Uncleared check
Hi, I'm wondering what happens if I wrote a check to someone but they don't deposit it during the month it was intended in the budget. If they deposit it in the following month will it mess up the budget or does it flow from month to month?
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Also, what if I have a budgeted amount--for example: $40 for my son's baseball lesson, and I withdraw cash to pay that way instead of a check--how does that work out in the budget?
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Purple Mermaid I take it you are not using a cash account in YNAB? If you are, it is just a transfer between two on budget accounts. That's why I use a cash account, so I don't have to worry about things until the cash leaves my possession. And in 4 years I've never lost more than $0.03 when it came time to reconcile my account.
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jenmas I didn't know I could do that, thanks!
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Purple Mermaid said:
If they deposit it in the following month will it mess up the budget or does it flow from month to month?I'm facing the same thing. What I think will happens is:
If you entered the check as a transaction for that bank account, it is recorded as outflow activity for the category and the funds are deducted from that category's "Available". Your budget should be fine.
Where it matters is at reconciliation. The transaction won't be "cleared" until the bank records it. That'll happen automatically (with your approval) if your bank is "connected" to YNAB. If your bank is not "connected", you'll mark it "cleared" when you see the bank records it.
Not sure if that helps ... I'm new to YNAB but I've got some uncleared checks too and that's what I see happening in my case.
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Purple Mermaid said:
40 for my son's baseball lesson, and I withdraw cash to pay that way instead of a check--how does that work out in the budget?I think this will depend on how you categorize the cash withdrawal. If you withdrawal $40 from checking, record the transaction to the budget category and it should just show as a $40 outflow activity and deduct from that category's, "Available."
However, if you withdrawal some other amount - say $100, I would record it as a split transaction - $40 baseball, $60 groceries - it'll show as one transaction in the checking account activity but the proper amounts will be deducted from each category's "Available" according to the split.
HTH
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Money stays in a category until you spend it or move it to another category. It comes out of the category on the date of the transaction... and it stays out. It doesn't matter whether the check has been cashed or not, it's gone from your budget the moment you write and record the check in YNAB, like any other spending.
I've got a check from October sitting at the top of my checking register that still has not been cashed. Every month I reconcile, and every month it still sits there uncleared. I'm hoping they cash it soon. The money came out of the category back in October.
If you do manual entry for all transactions and not rely on direct import to pull in your transactions, this becomes obvious, because your category balances change based on the transaction date in the system, not on when the financial institution recognizes the transaction. Just like an old school checkbook register.
