Tan Screwdiver Reconcile to your cleared balance, not your working balance.

Tan Screwdiver Pending transactions you've manually entered into YNAB should not be cleared. They should also be excluded from the balance you provide at the start of reconciliation (obtained from the website). Thus, there is no conflict.

This should not be a deal breaker.

dakinemaui Superbone My bank doesn't give me my cleared balance. They give me what they expect to be my cleared balance (for good reason, I imagine, since it shows me what I can likely spend). Are you saying I should take that balance, subtract the 20 pending transactions by hand, and then use the number I come up with to reconcile against? That seems really silly. Can I just reconcile against my last statement instead?

Tan Screwdiver Certainly you can reconcile to your statement. You can also talk to your bank to perhaps explain a less tedious approach to find the actual cleared balance.

Perhaps one possibility is if your bank's website shows a running balance that excludes pending transactions.

Another possibility might be that the website or mobile app may give more information, including the actual cleared balance.

Additionally, you won't always have 20 pending transactions. Reconcile when the number is more manageable.

Ultimately, you could stop using this CC. At the very least you should lodge a complaint with their customer service. You cannot be the only user who needs the cleared balance.

Best of luck!

dakinemaui said:
Certainly you can reconcile to your statement

Forgot to mention that process is described several times earlier in the thread.

dakinemaui So I think I understand where the confusion is happening for new people like me. When I go to reconcile my account it first asks if $123 is my current balance and I say no. Then it asks: "Enter your *current* balance". Instead of saying "current balance" this needs to say "current cleared balance" or something to that effect. That was my main point of confusion.

Tan Screwdiver Makes sense. That input was designed several years ago when the main balance the bank would show was, in fact, the cleared balance. Times change, it seems, and more than a few banks today seem to think showing you the "working" balance (including pending transactions) is the way to go.

Tan Screwdiver Just curious if you are looking at your bank balance only on a mobile app? My mobile app doesn't not give a running balance, but when I log into the webpage on a computer, I can get the running balance. Just a thought.

dakinemaui This was actually mandated by the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau circa 2010, 2011., along with a bunch of other disclosures about overdraft operation. 

dakinemaui , unfortunately, that process doesn't work.  It makes an absolute mess out of your account.  I followed those instructions and ended up with all of my post statement transactions being locked and YNAB makes some fictitious reconciliation adjustment that screws up everything.  

The instructions said to "unclear" all my transactions after the date of the statement which is completely redundant because they already are uncleared.  Why the hell would they be cleared?  But here's the kicker:  after that, the instructions say to highlight all of those said transactions and hit "c" on your keyboard which then sets them all as CLEARED!!  Why the hell would you want them to be cleared at this point!?  They wouldn't be cleared until you reconciled the next months statement.  Reconciling to a statement is such a basic function of account management, why did they have to screw it up!?  It worked flawlessly in YNAB 4, and any other previous program I've used (MS Money, Quicken, etc).  It's as if the Government or Microsoft is running YNAB..."if it ain't broke, fix it until it is!"

jwehrer said:
The instructions said to "unclear" all my transactions after the date of the statement which is completely redundant because they already are uncleared.

Then that step is already done so move to the next step. The only people who should be having this issue are those who import transactions (which are automatically cleared). 

If you do not import (which seems to be the case), then there is nothing special to do at all. As has been said elsewhere, the date is implicit to what has been cleared. Just provide the statement balance to YNAB's initial reconciliation balance query and go down the statement clearing transactions (or entering+clearing missing ones).

You might try to Undo the reconciliation. If that doesn't work, things should resolve themselves at your next reconciliation.

Is there a particular reason you don't wish to reconcile to the most up-to-date balance provided by the bank's website? I would hate having a delay of up to 30 days before detecting a missing transaction, as is the case when reconciling against a monthly statement.

dakinemaui Because it's too damn confusing to figure out what the bank balance is today.  Some of my accounts have the pending transactions included and some don't.  And the pending transactions are not always what the final transaction ends up being (i.e. a restaurant charge that only shows the amount of the bill without the tip as a pending transaction).  It's so much easier to reconcile to a statement and you don't have to sort through a bunch of crap online trying to figure out what the bank balance is.  Reconciling to a statement is account management 101.

dakinemaui and the next step said to highlight all those transactions and hit "c" on the keyboard and that set them all as cleared.  Now they're all locked and my reconciliation was way off and it created a fictitious transaction of fake money that screwed up my account and my budget.  I don't import my transactions so the instructions should have said to skip those two first steps if you don't import.  Ugh!  Why couldn't they just leave it the way it was in YNAB4?  Reconciliation worked flawlessly in YNAB4.

jwehrer Hopefully it's clear at this point how you can reconcile to a statement. If that's not the case, we can provide further details.  Fair point about banks hiding the actual cleared balance.

jwehrer The fundamental rule here is that you compare the cleared balance and transactions in YNAB to the cleared balance and transactions at your bank. Whether you are doing it based on today’s balance or last month’s ultimately doesn’t matter, though the software is built to facilitate doing it using today’s balance. 

