Hi Mau Orozco !

You're right that your savings account balances are included in your To Be Budgeted. I'm including the steps for how to do a self audit below. This is how you can check that all of your funds are accounted for and not a penny more! :)

1. Advance to next month's budget. (The math is easier there, because all overspending is covered.)
2. In the right sidebar, when no categories are selected, you’ll see your Total Available amount, which is the sum of the Available column.
3. Add that to the amount you have left To be Budgeted and any amount Budgeted in Future, if applicable.

Let’s stop here for a minute, just in case your To be Budgeted was negative. If it is, you would need to subtract it from Total Available, because that means you’ve given jobs to dollars you don’t yet have. Preferably though, you would go back to this month’s budget and budget less in a few categories until To be Budgeted is back in the green at $0.

4. Now, add up the cash in your accounts. That includes checking, savings, and cash accounts, plus any positive balances on credit cards if applicable.
5. Your totals in step 3 and 4 should match, to the penny.

If those numbers don't match, let me know and we can take a closer look at things! :)

Faness I am having the same issue as the original poster, I have gone through the steps as you mentioned and my totals did not add up. I still have more money 'to be budgeted' than I have in my actual accounts..

Hi Stacey Coleman !

I just sent you an email so we can take a closer look at what's going on! :)

Faness just after I posted I found that I'd left some 'money' in account that I had closed. Once I cleared that it equalled out! Thanks for your email 😊

Stacey Coleman I'm happy you were able to find the culprit! :)

Hi Stacey Wilkins !

Only Cash/Checking/Savings account should be included in the math there. Credit card or other debt accounts aren't included. If things still aren't adding up, I'd be more than happy to take a closer look! I just sent you a request via email. If you’re up for it, please take a look and reply there to give us permission to access your budget. Then we'll continue our conversation here in the forum! 

Faness  I had to go back and re read your one post.  After checking my other accounts knowing the ones that were showing the correct amount in YNAB.  I went to my bill account and added up all the bubbles, against what my credit union said.  That is where I found I had added more money to categories that I really didn't have.  So once I made those adjustments.  I got my to be budgeted down to zero, added the bubbles up again and checked it against my account and it all matched.   It has only taken me sometime to get all of this figured out.  Thank you

Stacey Wilkins I'm happy to hear you were able to get things ironed out! :)

If you have any other questions, please don't hesitate to ask!

Hi Aiza Cheung !

We'd be more than happy to take a closer look at what's going on! I just sent you an email for permission to look at your budget, respond there and we'll get this figured out! :)

Aiza Cheung Thank you for responding! I took a look and I'm seeing overspending in a hidden category. If you move forward to November, where that overspending is covered, your account balances match your Total Available. :)

Hi Jake !

Since this thread was posted, we've changed how we access user accounts. Now, we can only take a look if you enable Support Access for your account. Once you’ve done that, let me know—and mention whether you’d like to continue the discussion here or via email instead. :)

Faness thank you! I just allowed access if you’d like to continue this discussion via email 😊

Jake Email sent! :)

Hi Navy Blue Pilot !

We've made a few changes to things! :)

If you’re up for it, go ahead and enable Support Access for your account. Once you’ve done that, let me know—and mention whether you’d like to continue the discussion here or via email instead.

Josh If you want YNAB support to take a look, message them in the app and they'll get back to you quickly.

mamster  I already have a support request in that I submitted today. Hoping to hear back tomorrow, or possibly from  Faness  who has assisted in other responses on this thread. I am liking YNAB so far, I just need to work out these post-migration issues so I can get a routine going to see if it will work for me. 

Josh Do you only have a checking account in YNAB or are there other accounts?

nolesrule  Multiple accounts (credit, savings, checking). I have balanced everything with an inflow: to be budgeted category and manually reconciled my accounts to ensure my balances and associated budget envelopes align. 

Josh tying categories to accounts is not necessary. Have you checked your total available number + any TBB number, against the total of your positive bank accounts?  Do those numbers match?

Josh What about your credit card payment categories?

nolesrule   satcook  The only inflow is associated with checking and savings accounts. Nothing else is tied to a specific account so that YNAB can automatically adjust my end-of-month payments for each card. 

As I mentioned, all of my accounts (credit, savings, and checking) balance out based on what I see. It is just the to-be-budgeted amount that is off despite matching starting balances and pending transactions. 

