrule I was just about to post the same thing, so glad you were ahead of me.  It's not a big deal to do multiple languages.  If I recall correctly in the platform I worked with it was a resource file.   I may not be correct here but I that's what I seem to remember.

Navy Blue Foal I definitely feel like I'm getting value out of it for 7$ a month.. but if you take into consideration the 2 following elements, then it becomes a little more unclear: 1) nYNAB is now a SaaS product as the topic mentions, not a product you pay once 2) The longer you stay with YNAB, the more you expect to see updates that will be helpful to you

So far, I've only been with nYNAB for one year so it's worth it, there is no doubt about that in my mind. In 3 years, I will have paid 330$ in CAD dollars.. Will I still continue to be a client and feel like the money is worth it? Probably. However, if the number of new interesting features continues to stay this stagnant, suddenly I feel like my answer won't be as obvious..

nYNAB has been out for more than 4 years and I'm seeing veteran users still talking about Stealing from Future and basic reporting.. 4 years is a loooong time. I'm looking at their release notes and the updates in 2019 and 2020 are just very, very underwhelming for a team of 15 developers. So either that number of developers is completely wrong or they've been putting a lot of time/resources on perhaps experimental features and research (AI maybe?) that have just not panned out.

To be fair, their "Up Next" page (https://www.youneedabudget.com/up-next/) has 2 things that do seem bigger in terms of workload (Mobile First & Debt Management) so I guess we'll see?

Superbone Something to notify/find overspending in this and last month would help AVOID debt growth. I really wish they would address the commonly posted questions most first, but I'm sure you're right -- new users increase revenue more than these ongoing annoyances cause users to leave.

Superbone Honestly the beta fix for SFTF basically got the job done. It only doesn't work well if you go backward in time. I don't understand why it has proved so complicated to make the last handful of tweaks necessary to bring it fully to the app. 

dakinemaui You mean like the fact that if you overspend on credit one month, all indications of it completely vanish when the month rolls over? yeah I HATE that.  Makes it such a pain to track, and so easy to run afoul of it as well when you make spending right near the end of the month.

Superbone What is SFTF please?

Forest Green Memory Stealing From The Future

Superbone Ok now I get the acronym but still not clear on what it is :)

Forest Green Memory Sorry. Check out this thread for details:

https://support.youneedabudget.com/t/k9szvg/warning-when-future-months-tbb-is-underfunded

Forest Green Memory This is my big argument. They claim that rolling the over spending over to the next month makes it easier to ignore... I argue that it's easier to ignore when it disappears completely, and the only place you notice the increased debt is by your balance, which isn't that obvious if you're already carrying a balance.

farfromtheusual ESPECIALLY if you already carry a balance.

It would be so simple to put a summary of last and this month's overspending in the header. Pretty hard to miss when it's always visible like that. Convenient, too, if a click would take you there. Years later, users are still confused when Import pulls a sneak attack in last month's budget after they've moved on to the new month.

dakinemaui I'm probably missing something, but I find the bright red or orange bubble that pops up when you enter, or match, a transaction much more obvious than the small type face in the header. Who is not seeing those bubbles?

dakinemaui Agree.  That one kind of drives me nuts when it happens.🙂  I pretty much know immediately what has happened and can find it fairly quickly but it's annoying.

Periwinkle Flute A few examples: importing a transaction dated 10/31 that cleared Nov. 2nd. (User has already moved onto the Nov. budget.) Collapsed category groups is another cause. Looking at a sea of Underfunded goals tend to desensitize one to the color yellow (orange?); it's just too similar. It's not uncommon for transactions to automatically categorize to a Hidden category (Payee rules).

YNAB thought it important enough to put a warning in the account register (kudos for that), but it's only for the current month. It's also not even on the screen where you can do anything about it.

dakinemaui Ahh, ok. I've never run into items 2, 3 or 4. Item 1 has happened (I tried linking an account recently but stopped because I spent more time changing Payee names and/or splitting transactions manually than it took to just enter them myself). But in that instance, once I approved a transaction to a category which was overspent that yellow/orange bubble would pop up.

