I know this might not land well as it's not a product made by YNAB officially, but the 'Toolkit for YNAB' extension has some tremendous reporting features. Would love to see hear some pros like yourselves dive deep on them.
Memos are great to use for vacations, along with the delete/merge category functionality. Use case- have specific savings categories per trip. Categorize transactions for the trip to the specific category. Then, after the trip, on the web version of ynab you can select all the transactions in that category and give them the same memo that identifies the trip like “Vegas 2022”. Then delete the category and merge it into the generic “travel” category. Gets rid of all the orphaned trip categories, but still maintains the ability to search for the transactions related to the trip. Being able to make the memo the same for multiple transactions at a time is clutch in this case!
One of my tips is for those monthly expenses is to put them in a group, add the day of the month to the end of the category name, e.g. (5th), and sort them by due date so as you progress through the month you see them spent on order. Also very helpful when still living paycheck to paycheck.
We use emojis at front of credit card names to identify which card to use for what. We work with cash back cards. One card gives 4% on gas but only gives 1% on restaurants. So that card has a gas emoji. The other card has a chef emoji and a shopping cart (for groceries).
I did the free trial, which was great, but the clunkiness of credit cards is why I haven't left my spreadsheet and jumped on YNAB full time. Looking forward to credit card innovations in the future that might make YNAB the tool for me!
I put a lock and key 🔐 emoji on the categories that I’m not allowed to pull money from unless it’s a major emergency. It’s usually categories/accounts that comprise my emergency funds.
The easiest way to be a paid in full and non-float credit card user is to enter the credit card accounts as checking accounts instead! Then you always know you have enough set aside without the funny business in the budget when you get returns or redeem rewards etc.
I order subcategories based on when the money has to be in the category - from 1st to 30th for the monthly and true expenses and based on personal importance for the other categories!
I have a couple of linked accounts that auto-import transactions. However, we also try to manually add transactions when we purchase things and often times the auto-import can be delayed. So when I go to reconcile, sometimes my balance does not match. I've found the easiest first step to deal with this is to do a file-based import from my bank. This will move "pending" transactions to "cleared" transactions, import missing transactions, link previously entered transactions, and skip importing any duplicate transactions. Most of the time, this will resolve my reconciling issues immediately, or at least make it a whole lot easier to find the nefarious transaction that was entered incorrectly.
Great episode! Here's another one. Might have been mentioned already! I play tennis with a buddy of mine every week. In the summer, he pays and in the winter I pay (different clubs). I use a tracking account to, well, track the balance of this arrangement. Of course, whenever I book a court, I enter a scheduled transaction which will remind me to approve the transaction or cancel if for whatever reason the game didn't happen. Works out beatifully and, of course, I send him a screenshot once in a while so that he sees the status! Tracking loyalty prepaid cards at a local restaurant works really well also. I also use a tracking account for a family house where we contribute 10CHF for each adult night stay. I put a transaction for every trip we do there, and I have a scheduled transaction at the beginning of every year to remind me to settle the balance. Did I mention that scheduled transactions are great?
Great use of tracking accounts and scheduled transactions! And now that Ben is onboard with scheduled transactions, maybe we should do an episode on the topic! I'm gonna put it on the list! ~Ernie
Thanks for the tips; I immediately implemented the credit card payoff goal write away. Re: Emoji's, I put mine before the name and add two spaces between the emojis and the words to keep the line looking tidy and clean.
This was so helpful! I had my budget open on another tab as I watched so I could set these up as you talked about them. (I hate Menards too) Emojis in front!
Wished I saw that call for tips and tricks. Here's 2: We created a fake budgeted account to track category movements. We also use the 0$ split transaction to bind the 2 categories as the allowance example. That way we can easily see how much a category "owes" the other. Second one is more nerdy. We put separators and tags on the category names to identify short, medium and long term goals. Then we extract the budget in excel to regroup and work on our investment strategies. Long term goals money go into mutual funds saving account while short term goals money go to secured saving accounts. Put the file in place was tedious but now it automatically computes everything.
I alphabetize the subcategories except for debt which is ranked by interest rate!!! As for the group categories, I organize them by importance!! 😄 That's how it works for me.
I started using that credit card trick after I saw it on your show but forgot that's where I got it :) Emojis definitely belong in the front, looks so much better!
