Patzer Let me just add that if bank imports start including pending transactions and I don't have the option of turning that off, then I am probably done with YNAB.  I can't believe that it is even being considered and have no idea what YNAB is thinking on that one.

bobbucy I agree. The reason it would kill my subscription is the weekly grocery order, which I start on Friday and modify umpteen times until the following Thursday, when it's finalized. Every time I add or remove an item from my pending cart, which happens with every order, the grocer initiates a pending charge adjustment. There can be as many as eight, and the final charge resembles none of these. It would be a royal pain to deal with.

bobbucy I just recently started testing bank imports.  To YNAB's credit, it works better in YNAB than it does in Quicken.  THBS, I am not part of the beta test for pending transactions. 

Plan C and Plan D for the eventuality of YNAB "improving" to the point of not worth $45 per year involve using Quicken for tracking, reporting, and mobile data entry.  I already have Quicken for investment and net worth tracking, and that requires replicating transactions into Quicken anyway; so it's not a great leap for me.  Still need a budget function for the Quicken banking accounts constituting the same thing as my YNAB on-budget accounts.  Plan D, I could do zero based budgeting in a spreadsheet.  Not ideal, but I could make it work.  (For those who wonder, Quicken's budget function is a traditional forecasting budget that is totally useless to me.)

Patzer When I speak of imports, I'm not talking about direct connect.  I do use direct connect on a couple of credit cards, but download and import manually from our main accounts.  I've already explained my position on this in the older forum.  A bank item is either cleared or it isn't.  I don't care about pending transactions and don't want them in my import file.  I can't fathom that YNAB would do this without it being optional, and would feel much better if somebody from YNAB would clarify that.

bobbucy If you're downloading and importing manually, you control the imports and what YNAB does with importing pending transactions doesn't matter to your budget.  The only way YNAB can force pending transactions on a user is if that user uses Direct Connect and YNAB changes how Direct Connect works with no user optionality.  Which would be stupid, but believable.

Hi bobbucy !

I wanted to offer that clarification! :)

Even though we're looking into the possibility of importing pending transactions, this isn't a guaranteed future feature but, if we do implement this feature, there will be an option to filter out pending transactions so they don't appear in your accounts.

Faness Thank you.  That's what I would have expected but really wanted to hear it from somebody:-)

Patzer Thank you.  You are of course absolutely correct that the bank controls what I download form them.  I was thinking about this way too hard.  Like I said, I only use direct connect on a couple of small retail credit cards, so not a big deal.  I will stop worrying about this one:-)

Faness If you add importing of pending transactions, you'll permanently lose me as a customer. It's beyond belief that this is even being considered when so many useful features are completely ignored.

Forest Green Lightning  It's something we're still looking into! If implemented, there will be an option to filter out the pending transactions, if you'd prefer not to see them.

Faness Can you explain what user need this development effort (import of pending transactions) is meant to address?

dakinemaui At a guess, there were enough Feature Requests that agreed with the premise of this thread: https://support.youneedabudget.com/t/h4rwhs/pending-transactions-real-time-import

Either that, or the mysterious decision making process decided the feedback in that one thread was convincing, while all the feedback asking for running balance or INM or fixing credit card bugs or a Save As function or a working Restore from Backup function or a working method to handle reimbursements wasn't convincing.

dakinemaui We're still investigating all that this feature would have to offer YNABers. It's meant to increase visibility and awareness of transactions, but those transactions would not affect the budget in anyway until after they clear.

Faness FWIW I can see why importing pending transaction can be helpful to get the transactions recorded sooner and I would use that.  however I feel that if they don't update the budget that makes it kinda useless imo. I would rather they do affect the budget right away if they are imported but if you have a lot of pensing transactions that change or don't post alot  I can see not wanting that. But a togglavle option (preferably at the bank account level with a ynab account default setting?) Just my 2 cents.

Faness I am puzzled.  The only use case I can see for import of pending transactions is for users who do not enter transactions at the time they happen.  If, as recommended by YNAB, I enter every transaction when I make it, what value is there to having a pending transaction before it clears?

OTOH, there are very real benefits to being able to enter future transactions directly in the register for the future date.  These benefits have been explained in great detail, and YNAB insists that future transactions are incompatible with the method.  Then you or some other Support person will suggest lying to YNAB about the date to get it into the register . . . which actually works better for budgeting with income that is not yet received.  IOW, the workaround to break the rules is easier than the workaround to budget conservatively.