Periwinkle Flute The problem is those red or orange bubbles go away on the next month.  So if you have orange overspending (credit overspending) in October, and don't budget against them in October, when you move to November they just poof away.

Periwinkle Flute 

Periwinkle Flute said:
Ahh, ok. I've never run into items 2, 3 or 4.

 If you stick around here long enough, you'll see every possible way the software can throw people for a loop, even if it's never happened to you.

Forest Green Memory This is the problem that I have with it. But of course this is a whole 'nother issue from the complaints of the OP.

Amy H Ironically, making things simpler is definitely a feature. Improving user experience, making things more intuitive and easier to pick up from scratch, you need "features" to do that. If you add new things and it gets more complicated for the end user, then there's a problem. New features should add value to your use of YNAB (in some cases, you might not even know you needed them in the first place!) or, at least, not make things worse for you. 

I'm curious, if you had to pick between YNAB 4, which you paid once (I believe it was on sale for 20$ at some point) or a product that you need to pay monthly for years to come, how long would you be willing to pay before going "hmm, there hasn't been any impactful upgrade to the software that has added value to my use". 1 year? 3 years? 5? I'm not saying the product won't be worth it anymore and I think most people in this thread are not saying that either. But there's certainly a basis in wondering how they handle their roadmap.

Amy H But if you aren't going to connect to your banks, why not just use the offline YNAB 4 and not pay a recurring monthly fee? That's the thing that gets me.  Without the bank feeds working I'm struggling to see why I shouldn't just go back to YNAB 4.

Forest Green Memory what a great idea! Where can I buy it??

Green Orca I think this is also a rather limited view. Just because you pay for it monthly doesn't necessarily mean that changes need to happen. The anywhere connectivity of the product also has value. I can access YNAB from any computer anywhere, and use my mobile app at any time, and have it updated with no waiting. That has value in and of itself. Improvements are nice, but by the same token, there is usefulness in the SAAS model if it gives you connectivity that isn't there otherwise.

farfromtheusual anywhere that you have internet connectivity. I travel for work to places where that is not a given.

jenmas that is more rare than not these days. I live where connectivity is expensive, and my cell phone provides me with a hot spot to make up for it.
The flip side is that having it loaded onto a computer only means that it is only accessible on that computer, which if that's not a laptop then it isn't transportable either.

Either way there are limitations.

farfromtheusual Except ynab4 had a mobile app and sync capabilities. It may not have been as clean but it worked. So such a subscription isn't necessary for "connectivity". Thr only real thing thry add that provides regular monthly value is auto syncing. Which depending on your bank or country may not work at all or only intermittently. For me its been mostly reliable but I know thats not true for everyone.

Forest Green Memory I don't know what YNAB4 is, exactly. I've only used YNAB during the time it's been what it is now.  I'm really happy with it, so I'm not looking to change to a different YNAB delivery method. While I prefer that things not change in my overall experience, I do appreciate regular updates that keep everything running smoothly enough that I don't have to think about it. So it's working for me. 👍

Amy H YNAB 4 was the last version of their original application which was a "normal" one time purchase software.

Forest Green Memory Aha! Got it. I like what I have, but that's kind of my point. The YNAB folks aren't going to make everyone totally happy - I'm glad to have the software and the subscription though.

Navy Blue Foal I think the world has shifted to a more connected usable from anywhere model, so it makes the most sense. Even windows has gone this direction now.

Lemon Pie - I think finding YNAB in 2020 could certainly allow you to maximize your budget changes since everything in live got flip turned upside down and starting new habits has been somewhat forced.

Green Orca Wow, you've done your homework. Interesting findings that give some perspective. Thanks.

blackdiamond 🙄

Drinking the kool-aid i see.

There is nothing special about ynabs method, its standard practices that well predate ynab redressed in the 4 commandments....erm I mean rules.

I'm not paying a subscription for rules. I'm paying for software.