Reconciling in YNAB: A Step-by-Step Guide
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 มิ.ย. 2024
- Reconciliation is a crucial part of keeping your YNAB budget the best it can be, but if you've never reconciled your budget before, it can be hard to know where to start. Follow this step-by-step guide to achieve ultimate bank-to-budget balance so you can trust your dollars and love the way you spend!
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TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Intro
0:42 What is reconciliation?
1:02 Why is reconciliation important?
1:39 What would make my budget incorrect?
2:56 How often should I reconcile?
4:59 How do you reconcile?
5:12 Starting Point #1: Linked bank accounts
6:14 Starting Point #2: Unlinked bank accounts
6:29 Step #1: Pull up your bank and YNAB
6:58 Cleared vs Uncleared (or Pending) transactions at the bank
7:56 Current vs Available balance at the bank (or Total vs Spending)
8:37 Cleared, Uncleared, and Working Balances in YNAB
9:31 Cleared vs Uncleared transactions in YNAB
10:26 Step #2: Compare cleared balance at bank with YNAB
10:55 How to retrieve reconciled transactions
11:48 Step #3: Import and categorize new transactions
12:22 Step #4: Check status of any uncleared transactions
13:49 Step #5: Search for missing or incorrect transactions
14:44 Last Resort Step: Create a reconciliation adjustment transaction
15:32 Final Step: Repeat this process for other accounts
16:27 How to undo or fix a premature reconciliation
17:12 Tip #1: Linked accounts clear transactions before import
17:37 Tip #2: Enter transactions yourself, leaving it uncleared
18:15 Tip #3: Clear transaction yourself if accounts are unlinked
19:04 Question #1: Can I reconcile an account with uncleared/pending transactions?
20:16 Question #2: Can I only reconcile within the current month of spending?
20:52 Outro
21:22 Bloopers
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I knew all about reconciling and came here to see Hannah talk about it anyway 😁 great job!
Sorting by uncleared transactions is really helpful to notice a transaction that you entered into the wrong account like a week+ ago and didn’t realize 😅 an uncleared transaction in the wrong account can really hang out for a while if you aren’t careful! Especially if you duplicated the expense in the correct account, too
This is great! Really enjoy Hannah’s videos.
I’d love an excruciatingly long and detailed overview of credit cards in YNAB, particularly ones you pay off every month and never had a balance. I’ve watched the videos already available, but still keep getting confused (though I’ve only been at it for a couple months!)
Hannah, I wanted to thank you for your videos. I have watched most of them. I have been stressed about our budget for years. It never seemed to work out. Thanks to you, I have completely changed how we run our budget and it works SO much better. I actually have peace about it now! I reference your videos all the time and my husband laughs and calls you my new bestie. Thank you SO much!! DeAnna
🥰🥰🥰 Cannot tell you how much those words mean! SO happy for you and so grateful for such a great YNAB community that I get to celebrate with all the time! Thanks so much for your encouragement-I hold it closely!
🌻 Hannah
Great job Hannah! I have been using YNAB for six years now and love everything about it. Keep up the good work, thanks!
I reconcile all my accounts every morning while drinking my morning coffee. Since it’s daily, it only takes a few minutes. I do have linked accounts, but I just consider that a backup. By the time those transactions download, they’re almost always already in YNAB, so I’m just happy to see the little linked symbol.
SAME! The linked symbol gives me life-I know I'm doing my job well when I can just approve all the links. Way to go for being so consistent!! That's amazing!
🌻 Hannah
This was such a great and clear (no pun intended 😬) explanation!
Honestly, I'd given up on YNAB after a few attempts but this was so good I feel it might be worth another shot.
Thank you Hannah!
YAY!! Music to my ears!! Love to hear that! Once it clicks, it REALLY clicks and it is SO worth it.
🌻 Hannah
That was great, Hannah! Clear instructions and good tips 🎉
🥳🥳🥳
🌻 Hannah
Thank you so much! God bless you this was so helpful
This is a good detailed video on reconciling accounts! The one big issue I always have is not reconciling the accounts with
YNAB but reconciling the budget itself. if the budget tab does not match the accounts tab, there is no easy way to easily investigate why they don’t match.