It's a real head-scratcher why things that are known to be beneficial and probably would be easy to code are left to the Toolkit, while YNAB puts scarce programming resources on obscure stuff like this.  It's even more of a head-scratcher why a function with unknown utility is a higher development priority than a Save As function, which is standard on just about every piece of software that has user data kept in a database *and* has been stated to be on the development road map.

sgarelick Probably approaching 100%.

sgarelick 

I know of one advanced user who doesn't (or historically didn't) use Toolkit.  She said she does not want multiple points of failure.

But for my own situation . . . I am grandfathered in at $45 per year.  Without Toolkit, YNAB would not be worth that much.

sgarelick I don't really know what qualifies as an advanced user but I don't use the toolkit, I started with y4 and have been using nynab since soft launch.  I agree with all the points nolesrule raises but find nynab usable as is. 

Herman You'd probably find it more usable if you were able to add the Toolkit extension, given that you're able to use the Chrome or Firefox browser. If it weren't for the Toolkit, I'd cancel my subscription to nY and be back on Y4.

JoeDid I've used the toolkit.  It doesn't really offer me anything i need and I access ynab on multiple computers and devices so i prefer just to leave it native.  My point was, although i agree with the items pointed out would improve the product, I find it fully functional as is.

sgarelick I am the person @patzer referred to who doesn’t use the toolkit. I like having the base software so that I know exactly what someone new is seeing. Although at this time I think I have three or four beta features in my budget that have taken so long to make it out of beta that I don’t actually know what the real software looks like. 

I never learned to rely on future transactions, so that feature isn’t necessary for me. I get paid once a month, so SFTF wasn’t a huge deal, and it’s now fixed in my budget. Those are the two things I would be worried about most. I actually never used the running balance in YNAB 4 unless I was having reconciliation problems—since I only have about a half-dozen transactions in checking each month, it’s pretty easy to do the math to determine if I’m keeping the account too lean. And the pill colors didn’t bother me, though I might futz with the CSS now that the most recent changes have caused the release of code. 

WordTenor Regarding running balance, I too only used running balances in YNAB 4 for the reasons you mentioned but I have found them very useful in web YNAB. They just happen to mesh really well with YNABs stock account format with transactions listed from most recent at the top and scheduled transactions above them. Now I can quickly glance up into my checking account’s scheduled transactions and see when my account might need some replenishment from savings. It’s just so... elegant.

Sure, you can do the math yourself, but why when there is such an elegant solution?

sgarelick We could have a long discussion about the definition of an "advanced" user:-)  I started on YNAB3 at the beginning of 2012, used YNAB4 until mid 2016, and have been using the online version of YNAB ever since.  So I think I am at least an experienced user.  I occasionally turn on the Toolkit just to look at the calculated buffering number, but otherwise use YNAB on its own.  Like many others, there are improvements that I would like to see happen.  But for the most part, it does what I need it to do.  However, like others here, the pending transaction thing scared the heck out of me.  As long as it is an option then I don't care.

bobbucy Advanced user is any user that wants to do something differently than the software makes possible. 🤣

bobbucy Out of curiosity, is there a particular reason you don't leave the toolkit turned on? The main reason I could think of is that if there is some problem, it would be difficult to identify if it's a generic YNAB problem or a toolkit problem.

Herman Based upon your definition, I could say that I want to do word processing in Excel and I am therefore an advanced Excel user.  I think that there is probably more to it than that.🙂

I see the "advanced" user definition more as customers who have unique financial situations that do not fall within the 80% of cases for which the product was designed.  I'm not sure that it makes them advanced as much as it simply makes them different.  I'm not trying to be argumentative.  I'm just not sure that the term "advanced" fully describes the nature of the complaints.

sgarelick There are a few reasons, but the primary reason is that I simply don't need it.  I realize that running balances are important to some people, but I have no problem keeping our accounts reconciled without that.  I think that it was stupid to remove the check number field from the online version of YNAB and I'm still kind of annoyed about it.  But my wife and I just put the check number in the memo field and it has not greatly inconvenienced us.  Since we enter most of our transactions in mobile, the check number field in the toolkit if of no use to us.  And I periodically access YNAB on my work computer when I am not allowed to install an extension in Chrome.  The bottom line is that the toolkit has some very clever stuff that is useful to many people, and I appreciate the effort that has gone into it.  But it is not a requirement for our household's use of YNAB.

nolesrule There have been a large number of things changed, updated and improved since the original launch. I understand if you don't consider those changes "Advanced", but we don't currently tell users YNAB isn't for advanced YNABers. I'm not sure if it was during the Beta testing or the soft launch that things changed for the advice given to you, but we recommend YNAB for all YNABers. We understand YNAB might not be for everyone, but we do believe YNAB is the best tool to use to follow the YNAB method and we're working to continuously improve on it.