If you are manually inputting all transactions and reconciling to the statement, you sit down with your statement and the beverage of your choice, and check that all the transactions on the statement are correct in YNAB. As you do that, you click that they are “cleared.” When you have verified that all your transactions are correct, the cleared balance in YNAB should match the cleared balance you’re looking at. If it doesn’t, there’s a mistake in YNAB somewhere. 

If you are auto-downloading cleared transactions, the first part is still happening, just automatically. Then all that is left is to check that the balances match. 

YNAB has a mechanism for correcting the mistake by automatically adding a transaction for the difference. However, most people are better advised to stick with it and find the mismatch themselves. 

dakinemaui yes, I'm looking forward to my next statement to see if I can get that one to work.

WordTenor I've been diligently reconciling my statements since I got my first checking account in 1977 and have always been able to balance every time.  Never did an "adjusting" transaction to make it work.  Always eventually found and corrected the discrepancy.  That is until the new YNAB.  Have not successfully got that to work yet.  So I've resorted to reconciling the old fashioned way (by hand).  I'll see next month if I can get the next statement to work.

jwehrer I encourage you then to not think of YNAB any differently. All the YNAB register is, is a checkbook. Reconciling to the statement is just the same as it ever was. Don’t het confused by the software part of it. All that marking a transaction as “cleared” means is that you acknowledge that your YNAB record and the bank’s are in agreement. It’s the column in the paper register where I used to make a check mark as I reconciled. 

WordTenor Exactly correct.  That's what I've been doing.

Sea Green Octopus Interesting point of view. For me, reconciling only once a month (at best, most of my accounts only give me quarterly statements) would mean more work for me. It is a lot easier to find a discrepancy within a week worth of transactions (or less) than within a month worth of transactions.
I also agree with dakinemaui , banks don't look at statements anymore but at the ongoing record of transactions, even the pending ones if I have an issue with a transaction.

In short, I prefer to reconcile as I go. To give an example: one day I was checking transactions in YNAB with the bank record. And there was a discrepancy between the cleared balances. I searched. I uncleared all unreconciled transactions and there was still a discrepancy! This told me the issue was at my bank! And sure enough, I connected a few days after and the discrepancy was gone. This was much easier to do with few unreconciled transactions than with a month worth.

Slate Blue Crab You're right, Slate Blue.  It is stunning.  We had to move up from YNAB 4 because there's no YNAB 4 compatible app for my wife's new iPhone.  If you don't have to switch, I definately would not!  I'm currently trying Quicken too.  It's a lot cheaper and more powerful, but sadly, it's mobile app isn't nearly as slick as YNAB's.  Perhaps if YNAB would quit with the constant barrage of emails, and actually LISTEN to what they're customers want, I wouldn't have to cancel their service when my trial with them runs out.  Good luck to you and OregonRider.

Slate Blue Crab If you clear manually (i.e., don't import), you effectively reconcile to whatever date you like, including that of the statement. (It's implicit in the transactions you've cleared.)

Therefore, if you import (direct or file-based), just unclear transactions after whatever date in which you're interested.

TBH, if you don't trust anything other than the official statement, you should unclear everything that imported and you're in the "clear manual" scenario with a couple clicks.

dakinemaui Thanks for the helpful pointers. I'm a long time YNAB user so my usual system is to import and check transactions frequently so that I'm on top of things. I do get how to use the workaround you suggest (that's the only way to reconcile to a statement now), and thanks for that - but it's frustrating that I need to do a workaround for something as simple as this.

Seems like YNAB have priorities that are different from customers, because this is the second issue I've had like this in my first 7 days of the trial - I mean issues where there's a lot of users requesting a feature that they just won't deliver.

Really appreciate your comment though.

Slate Blue Crab May I ask you to tell me about your typical reconciliation workflow? I'd like to understand what reconciling to the statement balance offers that reconciling to the current balance doesn't.

JBCampo I understand that. But why not reconcile to the very latest as found on your bank website? I'm not a kid any more (age-wise 😉) and I don't look at my bank statements either. First of all, I don't get them in the mail. That would be a waste. I get them electronically. Secondly, I have no need to look at the statements as I'm never that far behind in my reconciliation. I'm always looking at the most recent transactions.

Superbone I agree. Also not a kid but not as ahem wise as you! :) 

The reason one reconciled to a statement was because that used to be the only time you found out what your bank had cleared. Now you can find that out every day. It’s outmoded. 