25:00 The widget on android works the same way. I love using this when shopping at my regular locations. I click the category, enter the ammount, and click done. This even works sometimes with the category-less add transaction widget.
Loved the idea of the first tip (setting a target to make sure you have enough to pay down the card in full at the end of the month) but I am not seeing where to do this...when I click on the credit card category I am not seeing an option to set a target but to just record a payment. What am I doing wrong?
We have changed the Credit Card Payment category since that video! If you're not seeing the option to create a target, it means you already have enough set aside in your payment category to pay your account balance down to zero. And if this ever changes (meaning you don't have enough money to pay down to zero), the payment category will automatically turn yellow to alert you. So what we talked about in that video is automatically built into the payment category now to keep you informed. Hope that helps! ~Ernie
Great tips guys! This might be off-topic, but have you covered net worth monitoring? After the one get to an accumulation phase, and masters budgeting to something that is akin to auto-pilot, a lot more of one financial life seems to swing on the ups and downs of one asset holding in markets.
Re emojis and memos ... I have specific groups and categories for claimable expenses at tax time, which I export along with income transactions each year (and massage the spreadsheet a bit, including a pivot table) for my accountant to process my tax return. I use memos to specify/describe the purchased items and, though I love emojis and use them elsewhere in YNAB, I don't use them for any claimable expense categories. The exported spreadsheet then has all my income as well as my expense items neatly laid out - but I don't have to spend time getting rid of each individual and pesky (in this instance) emoji images that appear in the file as well! :) YNAB has made preparing the data for my tax so, so easy and fast, compared with what it used to be! I'd love to use emojis for these categories as well - but until there's an option to remove images/emojis from the export I'm stuck with leaving them out. Maybe a suggestion for future development ... :)
I'm confused about the credit card tip. I have my "pay balance off by" date set to the current month and if I unassign money it turns yellow, but if I set the date to 2071 it doesn't turn yellow. Am I misunderstanding something?
lol, so true! In fact, we just had a huge debate about this in one of our Slack channels! I'm pretty sure the "before category name" group won 😜 ~Ernie
38:50 I do the same thing with using the memo field to list what I bought on sites like Steam and Amazon, it gives each transaction an identity and more "weight" so I'm not just filling up my digital cart with items and spending haphazardly
The tip about clicking on the dots of transactions in the mobile app to tally up the items selected. How do you do that? I have been trying to figure it out in my app but I don’t see any 3 dots. Only on the main screen of the budget and that doesn’t pull up any little Bubbles to select each transaction to tally.
I believe it's also available on Android. There's a gif in this section of the help doc that shows how to get that selected total. docs.youneedabudget.com/article/1501-searching-transactions-on-mobile#selected ~Ernie
I do the $0 Split to recategorize money when I want to put a description. Like move money from savings to vacation and in the memo put "overspent on vacation used savings to cover."
I enter a $0 transaction every time I pick up my prescriptions. On my drug plan, they cost zero dollars, but I want to track how long ago I picked them up as it is every 90 days. Just another way to see when I need to re-order instead of digging out the bottles to look at the dates.
I have a question to see if anyone has tips or tricks for this. One of my least favorite things is when merchant's will split up an order into multiple charges/transactions (Amazon is a good example of this but not the only one) based on when the items ship. For example I place a $100 order, enter that into YNAB but then two transactions come in for $70 and $30. Sometimes it isn't too difficult to manage but other times if there multiple orders, it's kind of a pain to sort through (honestly right now it's rough with Prime Day haha)
I enter those charges manually then I just delete the imported transactions. So I would put in the $100 transaction at the time of the purchase and then delete the $70 and $30.
lol, I do the opposite of Britnee! I like keeping the imported transactions because they are marked as cleared and then I delete the manual ones. And reconciling soon after is good just for peace of mind. ~Ernie
Great episode! (And squee!! My comment was read!) No emojies for me, I export to create my own reports to much and they don't always export well. If I were to use them though, beginning all the way!
Another tip I use for loans that you are including as tracking accounts and you need to enter interest every month and you are not paying extra on so you could know the interest from an amortization table is that I create a recurring scheduled transaction for the interest where the amount is the next interest amount from the amortization table and in the memo I have a list of all the following interest amounts. Then once a month after the scheduled transaction occurs I edit the scheduled transaction by removing the first value from the memo and pasting that value as the new transaction amount.