This is something I'm concerned with too. I use multiple bank accounts to keep things separate as my own form of budgeting and this form of budgeting is different so I'm constantly asking "where is this money at?" Now I think I've found a glitch and figuring out where my money is coming from in the budget is very important to me.
Just what I needed. Amex makes me crazy. One of your best videos. Excellent tutorial . Thank you!
Oh my gosh, YAY!! What an encouraging comment!! So glad it's gonna help you out!!
🌻 Hannah
So true. Reconciliation hits the dopamine spot!
Super helpful, Hannah! I am a case study for someone who hasn't reconciled for (eh-hem) years. (Not recommended) But while watching your video, I figured out reconciliation for my checking account. And I had some transactions from 2020 that I had to figure out! Fortunately, it was only about seven transactions but got it done. Woot!
I actually am really worried about this. It may seem silly, but I'm just worried that adding in all the old a
mounts is going to mess up my system...I wish I could have Hannah over to help me.
Thanks! ❤
This video was spot on. But here is where I’m constantly struggling how to manage your budget with the month turns over. I panic every new month because I don’t know how to manage it. Pls do a video on this!
Ernie just did a few videos on this on the 1st of August.
Very helpful! I've struggled a lot with reconciliation in the past. I use it a lot to clean my wallet mess xD. It often happens that I get money from my bank to my wallet and I forget for what I spent that wallet money, so it stacks up in the account in ynab. Reconcile helps to fix this.
YAY! Brings me so much actual joy to hear that, as someone who was confused by the reconciliation process herself for a long time. Now reconciling just feels like yet ANOTHER way I can feel more secure in my finances knowing everything is accounted for and exactly where it should be, and I love it!
🌻 Hannah
I reconcile every day!! 😆 I have to be on top of my budget! I still love learning something new!!
I liked how you said that you sometimes reconcile on your phone because of laziness 😅 glimpse into your near future, Hannah - it comes real handy with a baby too! I used to use the phone app only for entering transactions and I did everything else in the web app... but since I'm functioning as a 24/7 milk diner for my newborn, I learned to do a lot on the phone! I even assign money from paychecks and maternity leave, because it's almost impossible to get to a computer 😁❤🤱
For real!! My phone battery is absolutely shot, and I'm thinking about convincing the husband that getting a new phone with a brand new, sparkling battery is a good investment "for the baby" so I'll be trapped under him most of the time and the phone'll become a crucial tool in my life 😂
🌻 Hannah
I keep falling off my YNAB wagon, but I'm committed to getting back on. Wondering the pros/cons of linked and unlinked accounts.
The "yeah...knew it" got me 🤣
Using YNAB for years now…when will it be possible to link accounts in Sweden?
Hi Hannah, 🎉congrats on your growing family.
Would you please do a youtube on the Inspector, pretty please. Thanks and hugs Magy
Hey Hanna, Why a credit union instead of a bank? Want to do a pro/con segment or talk about having both.
Loved the video. But I'm one who already reconciles my checking and savings, even my HSA account, very often. I keep transactions that I make in the back of my mind and as soon as I think they're cleared, I pull up YNAB and my bank account and reconcile. That might happen every day or every few days. I much prefer to see the padlock icon than the green cleared icon and prefer the green cleared icon to the clear one, LOL. I do not have my YNAB linked to my bank accounts. There's something more visceral and direct when you enter the transactions yourself, especially with spending. And entering Income simply feels good.
I totally get this!! I've left my accounts unlinked for probably the majority of my time using YNAB-now that I have them linked again, I'm trying to decide if I prefer the "ease" of linked accounts or the *clarity* of unlinked accounts.
🌻 Hannah
Excellent job, very understandable!!
Hannah is just the best
Hey Hannah, thank you for all the tips. I really enjoy your videos. Quick question, what do you do with your bank & cc statements? I've always reconciled when I received my statements. I guess now I can just file them away? Thanks again.
Yep, if you'd like to hang on to them, just file them away! :)
Yes, Hannah, that IS the hill I want to die on, thank you very much!