Clearing out the 15 categories you mentioned may be tedious, but it sounds safer than leaving a category negative by $80,000. I see how the category group approach would work here and I understand why it would be helpful.

Quite a number of forum users have grown to distrust the Feature Request form. We're working on making it feel less Blackhole-like, but I mentioned the [email protected] email address for those who prefer reaching out to us in a different manner. We can pass along any feedback we receive there, as well.

Faness I understand it's your job to put together lots of words to create a warm fuzzy feeling about the product. But the inescapable logic is, the features nolesrule pointed out during the beta are the ones that prompted them to tell him that YNAB is not yet ready for advanced users, and, whereas many things may have changed since that time, none of the features in question have been correctly implemented. Ergo, either they weren't telling the truth before or you are not telling the truth now.

Would a Venn diagram help?

Faness [email protected] is also phenomenally useless unless one enjoys being talked down to when you present a perfectly reasonable observation. I am tired of taking the time to explain things carefully only to have someone cheerfully reply, “Thanks! We about that! Have you read linky link link?” in a way that shows clearly that nothing I wrote was read or understood.

bevocat I tried searching our records for the email nolesrule referenced, but couldn't find it. There are a string of emails where nolesrule provides very helpful feedback, but I couldn't find an email or other announcement where we mention YNAB not being ready for advanced users until reimbursement handling is modified. Maybe I misunderstood, but I took the missing invite to the beta to mean the beta wasn't ready - not the program after launch. Maybe I have the time line wrong and the missing features were discussed after the referenced email about advanced use? My apologies for not understanding here.

YNABers of all calibers currently use the program. While certain requested features aren't available, we don't believe they make YNAB unusable. 

WordTenor I'm sorry that's been your experience! We pass the feature requests we receive via email along to our development team as well. We do try to help if there's a way to implement what's being requested as is, but we don't want that to come off as talking down to any YNABer. We want you to share your thoughts and ideas with us and we appreciate it when you do!

nolesrule Thank you for clarifying! Since we try to stay away from timelines for specific features, I was having trouble with why you'd be told certain features were needed for certain users - especially when those features weren't currently in development or guaranteed to be brought to YNAB. I went looking for answers, but I believe beta test emails were handled differently before launch.

That being said, that post indicated the "soft soft soft launch" was not for experienced users. I believe that once made available to said users, those referenced features had been improved upon. However, even after launch we added in-line calculations in addition to other features. We don't believe YNAB is unusable for the experienced YNABer, but we understand there are still a number of things you'd like to see improvement on and we'll continue to work at it. 

Faness YNAB is not unusable for experienced users; it's just that we keep running into situations where you have forbidden steak knives because novices cut themselves, and we dislike having to use butter knives to cut our steaks.  I understand this is not a problem for budgets that are so tight they can't include steak at all; but there is no excuse for having a program that doesn't allow for its users to improve finances to where they *can* afford steak.  This is particularly galling because the steak knives in previous versions of YNAB worked very well for our needs.

I don't want to go over the list of missing  forbidden steak knife features again.  We've been over it, you're not implementing them, and that's the way it is.  I'll keep using YNAB until I find a better solution.  The better solution could happen because a competitor catches up, or it could happen because YNAB implements more changes that make me do further workarounds to budget as I wish, or it could happen if Toolkit developers burn out on keeping up with random YNAB changes.

Right now YNAB is the best budgeting solution for me.  But the direction YNAB is marching makes me less than confident that this will still be true 5 years from now.

Til Debt Do Us Part There's an easy fix.

bevocat For YNAB or all of the complainers?

Til Debt Do Us Part The king and the land are one.

bevocat Cause you're right, they could all stop using YNAB. Oh wait, some Dont use YNAB but still feel entitled to complain. Literally there are multiple threads for each issue listed by OP, but yes, adding one more is definitely the next best step.

Til Debt Do Us Part No, the support people are being paid to handle customer issues. If they didn't want to deal with year after year of complaints, maybe don't let the issues drag out year after year.

bevocat Ooo, you are incorrect, sir or madam. Support is supposed to Help with questions about using the program, they cant fix the things you're complaining about. That's why they gave you the form, to go to someone who can, but continuously belittling them does nothing - unless the years past have shown you otherwise?

Til Debt Do Us Part but... those who I assume you see as complainers  are the ones who also spend a ton of time on this forum providing advice and assistance on both the method and the app.  Seems fair they should advocate for the items that would help all users of YNAB.

ChicagoFlyer dingdingding Evidently my posts defending YNAB when people complain about direct importing not working are invisible.

