dakinemaui I see the line you're drawing, but in both cases we still want your budget to reflect today. Taking funds out of the Available column before they've been spent is like hiding money from yourself and we don't want that - we want you to have a full and honest overview of what's currently in your budget. If your priorities change, job loss or otherwise, your budget tells you where you are as of today so you can make decisions going forward.

Faness on what planet is an uncleared check money that’s not spent? Sure, I could put a stop payment on it and spend the money on something else, or just spend it and let the check bounce but those are aberrations, not the way to view your account balance in the normal course of business. If you have to undertake such drastic measures, THAT is when you should have to make unusual manipulations to your budget and register, not have it be the default behavior. 

bevocat Yes! Post-dated transactions (regardless of whether they are post-dated checks, or bills committed to via a bill pay system) are spending that has happened & has to be accounted for in the budget. Paying my electric bill is normal, whether I send the money the day I get the bill or the last day possible shouldn't make a difference because that money is committed to that purpose. I need to see that in my categories & accounts in order to be able to make decisions if my situation changes. Changing a payment I have already set up is the abberation, not setting up the payment in the first place.

Faness said:
Taking funds out of the Available column before they've been spent is like hiding money from yourself

You're missing the point -- that money has been spent, it just hasn't left my account yet. I'm not going to change my mind.  I simply want the account balance to reflect reality.

If this were a paper check, you would suggest that I record when I mail the check, right? I can change my mind just as easily and put a stop order on that check in 2 minutes. Isn't your advice therefore inconsistent?

Step back a moment, and perhaps you can you see that the very foundation of YNAB is to hide money from yourself. I absolutely hide the Grocery money from myself so I don't accidentally spend it on bling for my pet ferret (or whatever).

I realize you're trying to explain one of two views. I totally understand that view, and some of the time that makes sense for my needs. However, it doesn't ALWAYS make sense for my needs. We're not asking for an either/or -- merely the choice.

dakinemaui We don't get to have choices, because they're somehow convinced that toggle settings create unmanageable complexity for their support staff.

So we get a compromise. Which as we all know means everybody gets hosed equally.

Slate Blue Sander I've never seen a high yield checking account that doesn't require transaction-based hoops to jump through.

Slate Blue Sander I agree there are use cases for both impacting and not impacting category/account balances. The mere existence of a future dated transaction in the register vs. in a scheduled area is that user-selectable "toggle" you mentioned.

nolesrule I dont know what ones you've seen. My credit union requires only two things, to be signed up for electronic statements (a non-issue for me as I do so anyway on all my accounts) and 12 transactions per month on either your debit card or a credit card issued by the credit union and I think most people make at least 12 card transactions of at least $5 each per month, even in my case where I usually use a PIF CC that pays me 2% cash back, my subscriptions like netflix I just auto bill to my credit union cc, which in addition to meeting the transaction requirements also still earns some rewards, though it isn;t nearly as good as 2% cash back for small monthly subscriptions or small transaction when I buy just a few things at the store or stop off for some (budgeted for) fast food, it's simple to meet that requirement even while still mostly using a seperate rewards cc.

Slate Blue Sander Those are exactly the transaction hoops I'm talking about. I don't have a dozen small transactions I could use for that so putting things on autopay that way would result in a not-insignificant amount of rewards lost. Otherwise, it would require adding an extra mental IF/ELSE statement to pulling a card out of the wallet at the register, and knowing how many transactions have already happened in the particular statement period.

Slate Blue Sander my rewards checking requires that the debit transactions be in person, either PIN or non-pin. And to get maximum rewards they require a certain amount of credit card transactions too. That card is only a 1% cash back so theoretically I should do any spending over that amount on a card with more rewards, but optimizing that is hard work. Even altering my spending habits to get the required # of transactions is hard, since I would prefer to limit my debit card use to avoid getting that card info exposed to fraud.

adriana01 Yeah, that's the other thing. I only use my debit card at an ATM.