🪦💐💵
🌻 Hannah
A well done and very important video!!! For me, I choose not to link my accounts. My identity has been stolen so many times, I always have free ID monitoring and protection. Luckily the one time they did try to use my ID info, it was detected. I was told it is best to limit my exposure, so no links here. But, I clear all my transactions from all my accounts daily. It doesn't usually take more than 5 minutes, well, maybe 7, if I entered something wrong (rarely). Then I actually hit the reconcile button after clearing the accounts on the last day of the month.
Okay I entered the balance in my checking, assigned amounts by what was paid according to my checking during that time and after reconciliation I still have money left to assign. How can that happen?
Thanks for this process Hannah! If you have to do "create adjustment and reconcile" where does that money come from to make that adjustment?
Good question, Brittany. By default, it removes the money from Ready to Assign, but you can categorize the adjustment transaction wherever you like.
Great video! I actually learned quite a lot. My only issue is that when I am unable to find what causes the difference and just reconcile by entering the actual bank balance, the available amounts in the budget categories are not affected at all. And therefore it might look like I have a certain amount of funds available in a category, when in fact I don't. This causes issues more often than not, since I am really sloppy with reconciling regularly... Any idea what to do about this?
I could be wrong, but I think YNAB adjusts the Ready To Assign amount when this happens? So, say your bank account has $10 less than you thought; after reconciling, the RTA amount will move from 0 to -10, which prompts you to move $10 from any category with money, to get RTA to 0. I think that’s what happens… :)
Is it normal for the reconciliation balance to be off when you first begin YNAB and link the accounts? I began YNAB in November and haven't reconciled yet b/c it seemed like there were transactions that were downloaded after I linked accounts that had actually occurred before I linked the accounts. My actual checking account balance has always been around $200 higher than the checking balance in YNAB and I was afraid by reconciling, it would throw everything off in the budget and maybe I would spend money I didn't have...but I think it may just be a glitch and how transactions downloaded when I set up YNAB last month.
My biggest problem is Walmart. When you order online, it hits your credit card automatically with the total. But by the time you pick it up, there’s usually substitutions. Well YNAB pulls in that original total as pending. Three or four days later, the total will change because of the substitutions, and will hit YNAB as a second transaction. 🙄 so I always have to check that the Walmart transactions are actually accurate.
Ugh! I experience this with Amazon, too. Both of these business structures source their goods from warehouses and retailers all over the country, so they never know where all your order items will be shipping from until the individual warehouse/retailer charges for it. Frustrating!! Sometimes if I place an Amazon order with multiple items, I'll enter the transaction but mark it with a flag that reminds me to revisit it later. Not a perfect solution, but helps me feel one step ahead!
🌻 Hannah
Walmart is the absolute worst. I know that it takes a solid weeks before a pending transaction gets adjusted and cleared. I also found out that tipping may or may not hit based on if your groceries are delivered between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. or outside thatwindow. If the delivery is done;by Walmart no tip is taken out.( Walmart employees are not allowed to take tips). If you Walmart order is not delivered by Walmart, the tip is taken out and laid separately.
Target always splits up orders and not as simple as Amazon to tie back to the order. So I enter one line for the order but when they import, could be 4 or 5 different lines that when all totaled equal the 1. Annoying…
Word to the wise: Sometimes I will have the same transaction appear twice in my budget. One will be cleared and one will not be cleared. So if I mark both as cleared and then my account total is off. I’ve made this mistake before and have a hard time finding the mistake.
This has happened to me VERY often lately when it didn't when I first started using YNAB. Hopefully it's just a glitch in the software.
Full disclosure… been using YNAB for longer than I care to admit without reconciling and have always felt out of control financially. What’s the best way to start reconciling? Hit the reconcile button and make an adjustment so that both YNAB and WF match. Then move forward reconciling on a regular basis?
I would absolutely do that! If it's been a little too long and everything feels out of whack, just reconcile to make your YNAB balances match your bank balances and call it a new day, a fresh slate! Then you can be SURE you're working with accurate numbers and move forward with confidence!
Now, if you feel like it's been REALLY out of whack for a REALLY long time, your reports are all messed up anyway, and you just want to start COMPLETELY afresh, consider doing a "Fresh Start!" You can find this option in the menu, and it will basically make a clean new *copy* of your current budget with all the same categories, targets, and everything, but it will start a fresh new transaction history, reports history, and allow you to reassign all your dollars out to your spending plan all over again.
