Violet Flute I don't know what your process is now, but if you categorize outflows and inflows to the same category, a simple search for that category in All Accounts will give you the pending amount owed.

The fact you have to wait 6+ weeks before reimbursement is a separate issue. (I'm assuming you have a normal 4-week, interest-free grace period on your CC.) You have the following options:

• Don't pay that debt off until you are reimbursed. You may incur interest.  Most people are not a fan of this, although riding the CC float will reduce that interest, possibly to $0. Riding the CC float uses the cash backing more recent, normal/budgeted purchases to pay off the reimbursable expense, then uses the reimbursement to pay off those normal purchases (possible since they were incurred later).
• Submit expense reports more often so you will have been reimbursed before that purchase has to be paid off (thereby avoiding interest).
• Obtain a 60 or 90-day grace period card. This will likely require your company to arrange it (even though you are still responsible for the payments). CCs are typically reluctant to give longer grace periods to individuals, but it's worth investigating.
• Use your own money to pay off those purchases and avoid interest. That means you should carve off enough money from elsewhere in your budget for that purpose. (Budget it to the reimbursement category.) Pay the CC whenever it's due. The reimbursement then replaces the contents of the reimbursement category. This is the #1 officially recommended approach.

Violet Flute said:
it nearly impossible to make sense of how much I'm saving.

I must be missing something about your situation, because I find it pretty straightforward. I save by putting money in categories, and the cumulative total is in the Available column. Can you elaborate on what's not working for you?

Forest Green Koala You should be categorizing work expenses AND reimbursements to a Work category. Sure, let it go overspent, that just signifies new debt without the cash reserved to pay it off (which is hardly a surprise). If that Work category ever turns green, reallocate those funds back the the relevant CC Payment category.

If the overspending indicator really bothers you, just reallocate from the CC Payment category to cancel the overspending warning in the Work category.

You can avoid that manual reallocation step if you structure your plan (a.k.a., the budget) to reserve cash to pay off those reimbursable CC charges. For example, reallocate $X from an emergency fund (or other long-term category) into the Work category as a one-time setup. Use the cash now backing those work purchases to pay the CC bill, and the reimbursement just restores the Work category. No budget manipulation necessary. (Of course, you can always reallocate back in an emergency, but why not make your life easier in the meantime?)

Obviously, that second approach requires that you have enough cash to simplify your process. If you can't devote enough to cover the typically sizeable work expenses, then go with the first approach. Manually reallocating funds is hardly a hardship.

Slate Blue Hail YNAB is first and last a specific budget method. The goal of which is to have the money set aside before you spend it.

When you have a negative category in your budget, it means you have less money in real life than makes up the sum of the money in your categories.  Cash overspending  will reduce your TBB in the next month if you don't fix the overspending. Credit card overspending will leave your credit card payment short of being able to pay back the balance. Both are obvious.

As a prolific YNAB user who is no longer with us once said, "the money's gotta come from somewhere." YNAB forces you to acknowledge that reality.

nolesrule 

I don't think the statement is accurate that if you have a negative category in a budget it means you have less money in real life than makes up the sum of money in your categories. I can have lots more money in "to be budgeted" than I have summed up in my categories. If I'm wanting to have a specific average spend rate in a category, like vacation (usually things that aren't purchased on a regular basis), the budget should be able to go negative and then go back up just like a cash overspending would. The cash is available in my to be budgeted category afterall.  I may have even allocated it to spending for the next 12 months if I have enough money. In that case, a credit card account is acting just like a cash account. The cash is there to pay it and I'm not going negative if I overspend though I might not have the money for my budget 12 months from now unless I catch up. Am I just dumb? This seems obvious??

Slate Blue Hail But it is true, because YNAB is a cash allocation system (aka envelope budget). Let's look at this scenario:.

You have $200 in your accounts. You put $100 in groceries and $100 in vacation.

Then you spend $150 from vacation so that your vacation category is overspent at -$50. Let's look at what remains....

Your grocery category still has $100 in it, but your accounts only have $50. You can no longer use your categories for accurate spending guidance.

While this may have been a simplified scenario, this truth scales to your entire budget. When you have a category with a negative balance, the sum of all your positive balance categories is greater than the money that you have.

P.S. - To Be Budgeted should be zero at all times except for the extremely short period of time between when you've received the income and when you assign it to categories. YNAB Rule 1.

nolesrule I'm probably failing at YNAB rule 1. Here is where I was coming from. I previously did not have a budget. Excited to get into YNAB, I looked at the yearly income that I would like to spend and spread that out over a 12 months period and allocated it to my various categories. My income is higher than this yearly amount. I was wanting the additional income to just go into miscellaneous investments without seeing it even as part of my budget. Now that I'm set up for that, I want to put a fixed amount aside per month for those categories and to manage my spending to make sure that on the whole I don't exceed those category budgets. With that, until I build up a surplus in each category there will be times when I spend negative in some categories. I'd like to be able to look at the category the next month and say, "shoot, I'm negative on vacation, I better not spend any more there until I catch up".  As I understand it, this is exactly how this would work if I were only using cash accounts. The way it works now from a credit card, the Vacation category goes negative. If I don't cover it it will look like I have money the next month since the negative does not carry over. If I do cover it, the next month will also look like I have money unless I manually decrease the budget from the next month for that category. Since something like vacation might take several months to catch up, it's going to be annoying to keep track of how much I've kept that category under my target spend rate until I catch up.