ChicagoFlyer Theres a fine line between complaining and advocating.  Advocating means being supportive and I see nothing nice, yet again, in yet another feature request thread. I'm not against the features mentioned by OP, I'm against the derailing to customer service not doing their jobs and being attacked for things out of their control. Calling them liars or posting condescending images wont change company policy. 

#RantofACallCenterSupervisor

bevocat So you're nicer to the program than you are to the people who work for the company? I get it, you want a certain feature. But you dont like what they told you to do to get your idea considered and instead down talk support. How is that productive?

Til Debt Do Us Part And I suppose you are the arbiter of that line.

I don't even understand what you're saying about being nicer to the program. I give honest opinions; sometimes they are positive and sometimes they are negative. I'm not attacking anyone or using bad language, so I'm free to express them however I wish. We have been told repeatedly to submit feature requests and the form itself directly says when you submit it that you won't get a reply or even an email receipt. That's pretty slipshod. There is nothing whatever stopping us from both submitting a feature request form AND coming here to discuss the issue.

I don't even care about those features, particularly, but I do object to being fed an uber-chipper line of bull by support that flies in the face of basic logic. Now that's condescending.

#WhyItsAlmostLikeIDoSupportInMyJobToo

Til Debt Do Us Part  At this point, I suspect I am the single non-YNAB employee remaining who has used the web app continuously since its alpha launch 4 years ago.  Despite what I see as its substantial shortcomings, and the even worse creation of a tech support team that dispenses platitudes and auto-completion answers instead of engaging with the fact that Hey, this user has been using this product longer than I have and spends a lot of time elbows deep with our newest users; I bet they are coming from an informed perspective , I nevertheless come here to help people figure out the best way to handle the software because I still believe in it and I still believe in the method. In so doing, I learn a lot about where new users are struggling where older users don't and vice versa. And I learned the ins and outs and nuances of the method from people who had used YNAB for the better part of a decade by the time I met them. I know a heck of a lot about this software, and have learned a heck of a lot more from people who know a heck of a lot more than I. 

When you get around to being one of the people with those kinds of credentials, then you will have my respect to critique our critiquing of the way support handles our very well-informed, and very well-intentioned feedback. Until then, since I am still on my Hamilton kick, I believe the line is "let's hatch a plot blacker than the kettle calling the pot."  

bevocat No, I refer to the definition of the word for that factor.

You made an image to outline how support is disconnected from the topic at hand, instead of accepting the explanation that the given features aren't something they think are necessary. But no, you're right, no bad words - nice as can be.

#IdHateToSeeYourSupportTeam

WordTenor Ah, I understand. I shouldve known that users in this thread would assume they know better than the people who get paid to do the things they're doing for free. I think it's great you're helping new users, and I'm sure they appreciate it, but that canned response is probably because theyve heard what you had to say ten times over. Maybe from those 10+ year users or Jesse himself. 

Dont worry, I'm leaving that kettle on the burner. When YNAB signs your paychecks, I'll believe your input over theirs.

Til Debt Do Us Part So you don't understand how Venn diagrams work, it would seem. I was indicating that the product is in the space where there are still features required to be ready for advanced users yet those features remain unimplemented.

Nobody from YNAB has ever expressed to the advanced users that were warned off of the alpha/beta that the features aren't something they think is necessary. In fact, they are actively working on fixing one of the bugs brought to their attention during the alpha/beta. 3.5 years later. With an elegant working solution handed to them on a silver platter.

Even if they did explain that the given features aren't something they think are necessary, there's no reason I can't both accept the explanation and share our criticism. That's called a "dialectic". BOTH...AND.

I didn't say I was being nice. I said I was within the acceptable standards of the forum. I do not intend to be nice with this particular line of critique.

bevocat to quote Sondheim, ". . . nice is different than good."

bevocat Your Venn diagram said "you" not YNAB, as you were addressing Faness. 

My point is, YNAB already said that sharing your critiques and opinions in the forum isnt the correct way to make a difference. These are just venting sessions, complaining about how things are handled when not going through the proper channels to have them handled. I'm sure everything they thought "necessary", mandatory, must-have, etc. was added at launch or shortly after, the rest have to be considered niceties since they're still shipping and supporting the product as is.

I'm almost positive OP didnt expect an actual answer since the "no dates/timelines" thing is all over the forum.

Til Debt Do Us Part And? What if they are venting? I don't see that prohibited in the guidelines.

jenmas I reject the prison of the requirement to be nice at all costs.

bevocat when I was involved with the high school youth in my church, we pushed the idea that being kind was far superior to being nice.

bevocat Vent away, just know the "Give us voting privileges" stance is being shot in the foot by it. 😂

No company that cares about its employees would send them to a forum-shaped guillotine over feature requests.