The only trailing emoji I use is a heart - which means non monthly expense - I use a gold heart for non monthly wants, like travel, green heart for non monthly fixed, like auto fees, and a purple heart for for non monthly essentials like car repairs or clothing. My categories and groups all get a leading emoji to reflect what kind of spending it is, like 🛒 grocery or ⛽️ gas
This was a super helpful episode! I would love to see you deep dive more on scheduled transactions. Even as a YNAB power user, I have not ventured into scheduled transactions and would love to know more on this topic!
I was using RFID tags on Android 8-10 years ago with Tasker and IFTTT but it's so interesting how Apple makes things seem new and current. It's not that I'm an Android fanboy, I just think Apple's marketing must be so good, it's very impressive. I can understand the appeal of the simplicity and cohesiveness of the Apple-verse and completely get that, I'm not putting people down for buying Apple products, it's just that sometimes it feels like people opt for the easy choice rather than the right choice (the right choice could still be apple, I'm trying not to offend anyone :) ) but when it comes to a car purchase we, usually, consider so many options.
Using a split transaction with outflows and inflows together! 🤯 Why did I never think of this? The scheduled idea is great, but where I want to use it is for peculiar budget changes (no more asking "Why did we move $150 from X to Y?" a month later). Category comments are okay, but this is so much better!
I color code transaction with a dot before they are posted to accounts. This is an easy way to find them correct amount for tips (husband dies not post). Also helps for weekend transaction that do not post for days. I delete dot when posted
I love the merge feature. I’ve had to restart my budget multiple times because I wanted to rework the categories halfway through the month because things didn’t make sense. Now, it’s been a lifesaver because now that I’ve got my ‘eating out’ category spending down, I’ve merged my groceries and eating out into a single ‘food’ category. I’ve had to keep a spreadsheet to make sure I kept the whole year for my own reporting. But now the reporting is accurate!
I have some utilities that are on the budget plan. I set my categories at what my budget is for paying each month. Then I have a separate group for each category listed as over or under budget. Then if I went over the budgeted amount I add the overage to that utility over of under category. If I am under I deduct the amount from my over or under category for that utility and add it to my Stuff I Forgot to Budget For category. That way I have exactly what I need when my settle up month comes.
WE WANT THAT REPORTS DEEP DIVE! I apologise about the yelling but it was important to convey how much I want that episode to happen :)
No, I appreciate the yelling! Thanks for letting us know you'd love to see a reports deep dive. ~Ernie
You are not alone!
I know this might not land well as it's not a product made by YNAB officially, but the 'Toolkit for YNAB' extension has some tremendous reporting features. Would love to see hear some pros like yourselves dive deep on them.
Memos are great to use for vacations, along with the delete/merge category functionality. Use case- have specific savings categories per trip. Categorize transactions for the trip to the specific category.
Then, after the trip, on the web version of ynab you can select all the transactions in that category and give them the same memo that identifies the trip like “Vegas 2022”. Then delete the category and merge it into the generic “travel” category. Gets rid of all the orphaned trip categories, but still maintains the ability to search for the transactions related to the trip. Being able to make the memo the same for multiple transactions at a time is clutch in this case!
One of my tips is for those monthly expenses is to put them in a group, add the day of the month to the end of the category name, e.g. (5th), and sort them by due date so as you progress through the month you see them spent on order. Also very helpful when still living paycheck to paycheck.
The split transaction for distributing allowances…🤯
🎼Save big money at Menards!
Why is this jingle so dang catchy?! ~Ernie
We use emojis at front of credit card names to identify which card to use for what. We work with cash back cards. One card gives 4% on gas but only gives 1% on restaurants. So that card has a gas emoji. The other card has a chef emoji and a shopping cart (for groceries).
I did the free trial, which was great, but the clunkiness of credit cards is why I haven't left my spreadsheet and jumped on YNAB full time. Looking forward to credit card innovations in the future that might make YNAB the tool for me!
I did not know about the multiple file upload!!! I'm gonna try that!