Hi Josh !

I just sent you an email! It sounds like you're overbudget, but not overspent - meaning you've given dollars to jobs you don't have. If you don't think that's the case, you can enable Support Access for your account and we can take a closer look! :)

Faness I have replied to your email and opened up support access. As I mentioned, I rectified the shortage in my to-be-budgeted category through a manual reconciliation process, but now have an overage as a result. I don't want to assign this money to any categories as I know the money isn't really there. 

Also, if you are able, could you let me know about another incident I have open related to my american express linked accounts not updating? I was told not to unlink/re-link the account while tech support is looking into it. 

Thanks!

Thank you for granting access, Josh !

I took a look and Jen beat me to responding to your email, but I did the self audit steps she described in her email and everything is balancing out. I'm no longer seeing that overage either, so it looks like you were able to adjust things. :)

As for American Express, I took a look and you're running into a known issue our Direct Import partner is working on resolving. Currently, they're only able to import transactions from one card if it's linked to a joint account. They're working on building a new integration to better handle this situation. If you don't have a joint account, let me know and I'll update them! 

Hi Alicia8282 !

I took a look and just responded to the email you sent in! You'll want to double-check your account balances to adjust for the credit card payment you made, and I sent details in my email about how to do that, but everything else looks right on track! :)

nolesrule Your suspicions are correct. Since being in the forum, not just on this thread, I only recall one post about balance issues that was a calculation error - a hiccup where only one side of a transfer was recorded in a budget.

Alicia8282 Classify the payment to Inflow: To Be Budgeted just this one time.

Hey Alicia8282 !

It looks like Seth responded to your email, and has a few questions for you! We'll get it sorted out. 😀

Spring Green Display before anyone can help, some actual details of the issue that you are experiencing are required.

Spring Green Display There is no reason your TBB should match what is in your bank account.  You have money in your budget categories, after all.  Did you read the earlier explanations in this thread about how to verify/reconcile the budget numbers shown?

bevocat Yes i followed the steps but it still doesn't add up to the penny. Also,  I do not want those savings account to be accounted for tbb

Also, the average spent section shows like double of what my average monthly expenditures are.

Spring Green Display Very confused as you can tell.

Spring Green Display budget the savings money to categories. What are you saving for??  Make categories for those items and budget it there. 

Spring Green Display have you reconciled your accounts??  That’s how you ensure they are correct. 

satcook Just saving money for saving purposes. I created the savings category as well 

satcook I reconciled for all the credit cards I closed? How else can i reconcile?

When I look at the money I have in my checking account which is different of ynab's checking and deduct all the budgeted money for the money, it still doesn't add up

Spring Green Display the savings categories look great. Money will stay in those categories now until you need it. It won’t go back to your TBB. 

You need to reconcile every account you have. 

Once they are reconciled, click to next month (on a computer). Look at the total available number and add anything in TBB. Then add up the amounts in your positive bank accounts. Do those 2 numbers match??  If so, you are good!!

Spring Green Display Savings isn't a job. It's the lack of a job. You should find a job for those savings or put the money to work building wealth outside your budget.

Spring Green Display TBB is the sum of money in all your cash-based accounts that you haven't budgeted yet, not just your checking account. Money in accounts outside the checking account need jobs too. After all some money will have jobs intended for spending today, some jobs, the intent to spend is a long way off.

nolesrule I'll work on this. 

Spring Green Display to fix that you need to remove some money from categories and send it to TBB until it is $0

right now you can’t trust any of your category balances. 

Spring Green Display when you reconciled your accounts, are you marking as "cleared" the transactions in YNAB that cleared your bank, and adding any transactions from your bank that weren't in YNAB, so that the cleared balance in YNAB matches the cleared balance in your account before hitting Reconcile? Or are you having YNAB enter a reconciliation adjustment anytime it doesn't match?

adriana01 yes to adding bank transactions before reconciling

Spring Green Display ok, then if all your accounts are reconciled (and any transactions you know about that haven't hit you bank yet are entered as well) you can move money around in your budget categories until TBB is 0 and the Available in different categories is what you want, considering any money you had to move out to cover the red TBB. It's hard to make categories and accounts match, but the overall total of your money in the accounts in the budget should match the total available in all categories.

Spring Green Display Just checking in to see how it's going. If we can be of any help, or if you'd like us to take a look at your budget, please let me know! 