Til Debt Do Us Part I wouldn't want YNAB's forum reps jobs either.   But let's be clear, the "mess" you reference was caused by YNAB, not the "complainers".  All the features listed above that users have repeatedly asked for existed in the YNAB product in the past and were removed - people are just asking for them back.  Advanced users have been asked to move from a one time cost product that has the features they need, to a re-occurring cost product that doesn't.  I think a complaint in that situation is perfectly valid.   If this was a bunch of people who had descended on the product forums for a product they'd never used, and asking for features it never had, your points would be valid.  However, this is not the case.

I work in IT, and unfortunately this trend is not limited to YNAB.  I'm increasingly seeing companies release the "new and improved" version of their product, customers rejoice . . . and then realize it's missing half the features they need for their line of business.   Company responds with "don't worry, those features will be put back in, but we had to skip some features in the initial release to meet deadlines - in the meantime, use the previous product".  Couple years go by, "previous" version has support dropped, won't install on new operating systems, etc, and can no longer be used.  Customers ask where the features they need and were promised are, company responds with "we've decided you don't need those features".

Oddly, that type of "customer support" leads to negative feedback.

nbhms I see this as well, although to ynab's credit other than sftf, these particular features they've pretty much said from the beginning that they are not coming back.   For stealing from the future, I'm really not sure why they didn't release the fix they coded.  It does the trick, I think they've received feedback that it could be better but I have it and it is better than not having it.

Herman It's still broken is my understanding, and also they grew concerned because it would negatively impact the vast number of people who have learned to use workarounds to deal with it. Gee, that sounds like a familiar objection...

bevocat  I wonder what is broken about it, any idea?  I find it works perfectly well but would hate to get caught by a bug that i'm not aware of.

Herman I wasn't part of the beta, but I seem to recall reading something about it not alerting you in the case of overspending until you flip to the next month.

In other words, budget this month and next month to zero. Have an overspending event this month. Observe TBB stays green this month despite overspending. Voila, you have just silently stolen from the future.

bevocat I was part of the beta and still have the functionality but i'm not familiar with that problem.  SFTF isn't an overspending issue, its an over budgeting issue and it seems to work pretty well to me.  Oh well, since they've abandoned it, i guess it doesn't matter. 

Herman I hear what you're saying, but a) overspending this month (assuming cash overspending) implicitly involves increasing the amount budgeted this month by covering the overspend and reducing the next month's TBB when the month rolls over, and b) I imagine most people would expect a fix for SFTF to handle stealing due to overbudgeting and due to overspending. At least with a warning!

But I don't budget into the future so either way it doesn't directly affect me personally.

bevocat Ok, i see what you are saying and i tested it.  You are correct with the beta sftf fix, if you have cash overspending in the current month, your next month tbb will go negative and your only warning in the current month is the overspent category. TBB remains zero in the current month.  If you fix the current month overspending without correctly pulling the money from another category then you will get the negative tbb in the current month.  I wouldn't have dropped the change for this but I can see why they might.  

Til Debt Do Us Part from what I see everything was quite civil until you decided to come along and stir the pot.

You say this is not the right place. And no this is not the place ynab would like, they want it to be in their black box in the dark where it's a secret. They dont want newbies like me coming along and seeing that the problems they see with the app are glaring and persistant.

#SomebodyHasTooMuchFreeTimeOnTheirHands

Slate Blue Sander They've already addressed every issue mentioned and explained why they dont find them "glaring". If I have too much time on my hands, you dont have enough, because you obviously havent read the other posts on the same topic, newbie. 🤷🏽‍♀️

Til Debt Do Us Part I found a new user to block. Kudos on that.

Til Debt Do Us Part but countless paying customers HAVE and that SHOULD make it I important to them. The fact that it doesn't IS the problem!

Slate Blue Sander But did they report it the way they were told to? I'm not saying these are bad features or shouldn't be added, I'm saying this isnt the way to get it done. You said you're new, so I'm not sure if you've seen the other threads, but YNAB does not listen to feature requests in the forum. They have a form that goes to the people in charge of handling requests and changes. Theyve said posting features here goes nowhere. All it does is make people angry they're not being listened to, because they're doing things incorrectly and drag support through the ringer. You said I stirred the pot but I wasnt the one that made a venn diagram telling someone who Works for YNAB that they didnt know what they were talking about. 

Til Debt Do Us Part 

Conversation is important.  Most situations have a both-and, not an either-or. 

