I created a scheduled repeating transaction and now my budget is negative
I budget $800 for my student loan each month and it comes out on the 31st. It was taking a long time to clear for December on YNAB while other transactions afterwards had already cleared so I entered the transaction manually and made it a repeating transaction for the end of each month. I had already budgeted the $800 for January at this time. After I did this, YNAB suddenly found that the $800 I had budgeted for the January loan did not exist and is saying I am negative $800 and I need to reconcile this. I don't know where this $800 disappeared to and I do not want to move things around to cover this budget nor have to take away from my next paycheque as I already have plans for it. I tried deleting the repeating transaction but this made no difference. Can someone explain to me how to deal with this?
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Coral Storm said:
is saying I am negative $800Is this in the loan category or in the To Be Budgeted up top?
What are the three columns in the loan category for both Dec. and Jan.?
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In the To Be Budgeted on the top it is saying I am negative $800 - basically saying I budgeted $800 for the loan which was not in my account, but it was. It only appeared negative after I added the December 31 transaction for the loan coming out.
December - Budgeted: $800, Activity -$800, Available $0
January - Budgeted: $800, Activity - $0, Available $800
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Hmm, this does sound a bit complicated! 🧐 You mentioned that your December payment was taking a long time to clear - did it end up clearing in January or December? It's possible that, if the transaction came through in your January budget instead of the December budget, things got mixed up.
If you’re interested in having us take a look, go ahead and enable Support Access for your account. Then, you can reach out to the Support team through your budget so we can check in and see what's going on! In the web app, click the question mark near the bottom right of your budget and select Send a Message.If you’re on the mobile app, tap the Help icon in the bottom right, then tap Support and select Get Support to start a conversation.
Once you’ve done that, let me know—and mention whether you’d like to continue the discussion here or via email!
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Lauren Judging by the Dec. activity, OP correctly dated it for December. (Ideally, it would have already been in the scheduler, which would have entered it for the 31st.)
Coral Storm , As I feared, I believe this has nothing to do with the $800 transaction. In fact, you mentioned that nothing changed when you deleted it. Instead, I think you've been bitten by a design flaw where a future TBB can go negative without obvious warning while you're looking at the current month. It's only because you switched to look at the Jan. budget that you now see that it's short. Previously you were looking at December's area with its TBB sitting at $0. Search for Stealing From The Future for more details.
At this point, I'm assuming your cleared account balances in YNAB match the real world, and any pending transactions that haven't cleared the bank are entered. The only fix, unfortunately, is to reduce one or more green categories, typically targeting February's (if you've made any budget entries there) or January's budget.
Any red showing is an indication you have double-booked your funds, and you currently have an infeasible plan.
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dakinemaui that design flaw has a name.
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nolesrule keep reading... 😉
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dakinemaui I must be going blind. Or maybe I was too tired when I read it. Or some other excuse I can't think of right now.
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nolesrule I vote the latter. 😆
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