Cadet Blue Grizzly What balance seems too high?

nolesrule to be budgeted. Thank you for getting back to me, I figured it out by reading some of the other comments. 

Cadet Blue Grizzly Sorry I was late on the draw here! I'm happy you were able to get things ironed out! If you still want us to take a look for any reason, just let us know. :)

Hi Greg Johnson ! I have a few tips to help here! First, are your account balances correct? It's really important that your accounts in YNAB match your bank, exactly.

1. You may have other accounts that are adding money to your budget. It's not just your main account, but any Budget Account (savings, checking, etc.) with a positive balance, that pours into your To be Budgeted amount.
2. Look for Closed Accounts that have a balance other than zero.
3. Do you have any red or yellow overspending in your budget? If you do, move money to cover the overspending.

If those don't explain the difference, we may need to look closer! You can enable Support Access and once you have, let me know—and mention whether you’d like to continue the discussion here or via email instead.

Blue Thunder You shouldn't set Budgeted amounts to $0, you need to set Available amounts to $0 in the current month if you want all your money in TBB. (You would set budgeted amounts in future months to $0, though.) 

All this is just to satisfy yourself that YNAB is working correctly. You'll probably want to Undo after that since it's the easiest way to put category balances back to something reasonable.

The usual mistake is to leave any red numbers. Move funds around to fix that.

dakinemaui Thank you for the information. I've set the available amount to 0 and now I have a negative number in my TBB. My available amount is higher than what's in my accounts

Blue Thunder Did you also set available values to $0 in all future months?

dakinemaui I just did that, now the TBB is red for January and for all future months it is $172 

Blue Thunder Here's the math:

TBB = Sum of Cash-Based Accounts - Total Available - Budgeted In Future

If all category Available amounts from the current month onward are $0, those last two are $0, leaving

TBB = Sum of Cash-Based Accounts

If TBB is negative, then you must be in overdraft or possibly representing your credit card with the wrong account type. Do you have categories under the CC Payment group for all CCs?

dakinemaui That's really helpful to see the math. So TBB = Sum of Cash Based accounts minus Total Available, minus what's budgeted? Can you explain the difference between the sum of the cash based accounts and the Total Available?

Blue Thunder Total Available is the total of your category Available amounts. It's shown on the right of the budget screen when no categories are selected. If you successfully zeroed out all the categories, Total Available will be $0.

Blue Thunder The sum of cash based accounts is just that. Add up the account balances of checking, saving, etc. If a CC has a positive balance, that's considered cash, so include that. (This is rare.)

dakinemaui I wish it was truly rare to see a positive-balance credit card in a YNAB budget. :)

Matthew Surprising, but good to know! Thanks for the heads up. 👍

dakinemaui To be fair, when I see it, I usually assume "hasn't reconciled the account" rather than an actual real-world positive balance—which is even worse, because it means money is going to be sucked out of To be Budgeted when the account balance is corrected, and nobody likes that feeling.

There's your peek behind the scenes for the day!

Matthew Interesting datapoint because it lends support to my thinking that a number of users are fundamentally confused about the match between YNAB and their actual cash. I think a good proportion of people see YNAB as an abstraction of an ideal budget and not as a digital representation of the actual money they possess. 

WordTenor I've certainly encountered that disconnect as well.

dakinemaui I keep working with it and the future months are in the hundreds even when I set the available to 0. Will it mess anything up if I delete all of my accounts and set them up again to try to get it to 0 out?

Blue Thunder If the accounts have the correct balance, deleting them and adding them back won't change anything.

Perhaps your best bet is to get Support involved. Set your permissions to allow them to look at your budget, and they'll help you out.

Blue Thunder Are there any negative amounts in your Budgeted column for February or other future months?

I'd be happy to look closer! If you’d like, you can enable Support Access for your account, which will allow us to check out your budget through read-only access. Let me know if you decide to do so—and the name of the budget—and we’ll help you get to the bottom of what’s happening. 🙂

dakinemaui said:
It's not possible for future TBB to be greater than the current month.

Sure it is, if you're passing money through a category.  That's how I budget the next month without SFTF.  I think Faness is onto it with negative budget entries, because that's a really quick way to add money to future TBB.

Annieland OP said they deleted all budget entries in next month. I should have probably reported that qualifier.