adriana01 It's worth sopping around. One of my local credit unions does that too where you can get a slightly higher rate but too many hoops to jump though, 18 card transactions with at least $500 in monthly credit card spending, that is too much to deal with. But 12 transactions of at least $5 each for 2% isn't that hard, and the only type of transaction that is excluded from counting is an ATM withdraw (shame because I totally would withdraw $20 12 times throughout the month and deposit the cash back a day or two later.  I figured out after my monthly subscriptions are autobilled, some as much as $30 for the month, I only need 6 more transactions, I have more than 6 transactions a month of under $20 I can easily use between a fast food purchase at least once a week at between $6-$12 each time, and those times inbetween regular grocery shopping where you just need one or two things to get you by until the next major trip.  So yes there are hoops but if you do a little searching you can probably find something with just a few simple hoops that makes it worth it.

Slate Blue Sander so far I haven't seen any that have a better return than the one I have, but I do check periodically.

Captain Taniele Just another note. I thought about this from the cash envelope perspective. 

Say I have $200 in my eating out envelope. Say I know for a fact that I'll be going out to dinner with my friends next weekend and I'll spend $100. Using my example above, if I'm Person A, I'd want to take that $100 out of my cash envelope so I don't spend it during the week. I still have that $100 but perhaps I'd put it in another envelope for scheduled spent funds or something.

If I'm Person B I still plan on spending that $100 but I haven't fully funded my eating out budget so I don't want it to come from the $200 that I have available. I know that I'll receive money next Friday for example and I'll use that to fund the category for the weekend. 

In either case the system works. Each person gets to decide when a transaction will affect their available balance. I just don't see the need for a feature change in this regard.

Captain Taniele Accurate transaction dates are fundamental to being able to research discrepancies. What if the spending happens multiple times a month for the same amount? What's the differentiation?

The thing is there's no good reason for it in terms of how it doesn't affect the category, and it should have been considered in the first place. It was a lazy choice when architecting the software. As a developer myself, I am not willing to defend a lazy choice that restricts something arbitrarily that doesn't violate the Business Rules (in this case the 4 Rules of YNAB). As has been mentioned, the workaround to this is category bloat and complicated reporting. Your dining out example would require an extra category, which means your budget will have an extra category, and your reports would have an extra category unless you take the even extra additional steps to do a clean-up later. It's just not a user-friendly experience.

Furthermore, this isn't about just category management, but it's also about cashflow management in your accounts. If you know the date of the transaction in YNAB, you can look at your transactions and answer the question of whether the transaction is going to put you into overdraft, and when, so you'll know if you need to move money around between accounts. Will it go negative before the next paycheck? And if not, how long after in case for some reason there's a delay in when I get my paycheck. With today's interest rates, there's no reason to keep more money in checking than necessary.

So this functionality can actually address two different awareness issues.

Captain Taniele I think you phrased these arguments better than I did. ;)

As for the automatic matching, it's a net for the matching logic. If you enter a transaction for 4/1, we doubt it's the same transaction that imports on 4/25 - that's an unusually long time for a transaction to be pending. However, the transaction can still be Manually matched, it just won't automatically match in case they are separate occurrences. 

Faness I have two checks I wrote in Q3 2018 that didn't get deposited till March. If the algorithm detects multiple potential matches, then choose the most recent one to auto-match if that's how they want to play it. There's no reason not to look at all uncleared transactions.

Again, this is just lazy programming using the excuse that it's difficult.

nolesrule Wow! I've never heard of a check being held for that long. 

Was the check for a specific amount? Since transactions are only matched by date and amount, the date frame was shortened to help prevent matching issues. We didn't want the $5 Starbucks purchase on 4/25, matching to the $5 Walmart purchase on 4/1. There was recently another thread here in the forum where a transaction was matching to the wrong scheduled transaction and caused some confusion, the date range is meant to help limit those occurrences.

I know you've mentioned having programming experience, but I am not so versed. I'm not sure how difficult this would be to change, but it was put in place for a reason. If automatic matching beyond that span is a pain point I'm more than happy to check on that.

Faness said

Wow! I've never heard of a check being held for that long. 

Was the check for a specific amount?

Yes. Dues and activity checks for my daughter's girl scout troop. They are flush in terms of funds because they are very successful with cookie sales, so the leaders don't make bank runs much at all. It's extreme, but it it's a real-world example. It's also quite annoying that they wait so long.