Howevwr, as dakinemaui  points out, statement reconciliation, being a paper-based function, goes hand in hand with not direct importing. And if you’re not importing, reconciling to the statement is a piece of cake...get the statement, mark cleared only those transactions which are cleared, and boom! Reconciled to the statement. It’s dreadfully easy to do; it doesn’t need a separate workflow. 

WordTenor I don't import as I'm outside the US. I still reconcile to my online bank statement more or less daily partly because I'm lazy and don't enter transactions at the POS unless it's cash or I'm buying lots from a single category in a day (Christmas shopping mainly). I know, shoot me but I have one of those memories for numbers that means I could probably tell you what I have in each category without looking.  The other reason, is that I trained as an accountant in the 90s so spent many hours doing monthly bank reconciliations. Reconciling every time I check my accounts is just simply a lot less work. As for nolesrule I don't receive paper statements for all my accounts anyway. I only use the online statement if there's been a problem.

(I appreciate that there are quite a few differences between the UK and US banking systems so I may be missing something. It took me a while to understand why the US folk had such an issue with debit cards and I can't remember the last time I used a paper cheque. I have received a couple though. Typically our tax authorities are behind the times and a business VAT refund resulted in a cheque. I'd not had one in so long, I had to investigate how to pay it in.)

monkeyhanger "goes hand in hand with not direct importing" my bad, I didn't phrase that well. I mean it's a one-way entailment, as we'd say in semantics. If you are the kind of person who wants to reconcile to a paper statement you receive in the mail, it follows that you probably shouldn't be direct importing. Not that "If you don't direct import you must in turn reconcile to a paper statement." 

So if someone desperately wants to reconcile to a paper statement, they shouldn't have their transactions auto-cleared by an import process anyway, since the paper statement hasn't been received. It's very easy to then reconcile to the paper statement--nothing is cleared before the statement is received. But if one is clearing transactions every day anyway, then they can reconcile to more than just the statement. 

monkeyhanger said:
I still reconcile to my online bank statement more or less daily

Due to your "daily" qualifier, I'd call this a  web or online "register", for lack of a better term, and is exactly how YNAB envisioned the workflow. In contrast, a bank "statement" is generated monthly and is either mailed, e-mailed, or can be downloaded in PDF format. 

dakinemaui Fair point. Loose terminology. They have never differed. I check the statement balance to the bank register for that date when I receive it. The bank register has already been reconciled to YNAB so job done.

 Actually, who am I trying to kid. I do occasional checks and that's what I would do if there were any concerns. In reality, any paper statements I do receive usually just get filed for tax purposes. 

Superbone It's too damn confusing to figure out what the back balance is today.  Some of my accounts have the pending transactions included and some don't.  And the pending transactions are not always what the final transaction ends up being (i.e. a restaurant charge that only shows the amount of the bill without the tip as a pending transaction).  It's so much easier to reconcile to a statement and you don't have to sort through a bunch of crap online trying to figure out what the bank balance is.  Reconciling to a statement is account management 101.  

jwehrer The labeling can vary a bit by financial institution, and I know that's frustrating! You want the cleared/current/posted balance when you're reconciling—which does not include pending transactions.

Those are just three labeling options that my personal accounts offer!  Another option is to use the running balance, if it's available. I see you've been in contact via email, and I sent a reply there as well. 🙂

jwehrer Hmm. I’m sorry you’re struggling. I got my first checking account about the same year as you.  I have a lot of accounts but have never had an issue. Between the full balance, the cleared balance, or the running balance, I’ve always been able to get what I need no matter what account. I agree that some are different than others but you have to know what to look for.

WordTenor Thank you.  These instructions make total sense and I wish I would have had them instead of the instructions I originally received.

jwehrer Glad it’s useful. I think where we collectively misstepped before was that in YNAB 4, transactions after the statement stayed cleared, so we were trying to duplicate that. But there is no reason they should be. You begin reconciliation with all of them uncleared and compare. 

One edit to the above for others who read this: step 3 should read “as you verify the the transaction on your statement is in YNAB.” The bank is the primary record. If you are checking only that transactions in YNAB are recorded at the bank, you’ll miss the transactions you’ve forgotten to put into YNAB. 

WordTenor ...aaaaaand you've already elaborated. Hopefully my elaboration is still helpful.

dakinemaui I would make a comment about how it would be nice, and conducive to giving helpful information if the forum software the company has chosen would let us edit for more than 30 minutes, but...

Purple Transistor Will have zero effect unless you just want to kvetch. Have you put in a feature request?

Purple Transistor Why the bump? One can easily reconcile to a statement with a specific date by first unclearing anything after that date. Honestly, if you solely trust the statement -- and not the import/online register -- then you should be unclearing all transactions that were not previously reconciled/locked. The unclearing is a 2-click operation.