It's seriously the coolest! ~Ernie
I put a lock and key 🔐 emoji on the categories that I’m not allowed to pull money from unless it’s a major emergency. It’s usually categories/accounts that comprise my emergency funds.
Me too!
I put all my dead categories in a category called completed
Yeah I do house projects that way. Also one for Goals/wish farm
The easiest way to be a paid in full and non-float credit card user is to enter the credit card accounts as checking accounts instead! Then you always know you have enough set aside without the funny business in the budget when you get returns or redeem rewards etc.
I order subcategories based on when the money has to be in the category - from 1st to 30th for the monthly and true expenses and based on personal importance for the other categories!
I have a couple of linked accounts that auto-import transactions. However, we also try to manually add transactions when we purchase things and often times the auto-import can be delayed. So when I go to reconcile, sometimes my balance does not match. I've found the easiest first step to deal with this is to do a file-based import from my bank. This will move "pending" transactions to "cleared" transactions, import missing transactions, link previously entered transactions, and skip importing any duplicate transactions. Most of the time, this will resolve my reconciling issues immediately, or at least make it a whole lot easier to find the nefarious transaction that was entered incorrectly.
YES! FBI has always made reconciling much easier for me! ~Ernie
I always listen to the podcast but the rfid cc trick inspired me to go check out TH-cam. Fun to watch!
Great episode! Here's another one. Might have been mentioned already!
I play tennis with a buddy of mine every week. In the summer, he pays and in the winter I pay (different clubs). I use a tracking account to, well, track the balance of this arrangement. Of course, whenever I book a court, I enter a scheduled transaction which will remind me to approve the transaction or cancel if for whatever reason the game didn't happen. Works out beatifully and, of course, I send him a screenshot once in a while so that he sees the status!
Tracking loyalty prepaid cards at a local restaurant works really well also.
I also use a tracking account for a family house where we contribute 10CHF for each adult night stay. I put a transaction for every trip we do there, and I have a scheduled transaction at the beginning of every year to remind me to settle the balance.
Did I mention that scheduled transactions are great?
All the more motivation for Ben & Ernie to do up a full-focused 'Scheduled Transactions' episode.... I'd love to see that!
Great use of tracking accounts and scheduled transactions! And now that Ben is onboard with scheduled transactions, maybe we should do an episode on the topic! I'm gonna put it on the list! ~Ernie
35:25 I use memo to win arguments with husband.information is power.
I fully support this 🤣 ~Ernie
Thanks for the tips; I immediately implemented the credit card payoff goal write away. Re: Emoji's, I put mine before the name and add two spaces between the emojis and the words to keep the line looking tidy and clean.
This was so helpful! I had my budget open on another tab as I watched so I could set these up as you talked about them. (I hate Menards too) Emojis in front!
Wished I saw that call for tips and tricks. Here's 2:
We created a fake budgeted account to track category movements. We also use the 0$ split transaction to bind the 2 categories as the allowance example. That way we can easily see how much a category "owes" the other.
Second one is more nerdy. We put separators and tags on the category names to identify short, medium and long term goals. Then we extract the budget in excel to regroup and work on our investment strategies. Long term goals money go into mutual funds saving account while short term goals money go to secured saving accounts. Put the file in place was tedious but now it automatically computes everything.
I alphabetize the subcategories except for debt which is ranked by interest rate!!! As for the group categories, I organize them by importance!! 😄 That's how it works for me.
It’s crazy to me that this is 2 years old and that the SoFi PDF download on credit card transactions is STILL a thing. 💀
That merge category feature is too hidden. I had no idea it existed so I’ve been hiding old categories.
I started using that credit card trick after I saw it on your show but forgot that's where I got it :) Emojis definitely belong in the front, looks so much better!
Yay team emojis-in-front! ~BenB
25:00 The widget on android works the same way. I love using this when shopping at my regular locations. I click the category, enter the ammount, and click done. This even works sometimes with the category-less add transaction widget.
Great shout out to card shark.
Loved the idea of the first tip (setting a target to make sure you have enough to pay down the card in full at the end of the month) but I am not seeing where to do this...when I click on the credit card category I am not seeing an option to set a target but to just record a payment. What am I doing wrong?