I like that people discuss possible features and ways/reasons to use them in this forum.  It gives me ideas about ways to use the software and ways to approach my finances.  Some of them have been breakthroughs for me in cutting off hours of work interacting with the software, easing the way for my husband to join me in YNAB, and feeling secure about not losing money in my budget (SFTF is real). 

I believe that the purpose of technology is to streamline repetitive tasks and transform workflow applications in ways that are not possible on paper.  I also understand that there is a considerable amount of back-end work to make that happen, and various considerations. 

I think that the official feature request form was created about one year ago (based on reading posts about topics I needed to learn about that were originally written or replied to around that time). 

I also believe that these long-time users who are disgruntled with feature requests being ignored have, over the last several years, been in communication with YNAB through email, both forums, and the official feature request form, which was only set up last year or so.  I could be wrong, but some of the threads I was reading from that time included posts from long-time users happily (or grudgingly, because they had already been in conversation through officially recognized avenues for 2-3 years with no fruitful changes) putting in an official feature request to get in the database.  

They have a point about feeling ignored - there is no official conversation or status timeline about features they want.  I can also understand the lack of a timeline - creation and problem solving take irregular amounts of time, and the idea of how to make it work is not there until it's there.

This particular post is engaging a conversation between official YNAB people (the ones we can dialogue with... the official feature request is one-sided) and other interested users.  It is asking for a status update because the OP uses YNAB4 but would like to use nYNAB, as long as the core functionality is not diminished in the switch.  The OP and other long-time users have, at various times, used the official method of feature requests (that have changed over time).  

Harkening back to my first paragraph, having a conversation about feature requests on the forum is not the same as officially requesting a feature.  However, is it valuable because it puts multiple minds and perspectives in dialogue about that feature.  Just today, there was a conversation about different ways to use the Target Balance (no date) Goal, and the point at which those  choices break down.   If the users had put in a feature request at each of their own perspectives without the conversation, the ideas would not be as refined, deep, or far-reaching. 

Conversation also helps place the idea in proper context.  Every time I'm struggling with something in the software, it seems like it is the most critical problem of all!!!  Fix it!!!  The forum conversation allows shared perspectives and growth on my part.  The funny thing about the colors from the last few weeks was the juxtaposition of silly (We're arguing about colors, here?) with functional purpose (Why is this a big deal?  What is the main purpose of budgeting? How are they related?  oh.).  I also think that it really threw people for a loop - it came out of the blue and made people wonder what the priorities are behind the scenes.  It was possibly an indirect cause for the timing of this post. 

The purpose of most feature request threads in the forum right now runs along these lines.  User is trying to do something.  Software works in an unexpected way.  If the user is of one personality, they immediately request that the software be changed to accommodate their expectation before finding out how the rest of the software works.  If the user is of another personality, they research as much as they possibly can to find out what the software does, why it works like that, and how they can make their plan work using the software; they then say, "Hey, surely I'm not the only one who wants this feature, can we add it?"  Both of these types of users are then directed to put in a feature request, and they likely do. 

Imagine what would happen if there were no conversation - the development team would have to shuffle through even more chaff, determining somehow which requests were impulse-led, and which had been thought through.  Besides, sometimes people do learn a new way of approaching a problem, and it frees their workflow/finances in a new way.  As Jenmas said in the thread about having a feature request spot on the forum, sometimes people don't know what's best for them, and YNAB's job is to provide stellar software and philosophy to reach the goal of financial growth through solid budgeting. 

So, why did I write this long response to you?  Partly because I am naturally long-winded and am not in the habit of revising posts on forums for brevity's sake.  Mainly because conversations can be had in many ways - brusquely, politely, positively, negatively, frankly, in detail, generally, strongly-invested, checked-out, sneeringly, open-mindedly, respectfully.  The best conversations are sometimes those with someone playing "devil's advocate" in a respectful way.  We all need to be spurred to think and re-examine our ideas.  Sometimes it does us all good to remember the purpose, and the perspectives of those involved in the conversation.  

No one is ever perfect, and I've made my share of comments that were less than kind.  Please consider what you bring to the table. 

Til Debt Do Us Part no instead ynab wants you to send your feature requests directly to /dev/null (that is the trash basically) or at least that's the experience people talk about on here being ignored. It goes into a black hole...nothing happens.  Not listening to your users is a poor way to run a business. From what I can see people come to the forum because at least they can get some response.  Albeit other users saying yes they want that and support getting stuck in the middle because their employer ignores requests sent via other channeles.

Move Light Sound Life Have you ever contacted support about a feature? I have. I wasnt ignored. The form tells you not to expect a response but, like you said, it's new. If you contact support directly, theyll tell you where they stand on something. The biggest thing here isnt that people are being ignored, they've been told no and they dont like it.