Do whichever feels right! And even if you do decide to do a fresh start, then decide "nevermind, I'd rather just go back to my old budget instead," just head to "open budget" in your menu and you can easily find your old archived budget continue carrying on working in this one instead. If you do this, you can even go to your "budget settings" in your old budget and rename it to take out the "(Archived 5/9/2024blahblahblah)" details to make it pretty again.
Hope this helps!
🌻 Hannah
Great video. You mentioned with imported transactions YNAB marks them "automatically Cleared", but I still have to approve and mark them Cleared myself. You you mean something else? Can you please clarify. Thanks!
You still need to approve them, but they should automatically be marked cleared if they import as cleared transactions. If you're having to clear imported transactions manually, reach out to our support team and we can take a look.
What’s the best ways to find the uncleared transactions on YNAB mobile.
Go to Accounts > All Accounts, then in the search bar at the top search "Uncleared."
Crazy question, big fan 🎉 , Do you sell “the pig 🐷 “ ? I would love to have one on my desk 😊
Banksy is one-of-a-kind, I'm afraid. But I'm pretty sure Hannah just bought a blank piggy bank online and painted a face on it, so if you're feeling creative... 🎨🖌
- Ben M
I’ve discovered that my bank and YNAB aren’t always together when it comes to the total and I go into both every day. Many times my bank is pending a transaction or already processed it but YNAB hasn’t gotten the same info or sometimes it’s the flip of we’ve been really on top on putting everything into the APP as it happens. It makes reconciling take longer and at times very frustrating.
Yes! Sometimes banks are so to clear what we already entered into YNAB, or vice versa. It actually took me a long time to discover that my bank shows me the Available balance by default, and *not* my cleared/current balance. So I was always reconciling to the available amount instead of the cleared amount. Honestly, you could argue reconciling to either number, but now I know to TRULY reconcile I have to go a few clicks further to see my current/cleared balance rather than the default available balance.
🌻 Hannah
@@YNABofficial i searched through multiple videos and hours of content to find this answer! Thank you Hannah. The way you worded the answer entices you to be proactive.
Hannah you look beautiful just glowing
Ah! Thank you 🥰 Blame it on the baby!!
🌻 Hannah
I was playing with this an accidentally reconciled pending transactions - can I possibly unreconcile the account or individual transactions?
Hey there! No worries! We do have a little workaround for this.
First, if you're still logged into the same YNAB session and are using the YNAB app, you can always "undo" any action in YNAB using the undo button. Once you log out or navigate away from YNAB in your browser, it will close that session and you won't be able to undo any actions that happened within that session. Remember this tip for future sessions!
But seeing as you've likely long closed out YNAB and can no longer undo that reconciliation, there is a workaround! Select any transactions that were a part of the most recent reconciliation, duplicate them with the "duplicate" button in the action bar, and delete the "locked" reconciled versions of those transactions. You can now edit the cleared/uncleared status of any transaction as needed, adjust the total, move transactions to another account-whatever you need!
If your accounts DIDN'T match up when you reconciled and you submitted a balance adjustment, YNAB automatically creates a balance adjustment transaction. You'll want to locate that balance adjustment transaction and delete that transaction as well to get your original account balance back to what it was before reconcilition.
I hope this make sense! Kinda hard to explain without a visual :P
🌻 Hannah
❤
Works great if your account has a cleared balance online. Does not work if it doesn't? How do you reconcile off a statement?
My bank does not have a separate cleared balance, so instead, I reconcile off the running balance beside the last cleared transaction. ~BenB
TBH, I hardly ever have discrepancies in my budget. I do 99% of my payments with a debit card, and do a manual import (European user) on a regular basis. It is however good to know that I should reconcile regularly, and not only when there are discrepancies that I am unable to solve.
Way to go, that's amazing! But yes, reconciling just for the peace of mind, knowing all those numbers are definitely accurate, is a great idea even for the best of budgeters!
🌻 Hannah
It seems like my bank, when calculating my balance, considers everything “cleared”, even what it labels as “pending”. It seems weird to me, but when I treat everything as “cleared”, everything matches. Thoughts?