Captain Taniele 

Expansion of the matching window doesn't solve the issue of providing information on which to base cash-flow decisions. What is the upcoming demand from my checking account on a day by day basis over the next 4 weeks? When can I move "excess" funds into a different account? Do I need to pull any money back, or will the income that arrives a week earlier be sufficient? That sort of thing. When the money leaves the account is important in some contexts, and fudging the dates to get categories to decrement isn't enough.

Poor decisions of this sort cost real dollars from lost interest or even overdraft fees. YNAB's recommendation of a single checking account just doesn't make sense at some level of cash holdings (personal call on where that lies).

All that is necessary for these assessments is a running balance and future-dated transactions that affect account balances. I can understand YNAB not implementing them as part of the "minimum viable product" at launch (their words), but it's been several years at this point.

Instead, we get Zapier integration (whatever in the heck that is) and I can ask Alexa how much is in my Grocery category (if I had such a device). I would bet a large sum of money that those took WAY more time and effort than something that would be useful to far more users. Many users would also like a running balance to aid reconciliation.

Exactly. Right now (in YNAB4) I can look at my checking account register and see that it will go negative on April 20th with no new money coming in. I also know that we're receiving 2 paychecks on the 12th and 15th, so I don't need to worry about it and I have 5 days to move some money around if both checks fail to deposit for some unlikely reason. Furthermore, I can see (by temporarily adding in the checks) that those checks would cover us through the May 1 mortgage payment.

I also can see that quarterly property taxes are due on the 1st of next month, and I usually pay that a few days early. It means that I can schedule the property tax payment anytime after the 15th and not worry about overdrafting.

But we'll be getting 2 more checks on the 26th and 30th, so maybe I'll schedule the property tax payment for after the 26th. I can then move in all my May expenses into the register and see how far those checks will last and decide how much money I want to move into a savings account. I can then decide after the April 12th/15th checks how much money I want to keep in checking and how much I can move to savings... based on the end of April checks I won't be receiving for another 2 weeks.

I calculated that due to the rate spread between checking and savings, this method keeps more money in savings on average to the point I could cover the costs of the YNAB subscription... but unfortunately I can't actually do this in YNAB.

Now, if they introduced cashflow modeling like the module that existed in MS Money (it even had pretty cashflow line graphs), then I wouldn't actually need this feature for cashflow purposes. But I would still need it for category balance reliability. In MS Money the Scheduler wasn't even part of the account register. It was a separate module  cashflow data. I actually spent more time there then in my account register. I'd post a screen shot, but my MS Money data is 5 years out of date, so it wouldn't make any sense.

JoeDid The problem is this assumes that all your recurring transactions occur exactly one time per month. Anything else and the running balance projection using the Scheduler is inaccurate.

nolesrule That's a point I overlooked, probably because, my budget being seriously simple, I don't run into that problem. Carry on.

I have a work around for that too. Anything that recurs twice a month or fortnightly, I make two scheduled transactions for. For the 1st and 15th, I make 2 once a month scheduled transactions. For my fortnightly paycheck, I have two transactions each of which is an every 4 week scheduled transaction.

Superbone Not to steal your thunder, but I've done that on the rare (for me) occasions where I needed a twice-a-month transaction. Also for the rare times I wanted to do what-if scenarios.

JoeDid I have no thunder to steal. 😄 I'm just stating the facts and I've been using it for a while now and it works great although it is a workaround and it requires more maintenance if you need to change one. Just one of the many workarounds that I need as an advanced user of the software.

JoeDid I don't believe you are. :)

I was reading Entered Transactions as a replacement for Scheduled Transactions, thus assumed the Scheduler wouldn't be a part of the equation - but I know what happens when people assume, my mistake. After re-reading the arguments, I understand it's not about changing the behavior of Scheduled Transactions but adding a separate option for Entered Transactions.

Faness It's not even a separate option. It's just the ability to enter it for a future date and not make it a scheduled transaction. In other words, exactly how YNAB 4 worked.

nolesrule Granted it is a workaround and it’s not perfect. Still gets you further into those months than without it.