
Cloning an existing budget
Is there anyway to clone an existing budget into a new one? There are times when I would like to simulate scenarios or play around with things. It would be nice to be able to do so without the worry of screwing up primary budget.
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Hi there,
I'll pass this along to our development team for further consideration! For now, you can either make those changes in the web app and Undo them (which is dangerous considering just how much you change), or create a Fresh Start budget - the Fresh Start won't have your transaction history, but it'll have your account balances and categories so you can test a few things with that. :)
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Janelle It's great that copying a budget is on the roadmap. In the meantime, couldn't you use Fresh Start to essentially make a copy of the budget? Rename the fresh start budget something like "sandbox budget" and then rename the "archived" budget back to its original name? I haven't done this myself, but someone posted the exact steps in another thread - I want to say it was HappyDance but I'm not 100% certain & I can't remember the exact thread either.)
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Slate Gray Memory Turquoise Lobster Justin Dorough
I don't have a timeline or update to report on this, but I wanted to pop in and mention that if you haven't already filled out this feature request form on this topic, doing so would be really helpful!
Our team looks at these requests to determine what should come next in YNAB.
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Submitted a feature request. The form has limited space, so I ended it with "see forum thread for discussion." The following discussion is intended to supplement my submission of a feature request:
Over time, my financial arrangements change. I open new accounts, close old accounts, add new categories, stop using some old categories, and so on. This is not a speedy process. The usual changes are minor. But they add up over time.
In prior versions of YNAB, I could pick a date after I was done using some old accounts and old categories, then manually delete everything before that date and re-create the account balances and categories as of that date. Then I could safely delete the accounts and categories that are no longer used. This allowed me to have a smaller budget, with less clutter, and still keep a reasonable amount of history.
This process is somewhat complex, and there is always a chance that I will make an error and need to start over. So I used a copy of my good budget, and was willing to throw the copy away if I made a mistake and start over from the good copy. In order to safely do this infrequent budget trimming, I really need to have a good copy to go back to. If I don't have that copy, it's too dangerous to make broad changes like this.
Ultimately, I could delete the old, larger budget after I am sure that the new, smaller budget is working properly. This would more efficiently use YNAB's system storage space. I am also hopeful that it would prevent my budget from growing so large as to have response time issues.
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Hi all!
I just wanted to leave another link to our Feature Request form to make sure your ideas are reaching our development team! :)
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Jannelle said:
No actionable news on this front for you guys, but we officially have plans for a "make a copy" option! It's now road-mapped (not super high, but it's there)!Any update on when?
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Faness So if I want to do some "experimentation", I could do a Fresh Start without really doing it. I mean by that using Fresh Start to have my new Budget created and renamed, but still using the "Archived" version actively right?
Is it really "Archived" in the sense that it has a different status/functionality ?
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