Be sure to look at the cleared balance, specifically, in YNAB.
support.ynab.com/en_us/getting-started-with-reconciling-accounts-an-overview-Sy3JWx4Js#balances
This software is almost perfect. Yet with the account balances always I mean always being off it makes it impossible to use. I linked my banks and it is spot on the first day. Then the next day says I have $10,000 more then I have. So I click reconcile and instead of it just going and pulling the correct balance from my bank it wants me to enter it. Not to mention that when I enter the correct value and reconcile then it gets my assigned value all out of wack. When I say there is not one budgeting tool out there that is like a last stop this I all I will ever need I mean it. Not one company on this earth can get it right. It is so frustrating. YNAB fix your almost perfect software. So close but no cigar.
Hey there! Reach out to our support team so we can help you out with this. It's possible you have an issue with your bank connection. support.youneedabudget.com/en_us/how-to-get-help-SygqcvtC5
Yes, direct imports are not really working.
Hey there! Anytime you're having trouble with your bank connections of your budget, feel free to reach out to our customer support team and they'll help you figure it out!
🌻 Hannah
@@YNABofficial I prefer to write passive aggressive letters to Amex and Plaid thankyouverymuch
To each their own 🙃😂
🌻 Hannah
Before I figured this out, I had random unaccounted money, sometimes more than a 100€ a month. Fucked up the budget up pretty regularly. Now I can trust the numbers and I'm always able to track down any errors very quickly.
We bought this software a few years ago. Entered all of our income and expenses and as I recall, the software basically said, "Nope." So I said, "Yup." We found shrewd ways to set things up and get things paid off. We now have over $150k in savings and most of our debts are paid off. Our credit score is around 800. And YNAB said it couldn't be done. We still laugh about that. If the numbers don't work, don't panic. It's not just about math. It's about thinking outside the box and being determined to make it work.
Where can I get a YNAB sticker?
We randomly have surprise, pop-up swag sales here and there! To be in the know on when these sales happen, make sure to follow us on social media or subscribe to our email newsletter!
🌻 Hannah
lol, "This is not the hill you want to die on"
I get the same feeling about reconciling my budget. Ahh…
🧘🏻♀️ 💆🏽♀️ ✌🏻
🌻 Hannah
Asaaasajhhhhhfgtvhf!!!
How on earth can my budget get soooo messed up in 1 day!?!?
You'd be surprised what we're capable of 🙃🤪
🌻 Hannah
Is it normal to always feel YNAB broke? Haha
I. Feel. This. Especially with having a baby due any day now, I feel like we've pushing the limits in every category every month 😂 I'll say we've been rolling with the punches quiiiiite a bit here recently...
🌻 Hannah
@@YNABofficialthis is totally not budget-related, but if ever you feel the desire to do a baby bump update, I’m sure there would be plenty of YNABers going “AAAWWWWW” ❤️❤️❤️
Oh, in the next few upcoming videos the bump is pretty undeniable 😂 I tried to keep it discreet, but filming at 36 weeks made that pretty impossible 🙃
🌻 Hannah
@@YNABofficial 😍😍😍
@@YNABofficialCongrats Hannah! ❤
well that was intentionally early to a video
Hannah seems like the kind of person who listens to a lot Needtobreathe and Ben Rector 🤷♂️
Wow, you are not wrong on either of those 😂 Though my current obsession is The Arcadian Wild 😍 Give them a listen!
🌻 Hannah
I use the clear button to check people who owe me money.
I feel like “match” is a better word than “agree”
Funny you mention this! This has been a debate internally at YNAB for a while. We all tend to gravitate toward using the word "match", but the truth is you can still have transactions entered/uncleared in YNAB that haven't actually hit the bank yet, or pending transactions at the bank that haven't been entered into YNAB yet, and STILL be able to successfully reconcile. In both of these scenarios, my bank and YNAB don't *match* line for line, but they do *agree* on what's true. In the end, it's all just syntax, and I still tend to use the word "match" in my head more than the word "agree," but I totally understand both sides of the argument!
🌻 Hannah
🌻 Hannah
@@YNABofficial hehe classic in so many ways!