SFTF? Being worked on, will take a while. Red arrow? Never coming back. Income for Next Month? Not part of the current approach. Future dated transactions? Dont look for this anytime soon. Reimbursement tracking? They're happy with the current approach, so changes aren't a current priority. 

There are literally multiple threads on each of those and most got ugly towards support for saying, "Thanks but no". You said OP wanted a status update, but this thread came on the heels (maybe a day or two later) of another thread asking about one of the listed features. This is basically mob mentality- if we get enough people angry about it, maybe theyll do something. But in reality, less than 30 people have interacted with this thread and theres been over 500k downloads of the YNAB app through Google play. 

Everyone's welcome to be upset at me for my delivery, but I'm not wrong. If I were, these feature request threads would have mattered a year ago. Instead, the form was created to keep the forum civil, or am I the only one that sees that? The support reps in the forum used to submit feature requests for you, but after thread after thread of not nice comments - heres this new form guys. Support was literally called liars in this thread, for promising features they didnt promise, and when it came out there was a misunderstanding there was no apology, just an "even if you didnt promise them we still want them".

No one is forced to use YNAB. So if discussing work arounds helps, that's great, Thats what places like this are for, but I dont see how calling support liars and threatening not to use YNAB is productive. I care not what I bring to the table, as long as I dont fall into the latter.

Slate Blue Sander Support used to submit feature requests personally. Theyd ask you questions, get clarification and send it up the chain. People didnt like that approach either. It wasnt until after things got repeatedly ugly that the form came to be. If this is a /dev/null situation, your fellow forum goers created it. 

Til Debt Do Us Part I have both contacted support and submitted feature requests, thanks for checking.

Til Debt Do Us Part While you're right about people being unhappy with the answer of no, and there are frank, strong, and direct tones employed to convey that unhappiness and the reasons for it (which range from dissatisfaction with the tone used in official communication to reasons these features are important), most of the comments I see have made good points. 

The YNAB/customer relationship is not a parent/child one, or a boss/employee one, or even all the time a teacher/student one.  Those are relationships in which someone has the authority to say, "no, and even though you disagree, no arguing." Sure, the good leader will listen and consider the opinions of the followers, but in order to go forward, the followers must put aside their differences and go with it. 

In fact, several other comments on this thread and others show experienced users saying essentially that they understand the answer is no, they still don't like it, and are living with it in various ways.

I actually have found most of this community very positive and idea oriented. Perhaps this is just my view, but when someone presents a differing idea than my own, I take it as a learning opportunity (sometimes it's not convincing and I don't change my mind, but usually I understand my way more completely because I explored the other option's implications). When someone says something to deride or attack my character, I assume they had a bad day and were looking at screens too long, take it with a grain of salt, and move on. 

My last point of social interaction education (for others' benefit as well...) Is that different families have different styles of commutation. A loud family may be having an animated discussion of diverging ideas and enjoying themselves thoroughly, while the quiet family next to them thinks they all hate each other because of the volume and contradictions.  Not everyone's communication style is the same. It has been interesting getting to know these (and other) frequent posters through their words. Some are kind, most helpful, some creative, most smart, some arrogant, some full of self-doubt, most insightful, most problem-solvers, some cutting, some refined, some wise.

I've been following this thread since it started, because I've learned a lot from most of these experience users and respect what they say. I don't agree with all of their ideas, but I always learn something.

Personally, I wanted to see responses about the features themselves and the official communication.  It's definitely interesting to see someone come along and say this isn't the right place for a feature request, when the whole point is that it's not a feature request.

I do have thoughts about the actual features, but I'm not an experienced user, so I figured I would bow out.  I will want to bow out of following entirely if you (and you probably have) shut down the conversation.

Anyways, for those who read my novel, have a great day! I'm off screens. 

nolesrule The workarounds did cross my mind, and you could be right.  My gut says there’s some complexity on the backend related to existing logic that wouldn’t play nice.  🤷‍♂️ 

nolesrule I dont think it's a "can't" but a "won't", hard lined in that stubbornness you mentioned. When they changed the 4 rules they changed their approach.  They tell people to budget ahead and budget in any month. I really think it's as simple as not wanting to instruct people to use a holding category. Yes, people can do it, but I dont think they want to Tell people to do it. Which is, of course, their call and why it's a "workaround". Having the category or feature is what they decided they Dont want the program to be. 🤷🏼‍♀️

a_different_joel actually itd be quite simple. Take income for next month it would go something like this:

User enters in income for this month.