We have changed the Credit Card Payment category since that video! If you're not seeing the option to create a target, it means you already have enough set aside in your payment category to pay your account balance down to zero. And if this ever changes (meaning you don't have enough money to pay down to zero), the payment category will automatically turn yellow to alert you. So what we talked about in that video is automatically built into the payment category now to keep you informed. Hope that helps! ~Ernie
how do you do that debit card trick?
Great tips guys! This might be off-topic, but have you covered net worth monitoring? After the one get to an accumulation phase, and masters budgeting to something that is akin to auto-pilot, a lot more of one financial life seems to swing on the ups and downs of one asset holding in markets.
We have not covered the net worth topic yet, but Ben and I have been throwing around the idea of an episode on using Reports! ~Ernie
I know of Menards and Nathan Pyle, so I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to be a regular guest on Budget Nerds….
Hi guys, would the credit card trick work if you pay your statement balance every month but not to zero?
Yes! The category will only turn yellow if your available amount does not match the balance on the card.
Re emojis and memos ... I have specific groups and categories for claimable expenses at tax time, which I export along with income transactions each year (and massage the spreadsheet a bit, including a pivot table) for my accountant to process my tax return. I use memos to specify/describe the purchased items and, though I love emojis and use them elsewhere in YNAB, I don't use them for any claimable expense categories. The exported spreadsheet then has all my income as well as my expense items neatly laid out - but I don't have to spend time getting rid of each individual and pesky (in this instance) emoji images that appear in the file as well! :)
YNAB has made preparing the data for my tax so, so easy and fast, compared with what it used to be! I'd love to use emojis for these categories as well - but until there's an option to remove images/emojis from the export I'm stuck with leaving them out. Maybe a suggestion for future development ... :)
Please do an episode on scheduled transactions. I used it for my quarterly estimated taxes and it didn't all work the way I expected.
Noted! ~Ernie
I'm confused about the credit card tip. I have my "pay balance off by" date set to the current month and if I unassign money it turns yellow, but if I set the date to 2071 it doesn't turn yellow. Am I misunderstanding something?
You're a budget nerd if you have an opinion about emojis before or after category name.
lol, so true! In fact, we just had a huge debate about this in one of our Slack channels! I'm pretty sure the "before category name" group won 😜 ~Ernie
38:50 I do the same thing with using the memo field to list what I bought on sites like Steam and Amazon, it gives each transaction an identity and more "weight" so I'm not just filling up my digital cart with items and spending haphazardly
Emojis in the front.
I use emojis to match up my budgeted money with which account it's in! Plus they just look nice and are such a good visual reference
The tip about clicking on the dots of transactions in the mobile app to tally up the items selected. How do you do that? I have been trying to figure it out in my app but I don’t see any 3 dots. Only on the main screen of the budget and that doesn’t pull up any little
Bubbles to select each transaction to tally.
This doc should help (and it covers iOS and Android)! support.youneedabudget.com/en_us/searching-transactions-a-guide-r1gxyQryj#selected ~Ernie
Ben, where could I find the iPhone shortcut that opens up YNAB with a touch of the card to the phone?
Actually I figured it out. Pretty cool.
@@bwfidler Can you share? :)
Ipad is ready use ynab
let us know
I'm not sure how to get the sum for selected transactions. Maybe this is only for the apple app?
I believe it's also available on Android. There's a gif in this section of the help doc that shows how to get that selected total. docs.youneedabudget.com/article/1501-searching-transactions-on-mobile#selected ~Ernie
@@YNABofficial Thank you, that was very helpful.
𝐩𝓻Ỗ𝓂Ø𝓈Ｍ 👊
I do the $0 Split to recategorize money when I want to put a description. Like move money from savings to vacation and in the memo put "overspent on vacation used savings to cover."
I enter a $0 transaction every time I pick up my prescriptions. On my drug plan, they cost zero dollars, but I want to track how long ago I picked them up as it is every 90 days. Just another way to see when I need to re-order instead of digging out the bottles to look at the dates.
@@sherrylynnbishop8007 That's smart I have started using google calendar for that and it'll email me notifications when the 90 days are up.
Emoji’s definitely go in the front, then a space, and then the category name so everything is perfectly aligned 😆😊
I wish there was a way to group accounts by bank. Either as an actual group or better yet using something like the filtered views concept.