I realize that this might not be how YNAB was designed but it seems like a good system. I do have a complicated budget with my wife and I as the main spenders so this isn't even just me looking at this alone. I guess I could change everything to cash accounts but then I'd miss out on any benefits from reward points etc. Again, I'm not spending a minimum amount. I'm allocating a fixed budget for my family and saying we need to stay inside those numbers even though we actually have more income. I do also appreciate the active forum here and your feedback.

farfromtheusual  Thanks for the reply, examples and understanding. I guess in my case, the problem is that I already have enough money for the spending but I was wanting to see a consistent draw against my funds on a monthly basis. If that meant I need to take the vacation in the spring and go negative while the funds accrue to catch up in the fall that's fine. If the budget would go negative it would give me an idea of how far I had caught up and help my pace my spending throughout the rest of the year. I could just budget the money this month and then reduce the budgets for the rest of the months but then I have to start figuring out how much to reduce them and which months to do it etc. I can make it work though I don't see it as ideal.

And to the many people saying that YNAB just wasn't designed to work that way, I guess I get that but there is one point that I'm not understanding. From what I can tell, YNAB will reduce future months by the overage that I have in the current month if it is from a cash account. That function is exactly what I want to happen and it appears the only reason it doesn't work the way I want it to is because I am using a credit card. It also appears that in a previous version of YNAB even credit cards worked this way. I guess I'm wondering, was this really changed because it doesn't make sense or is it just a function of making the credit card stuff work? It seems like it would be nice to toggle the way each account is handled so that it could work either way. I know the programming gets complicated so maybe it isn't so easy or there is some other limitation.

I just don't understand the theoretical difference between the cash accounts and credit accounts. In either case the budgeting works the same, with the difference being that on a cash account the cash is reduced when the purchase is made and on the credit account the cash is reduced when the card is paid. If you don't have funds to pay the card, that can be problematic but if you do, it's effectively the same thing. The liability of the credit card just grows until the payment happens, at which time the liability and the cash asset are both reduced at the same time. In either case, YNAB knows the sum of the assets (cash accounts) and the liabilities (credit card accounts) so YNAB should be able to show you how much money you have. The "to be budgeted" fund would be the cash - credit card liabilities - budgeted funds.

Slate Blue Hail cash accounts don't stay negative. When the new month rolls around (tomorrow) the negative from the cash account will be taken out of the TBB for April. 

Slate Blue Hail So, the YNAB philosophy is built on a cash basis. If you don't have the cash, it will take it away in the next month. 

Also, I think part of the "magic" of YNAB is that it forces you to deal with your choices in the here and now. What is more important to you? Covering an expense with money from another category or letting the debt build up. When you keep rolling the debt over to the next month, you are saying "deal with it later". Later comes with a big mound of debt and no way to cover it anymore. Or, you are no farther ahead than you are now. Because many people don't have the discipline to do the internal payback. There is no external accountability until it is too late.

It really is a new way to frame your approach. I thought I was good overall at money management. Not a huge amount of debt, both high-ish income earners, home, vehicles. Embracing the philosophy has really changed how I look at what we are spending and why. 

Slate Blue Hail Dude, you basically just took on debt.  If you want to move forward paying $500 towards the $2k vacation you just bought on credit, then you assign $500 a month to the CC category for the card you used.  And then all you have available to pay the card will be less than the statement balance, unless you're riding the float and all that.  If you want to cover your CC balance in full, you gotta pull cash from some other category.  If you pay MORE to the CC than you have in the category, well now you just took on the cash overspending that you're looking for.

Don't use YNAB to take on debt and then pretend you didn't.  It's not designed that way.  For most people, that's what got/gets them in trouble in the first place.  Just follow the very few rules and you'll be fine.  

HappyDance I can't believe it's April 1st and I've yet to set up my Cash Flow spreadsheet for 2021.  I guess it wasn't really worth the effort in the end?  

My confession is I pretty much use average calculations in my budget arbitrarily in certain categories.  What I mean is, for some I just do "average spent" each month, which is backwards looking.  It's kind of a challenge to myself to "get real" with what's actually going on, and try to spend less in the end.  It has the drawback of occasionally contributing to lifestyle creep.

For forward looking averaging, I set large spending-by-date goals, for roughly 12 months, and then see if I can stay within that goal each month.  If I go over I WAM and then budget less the next month.  It's a wonky system, but works (and is kinda fun) for me.  And it keeps me on my toes :).

Slate Blue Hail said:
The type of card the funds are paid with should be irrelevant.

 Huh? Yes, of course that doesn’t matter. I’m not sure why you think anyone says it does. Unless I misunderstand what you mean and you’re talking mechanics.

Anyway, in essence it doesn’t matter indeed where the money comes from. Would this be of any help? https://www.youneedabudget.com/the-relationship-between-your-budget-your-accounts-its-complicated/

Slate Blue Hail Many people treat credit spending the same as cash spending - the way to do that is always (preemptively, if possible) cover overspending. No categories should be negative. 

Also, there's a toolkit extension that can turn all negative categories (even credit spending) red.