
Have I mis-handled refunds in YNAB 4?
We've been using YNAB 4 for about 4 years. Whenever we received a refund from a vendor, or a friend paid us for their share of something, we'd enter that money into YNAB by crediting it directly to the category it was originally from (like "dining out") instead of "Income for April".
For example, if we returned a kitchen item to Amazon, since the purchase was originally classified in YNAB as "household goods" category, we'd enter the refunded dollars directly to "household goods". The thinking was, the money was going back to the same category it came from.
I recently realized that the numbers in the Budget screen, such as "Income for (month)" and "Available to budget", never increase when I enter incoming refund money this way. We've assigned the $ directly to categories, so those numbers should be correct, but the totals at top of Budget must be wrong.
So I think we may have a bunch more money available to us in Budget that is not displaying properly. To see it, I think I should fix all of the mis-entered transactions - by going back and changing them to "Income for (month)", then assigning the money to categories.
Is that right? I did mess this up, right? And that's how to fix it?
thanks in advance for the help!
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I typically add it as an inflow to that specific category as well. The issue is if you'd already budgeted to cover that category, your category is now over budgeted.
You'll then need to move money from the category with the excess to another category where it's need.
For instance I have a category for work reimbursements. I always fund that category with money from my income. Then when I receive the reimbursement I inflow it to that category. It then shows up in the available balance for that category. From there I can move it around as I see fit.
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nolesrule said:
categorized to "Income for <month>"That category doesn't exist in nYNAB.