
What do you use payee for?
I pretty much always leave the Payee field empty when entering transactions since I don't see any use for it, but I am sure there must be a reason it's there, I just don't know it yet. So what are some good reasons to start filling this field? What use do you get from it?
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1. It helps me identify the transactions if there is ever a disparity between what my bank thinks I have and YNAB thinks I SHOULD have.
2. It speeds up my tracking...YNAB "remembers" your payees and will suggest budget categories based upon which payee you choose. If the payee is my landlord, I'm always assigning that transaction to the "rent" category.
3. It raises my awareness of what's happening to my money. Eating out has always been a problem area for me, but when I saw my payees in front of me, I realized my REAL problem is the work cafeteria. Over and over and over the same payee. So I need to address that by pre-planning and organization (packing snacks and a lunch) as opposed to if it were all late night trips to Taco Bell...which based upon my college years, would mean I'd need to drink less!
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Uh? Let's say you have a category, as I do, called "Home Maintenance." I use the Payee field to record a visit to Home Depot for paint; maybe then I go to the Nursery for plants and then I make an order from Amazon for air filters. These all transactions in the same month for the same category.
I personally like to know this information.
Another example: Under my Master Category of "Personal Care, " I have a category called "Beauty." This could include a transaction to EJ Salon for my haircut/style; Luxe Nails for a pedicure and Spa for a massage. The payee describes who you are paying for the expense recorded in that category.
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Wow, I have spent a lot of time on these boards today. That's what happens when you are living away from home and have nothing better to do, I guess. One more post and then I am leaving for work so I will actually have some money to budget!
I find it really interesting what seems like too much work to different people. It frankly would never have occurred to me not to enter my payees. But I grew up with a checkbook register, like bevocat.
Split transactions, though? I experimented with them when I would go to WalMart and buy groceries, paper goods, soap, and cat food. My conclusion...ain't nobody got time for that. 😊
I decided I was comfortable enough with what I spend on toilet paper and shampoo that I didn't need to track it separately. Right now I put everything from WalMart in Groceries/Toiletries/Pet Supplies and call it good.
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Thanks everyone for suggestions! I am posting this reply here because I can't edit the main post anymore - my intention when making this thread was not to ask what you should put into payee, but what use you get from filling that information.
Got some interesting insight, my favorite is Voracious Reader 's suggestion to use it as a way to just better see where you're spending the money in a given category if you think you spend too much in it. Also props for mentioning reports-by-payee in Toolkit mentioned by Move Light Sound Life .
I am now on a quest to update all of my past transactions with payee because I guess I hate having free time? :D
But if you got any other novel ways to use it or want to share how it helps you with budgeting I am all
earseyes!Reply -
My spouse wants to put down every single different name. I myself care not that we bought fast food at 3 different food trucks last weekend, I just want to see Fast Food as payee, because then I can track that we spend $50 on fast food this month. I use Grocery for all grocery shopping except stores like Target and Costco because the possibility for, hmm, unnecessary budget-busting spending is much greater at Costco than Aldi. I tend to use the memo field for things like names of grocery stores. Or for Car master category transactions, I put down the vehicle in the memo, because I'd like to be able to, if I wanted to, to track gas purchase between the vehicles.
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This is actually kinda funny to me, because you’re like my boyfriend and I’m like everyone responding in this thread.
He wasn’t inputting his payees and I got, basically, culture shock.
Sometimes I use a “generic” payee (like corner store) but for other things I don’t.
It helps me tell where, specifically, I may be ‘blowing’ money, so as to brainstorm ways to cut back
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Is there any possibility you’ve misunderstood what split transactions are for? For most people, they are on the rarer side—most of the time when I make a purchase somewhere, the entire purchase belongs in one category. If I go to the bar, the whole thing is Dining Out. If I go to the mechanic, the whole purchase is auto maintenance. I didn’t even realize that screenshot was a split—that is a very (I would say excessively) detailed split.
The structure of a transaction comes from the days in which paper checks/cheques were used. You must fill out the date, the amount, and the payee. Then there was a memo field which occasionally gets used to remind yourself why you wrote that check, or to communicate information to the payee, like your account number. But it is the one that is least used.
In a split transaction, unless you need to make a transfer, the payee is always the same—the name of the shop or person who received the money. Then you split according to categories. So if I go to the mega shop and buy groceries, birthday gifts, and towels, I create a three way split, but all the groceries, all the gifts, and all the towels are under each split. It looks to me like you are creating a split for every single item on a receipt.
So no, you don’t need a payee for each line of a split. But it looks like you are using splits where you should either be recording multiple transactions or at a minimum, grouping like categories together.
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Maurycy Zarzycki said:
I had separate categories for veggies, dinner fillers, dinner meats, spreadables etc.Thank you! I no longer feel like the most anal-retentive person in existence. 😎
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