Hi Green Cyborg ! Can you tell me a bit more about what you're seeing? I know you mentioned the calculations aren't accurate, which calculations are you referring to in your budget?

Let me know and we can take a closer look at what's going on! :)

Here's a screenshot of what it looks like in Oct when I budget $1060.34 to pay off the AmEx.  It uses the $963.81 that I did not pay in Sept (calling it "cash left over") to say I have -$617.86 available to pay in October... and that I've overspent.  When I click on the -$617.86 "available" in the budget to cover the amount, it adds $617.86 to my budgeted amount.  I hate seeing the red in October, but even worse, it carries over as overspending into November as well.

Green Cyborg You had $963 available to make your payment. You made a much larger payment than that, subtracting  $2650 when you made the payment. Then you added $1040, but your balance in the category was -$1687, so adding $1040 couldn’t bring it all the way back to zero. It looks like you probably made a budgeted purchase or two which put a few dollars into the category. 

While there is definitely some weirdness about returns and paying the card positive, the basic credit card functionality is relatively straightforward, even if it might seem a little confusing at first. You can’t pay more than is in the category at any time, or just like any other category, it will go overspent. The only fundamental difference between it and any other category is that in addition to you being able to budget money there directly, money moves to it automatically when you spend budgeted dollars. But you still can’t spend more than is in the category. If you do, it will show you that you are overspent—you have sent more money to the card company than the budget had set aside for that purpose, and as a result, the green amounts can’t be trusted. 

Long story short—you need to move $600 to the card category, because you’ve already sent it to the card company and it’s not actually available to do the other jobs you thought it could do. 

Green Cyborg No judgment and no need to apologize! If you have a moment, I highly suggest our Master Credit Cards with your Budget workshop - it'll allow you to see credit cards in action and give you the chance to ask questions live! :)

I can't tell based on the screenshot, but it sounds like you budgeted for the $963.81 you spent on the credit card. When you budget for an expense and then put that expense on your credit card, YNAB moves those funds from your spending category to your Credit Card category so those funds are now Available to pay your credit card bill.

For instance, let's say you budget $20 towards Dining Out and then spend $20 on your credit card and categorize it as Dining Out. YNAB moves that $20 from your Dining Out category to your Credit Card category so you can now pay your credit card off in full.

Since that $963.81 was Available, that's the amount you had put aside to pay towards your credit card statement. That $963.81 Available rolled over from last month, then you budgeted an additional $1,060.34, which gave you a total of $2,024.15 Available to pay towards your credit card (that's the max you had available to pay towards that card). Since you paid $2,642.01, you spent $617.86 more than what was budgeted to cover that balance. You'll need to budget $617.86 towards your credit card category to cover that negative.

The key is to have your credit card Available amount match what you plan to pay towards your credit card. If you plan to make a $100 payment, and there's only $80 in that category, you'll need to budget another $20 to cover the difference.

I hope that helps clear things up! You can take a look at our Quick Start Guide to Credit Cards for more information, or let me know if you still have questions! :)

Faness Thank you for your responses.  To clarify: I did NOT budget for the $963.81. 

WordTenor

The program automatically filled the $963.81 in as "available."  The program is not behaving as described.

Firstly, budgeted amounts were not "moved" to the credit card category.  My credit card category budget in Sept is $0.  Instead, the outflows and inflows on the card give a net for the month of $963.81 (spent more than paid).  In other words, even though I made several payments, they only show up as part of "activity," and not in "budgeted."  It has been suggested that I budget an additional $600 amount to cover this amount.  When I try this, the $600 is ADDED to the $963.81 so that available has now increased to $1563.81.  

How is it possible that budgeting the AMOUNT DUE on the card does not bring the credit card PAYMENT DUE to $0? I've signed up for the credit card workshop for tomorrow morning; thank you for the recommendation.  I'm not sure how taking a class will fix the math... hopefully it will reveal some error that I've made.  I've been budgeting for over 30 years, though: if I can't figure it out, it's more complicated than it needs to be!

Green Cyborg  The credit card class isn’t so much about the math as helping you understand what the budget is doing. 

 When you spend budgeted money on a credit card,  the software automatically set that money aside so that it’s ready for when you need to make the payment.  Imagine it like cash in an envelope: when you spend money on dining out, it takes a $20 bill out of the dining out paper envelope, and put $20 into the credit card payment envelope. 

 That’s  where the $963 came from. So, in your budget, just like you might have $200 set aside for buying groceries, you had $963 set aside for making a credit card payment,  via money moving from one envelope to another automatically. 

 But you then spent a lot more than that.  You made a payment of $2650.  That was way more than the budget had set aside for the purpose of making a credit card payment.  So it showed you as overspent by over $1600— you sent $1600 to the credit card that may have been in your account, but which you currently had budgeted in other categories.  You took it from other envelopes, but you didn’t tell the software which envelopes you wanted to take it from. 

 You then budgeted $1040.  So you did take some money from some other envelopes.  but that still wasn’t enough, because when you sent your credit card payment, you sent $1600 more than the budget had set aside, not just $1000 more. So there still $600 left to go. 

 You can see this if you add up all of your positive category balances.  They will equal $600 more than what is actually in your account.  The missing $600 is the money you already sent to the credit card company.  By budgeting the $600 to cover that negative, you will bring the rest of your categories in line with the money you actually have on hand right now. 

Green Cyborg I just sent you an email so we can take a closer look at what's going on. As long as it's okay with you, we'll investigate and get to the bottom of things! :)

Green Cyborg I really do understand what you’re saying and I really do understand your confusion. I also understand what happened and am explaining exactly what that was. I know it’s not fun to feel confused, but you are assuming no one understands what has happened without carefully trying to understand what we’ve taken the time to write. You are going to hear exactly the same thing from the person from YNAB who emails you, but I hope the penny drops for you more easily with someone helping you one on one. I wish you the best of luck. When it clicks, it will click. 

WordTenor  I tried nYNAB for 4 months as a test (along with YNAB4) and it never clicked. I took the class as well.  Should I ever use nYNAB, I will just set up as a Checking account. It really is not intuitive, and I'm pretty analytical.    I'll reach out to you if I do decide to use as designed since you seem to have the process on lock. 

Agent99 If you understand the pre-YNAB debt category in YNAB 4, understanding the credit card payment category in nYNAB is a matter of understanding what two parts of the system you're looking at. In both systems, the relationship is that the budget tracks the debt, and the accounts track the card balance. In 4, what was visible in the budget was the carried debt, the accounts showed the balance, and you did math to figure out the payment. In web, what is visible in the budget is the payment, the accounts still show the balance, and you do math to figure out the carried debt. (It is also in the inspector.) 

90%+ of the problems I see with credit cards (I would honestly be willing to guess it is nearly all of them, but I haven't kept track and wish I had) that aren't related to a return or cash back are people paying the card without budgeting for the payment first. This is especially confusing for YNAB 4 users, because YNAB 4 let you do this without throwing up any sort of warning. If you had a large enough base of working capital in YNAB 4, it was entirely possible to bumble along forever without realizing that you were consistently paying more than the budget had set aside, because you had enough cash to never really be in danger of overdraft. nYNAB gives you a big red angry oval the moment you go even a penny over, regardless of how much cash you have on hand. 

Returns and cash back are a different matter, and I wish the devs would hurry up and just eat the requisite crow on that design and fix it. That SFTF is being worked on gives me hope that perhaps someday they will backpedal on how these are treated.