Chrome Toolkit for YNAB
Game Changer! If you want to control more about how YNAB functions for you, use the Chrome web browser to install the YNAB Toolkit. Go to https://Chrome.google.com/webstore , search for YNAB, and choose Add to Chrome for the Toolkit for YNAB.
This is such a hidden gem and I’m so glad I found it!
Note: This only works on the desktop version of YNAB.
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Ben
Does the buffering metric take into consideration the income that comes into our accounts in relation to the expenses? is that how it determines how many days we can live on the expected ongoing expenses?
Thank you for the help!
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Lavender Projector I don't believe it looks at any expected / future income. It figures out your average daily spending based on all your history, then divides your current cash on hand with that number to figure out roughly how many days you can expect to be able to live if you didn't earn any more money.
"This calculation shows how long your money would likely last if you never earned another cent based on your average spending. We know that no month is 'average' but this should give you some idea of how much of a buffer you have. Equal to budget accounts total divided by the average daily outflow. That comes from sum of all outflow transactions from on budget accounts only divided by the age of budget in days. You can also change the number of days taken into account by this metric with the 'Days of Buffering History Lookup' setting."
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Ben Fantastic! Thank you so much, that makes sense. What's the best way of increasing this number? Sorry for the stupid questions. I'm a noob :)
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Lavender Projector Realistically, that number should increase using the same techniques that you'd use to try and increase YNAB's Age of Money. You'll want to work to reduce your average daily spending, and/or increase the amount of money in your on-budget accounts (likely by building up your budget category balances).
Like with Age of Money, Days of Buffering is simply one number that gives you a glimpse into your financial health... but it may not encompass your entire financial picture. It's a potentially helpful guideline, but I wouldn't really suggest making major financial decisions based on how you expect that number to change. Hope it's helpful though!
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Super helpful information. Thank you so much!!
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So grateful for the latest toolkit update. It was getting very frustrating figuring out how they came up with the running balance. Now it's fixed.
Thank you toolkit.
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Yo! Toolkit developers!
🙂 Love your toolkit, and can't do much without it.
A minor issue has been revealed in my income/expense report (both the report provided by YNAB and the Toolkit). The payee/category column won't freeze in place when scrolling across a selection of months. (I use Chrome.) This makes it near impossible to figure out which number goes with which category or payee. Is this something that is easy to fix?
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It may be a coincidence but...
I installed the toolkit extension and about 15 minutes after I activated it, my computer crashed and now I am getting a hard drive not found error. Any thoughts?
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MXMOM it's highly unlikely that the Toolkit caused this issue.
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MXMOM What a coincidence! I installed the toolkit, got a new computer, installed the Toolkit on 2 browsers on the new computer, and 5 months later I got a hard drive not found error! (Long winded way of saying, I agree with a_different_joel that it's unlikely the Toolkit trashed your computer. I could see it trashing a browser if something went horribly wrong, but not a hard drive.)
Disclosure: Sent the computer back to Dell for repair under warranty. Currently waiting for that to play out, and accessing the web, YNAB, and Toolkit on my older computer running Linux.
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Thanks you!!!!
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I'm a tool kit fan now! I like having the option to change the way things look and work for me.
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Can anyone speak to the security of the toolkit? Is it up to me to look at the code on github to ensure there is nothing nefarious going on behind the scenes? (no offense) or has this already been done by google? haha
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Beige Drill Fair question, and all I can say is, "I don't know." I can say that in the years that I've had it installed, I haven't had any of my bank account information compromised, so I don't think it's scraping for things that look like usernames or passwords. In reality, I just don't know though.
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Beige Drill Toolkit really affects only the user interface. It can change appearances, such as displaying a running balance or a check number field. It can't create a field that doesn't already exist in the data YNAB puts on the web page, such as creating a field for Tags. It can make modest improvements to user interface functionality, such as allowing me to set multiple flags in one operation instead of one at a time. It can't improve the database functionality, such as letting me put future dated transactions in the register.
If you have a security package such as McAfee or Norton, that may scan browser add-ons and warn you about risky ones. This depends on what protection package you bought.
If I were really worried about my bank accounts, I wouldn't use Direct Import at all. IMO, that's a much bigger security risk than Toolkit; but still not big enough that I don't use it.
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Hey folks!
We’ve made some changes, and you’ll see an updated forum section—called API & Integrations. For questions about the Toolkit, Zapier, the API and other integrations!
I’m going to move this thread over there, and wanted to let you know, since there has been some recent activity. 🙂 -
How do you get this to load? I'm starting to use YNAB this week so I enabled the extension tonight but nothing happens when I open it....I can get to the settings page but that's all. What am I doing wrong or missing? Thanks so much for your help!!
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Hi Doxie Donna !
Once the toolkit is installed, you should be able to activate the features you'd like to use and see them in YNAB. :)
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Does the toolkit let you actually print the budget similar to the screen display (budgeted / spent / available)? This is the one MAJOR feature I am missing from nYNAB. As the "administrator" in a 2 person household, we have a monthly budget meeting and then I allocate money as the month progresses (since we get paid every other week). Plus I WAM throughout the month. Then at the end of the month I can't remember what we agreed to vs what is actually in the budget. I am currently having to export to Excel and then filter that and print for reference.
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Hi MXMOM !
I took a look and I was able to find a full feature list for the YNAB toolkit. Under General, it lists the following for Printing Improvements:
Changes print styles so budget and account sections can be easily printed. Due to the number of columns, the account section should be printed using landscape orientation.
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Is there an option to show the overspent in this month in this month? I cannot see it if it there
If it isn't an option could it be? I hate toggling to the next month to see if i have accidentally overspent this month-
Green Boat I believe you can choose to show all overspending as red. There's also something you can add to the header to show overbudgeted in next month as a warning.
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What will happen to my YNAB if i add the extension then don't like it and remove it? Will my YNAB look the same again? I'm just concerned with what kind of changes will happen with it like when I went from YNAB 4 to new YNAB. It was crazy different and require a lot of work to understand and get everything back to balanced again.
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RedTinaRN Nothing will happen. You can even selectively turn features within the toolkit on/off.
I would actually recommend only turning in a few features at a time so you can see their effect and determine if you like it.
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RedTinaRN Yes, default YNAB will be back. No worries about trying it out.
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