Income added to tbb.

Or

User enters income for next month.

Added to hidden database field for income for next month.

On the first of the month add amount of income for next month to tbb.

Set income for next month to 0.

Essentially that's what the category workaround does. I think the real issue here isn't that the workaround should be made a feature it's that ANY feedback goes into a black box and is seemingly ignored despite, as forum posts have shown, lots of user actually want a real way to do this that does not require the extra effort on their part to use a workaround.

This is the single biggest issue I personally see, non responsiveness from ynab, a one size fits all approach that lacks flexibility to do things your way (within reason).

That said I'm at a loss because I dont like how other budgeting apps require me to guess my income to budget beforehand.

I have highly variable I come and get paid around 7 times a month on avaerage!  Ynabs system of only budgeting the money that you have helps but I'm budgeting more than once a week, talk about exhausting.  This is why I like the idea of income for next month....record the income forget about it u till the first then budget the whole month at once using last months income.  No guessing no extra busywork.  It seems at one point an older version supported this but it was taken away? That seems quite nonsensical to regress like that. I know they claim its "incompatible" with the un-walled off months. No it's just changing the date the money is first available from the date of the deposit to the first of the following month. It's just laziness on their part.  My issues with the software can be worked around. My issues with how ynab as a business runs go much deeper.  But from the perspective of ynab the software it's the closest thing to a viable system I have found so far but it feels like a minimally viable product, and it seems it's been this way for too long and I dont see any hope of that changing anytime soon. That's the problem. Maybe the OP Hope's that by posting this publicly  rather than speaking into their echo chamber some support from the community can be generated towards pushing for some much needed change.

Superbone Let me start by saying that I have huge respect for folks like Superbone , Patzer , nolesrule , and others who have posted in this forum and the old forum over the years.  At the risk of being excommunicated from the legacy forum, I have to disagree a bit with some of the assumptions in this post.  My wife and I came to YNAB3 in 2012 in pretty good financial shape with minimal debt.  We were coming from another budgeting product that had reached end of life.  YNAB has been incredibly helpful to us, but we were certainly not living paycheck to paycheck when we found YNAB.  We are now fully debt free, but I believe that we would have reached that point with or without YNAB.  We have 1 main checking account, 1 main savings account, 1 main Visa card, and a few small store cards (all paid in full every month), and a few investment accounts handled as tracking accounts.  We use the standard credit card process, and the only workaround that we employ is a folder to set aside income for next month.  As I stated elsewhere, I turn the toolkit on sometimes to checked the buffering number, but do not use it otherwise.  I just cannot agree that it is impossible for somebody who is financially healthy to use YNAB without employing workarounds and the toolkit.  My family is clearly doing it, and I can show anybody else how to do it.  There are improvements that I would like to see in the product, and I am also frustrated by the pace of change.  I appreciate the passion expressed by many in this post, but I think that there is a danger in broad generalities.  A problem for one person is not automatically a problem for everybody else.  That is the extent of my contribution on this.  I'll be hiding under my desk if anybody needs me.🙂

bobbucy I never said you can’t do it with stock YNAB. It’s just not as elegant and easy to implement without the toolkit and workarounds. Plus, you yourself admit the IFNM workaround. You also have many less accounts than many of us long time YNABers. The new stock CC handling is not as simple for PIF users as it has been shown that there are a myriad of ways for the payment balance to go wrong. I never have to worry about that and I cut out the middle man. I’m glad you enjoy the new inconveniences. 😉

ChicagoFlyer bobbucy It was just a joke,  'advanced user' is frankly a meaningless term in these forums.  

One of the differences I've noticed is that YNAB4 was designed in such a way that living on last month's income and having  PIF cards was the optimal use case & the education & support revolved around getting users to that point. This version is designed to be easier for someone who is still living paycheck to paycheck & carrying debt on cards, and some of the problems with SFTF and the credit card handling not only make it more difficult for people who are living on last month's income with PIF cards, but also harder/more confusing for users who are trying to get past living on last month's income, and the educational message has changed focus as well. 

It's not impossible to use YNAB while living on last month's income with PIF cards, but it is harder to do "advanced"  things like optimize cashflow to increase investments. It's also become nearly impossible for "experienced users" to explain how revolutionary living on last month's income is since that concept no longer exists--and that is what used to make YNAB stand out as a software & company.

Lego 

Lego said:
I hope YNAB is giving a free subscription to every toolkit developer.

 I hope the Toolkit developers don't burn out.  If they do, the next time YNAB breaks Toolkit and it doesn't get fixed I'll cancel my subscription and just deal with a less convenient budgeting solution.