I have a question to see if anyone has tips or tricks for this. One of my least favorite things is when merchant's will split up an order into multiple charges/transactions (Amazon is a good example of this but not the only one) based on when the items ship. For example I place a $100 order, enter that into YNAB but then two transactions come in for $70 and $30. Sometimes it isn't too difficult to manage but other times if there multiple orders, it's kind of a pain to sort through (honestly right now it's rough with Prime Day haha)
I enter those charges manually then I just delete the imported transactions. So I would put in the $100 transaction at the time of the purchase and then delete the $70 and $30.
lol, I do the opposite of Britnee! I like keeping the imported transactions because they are marked as cleared and then I delete the manual ones. And reconciling soon after is good just for peace of mind. ~Ernie
Love the jingle, Ben! Thanks for all the ideas from the community and the two of you.
Oh my gosh, a Split $0 transaction sounds so helpful in so many ways
Great episode! (And squee!! My comment was read!) No emojies for me, I export to create my own reports to much and they don't always export well. If I were to use them though, beginning all the way!
Regarding name pronunciations, I know 3 people named Claudia (one being my wife) with the same spelling but completely different pronunciations.
Guaranteed I would choose the wrong pronunciation! ~Ernie
Another tip I use for loans that you are including as tracking accounts and you need to enter interest every month and you are not paying extra on so you could know the interest from an amortization table is that I create a recurring scheduled transaction for the interest where the amount is the next interest amount from the amortization table and in the memo I have a list of all the following interest amounts. Then once a month after the scheduled transaction occurs I edit the scheduled transaction by removing the first value from the memo and pasting that value as the new transaction amount.
The only trailing emoji I use is a heart - which means non monthly expense - I use a gold heart for non monthly wants, like travel, green heart for non monthly fixed, like auto fees, and a purple heart for for non monthly essentials like car repairs or clothing. My categories and groups all get a leading emoji to reflect what kind of spending it is, like 🛒 grocery or ⛽️ gas
This was a super helpful episode! I would love to see you deep dive more on scheduled transactions. Even as a YNAB power user, I have not ventured into scheduled transactions and would love to know more on this topic!
You're in luck Kendra-Hannah has already done a video on scheduled transactions! th-cam.com/video/5oK0wpgWLQA/w-d-xo.html ~Ernie
Save big money at Menards!
Me, watching this as another Sarah: 👀
What book?
I was using RFID tags on Android 8-10 years ago with Tasker and IFTTT but it's so interesting how Apple makes things seem new and current. It's not that I'm an Android fanboy, I just think Apple's marketing must be so good, it's very impressive.
I can understand the appeal of the simplicity and cohesiveness of the Apple-verse and completely get that, I'm not putting people down for buying Apple products, it's just that sometimes it feels like people opt for the easy choice rather than the right choice (the right choice could still be apple, I'm trying not to offend anyone :) ) but when it comes to a car purchase we, usually, consider so many options.
Using a split transaction with outflows and inflows together! 🤯
Why did I never think of this? The scheduled idea is great, but where I want to use it is for peculiar budget changes (no more asking "Why did we move $150 from X to Y?" a month later). Category comments are okay, but this is so much better!
6:56 Same. It would mess up my entire budget. I have a lot of one-time categories.
I color code transaction with a dot before they are posted to accounts. This is an easy way to find them correct amount for tips (husband dies not post). Also helps for weekend transaction that do not post for days. I delete dot when posted
46:06 death to emojis-at-the-end heretics!!1! ( oДo)
I love the merge feature. I’ve had to restart my budget multiple times because I wanted to rework the categories halfway through the month because things didn’t make sense. Now, it’s been a lifesaver because now that I’ve got my ‘eating out’ category spending down, I’ve merged my groceries and eating out into a single ‘food’ category. I’ve had to keep a spreadsheet to make sure I kept the whole year for my own reporting. But now the reporting is accurate!
I have some utilities that are on the budget plan. I set my categories at what my budget is for paying each month. Then I have a separate group for each category listed as over or under budget. Then if I went over the budgeted amount I add the overage to that utility over of under category. If I am under I deduct the amount from my over or under category for that utility and add it to my Stuff I Forgot to Budget For category. That way I have exactly what I need when my settle up month comes.