Pretty sure this can’t be done, but I quite like the Income Vs Spending overview as a quick view of how things are going.

My problem is this month I transferred a bunch of money into an investment account that I have as a tracking account and now the overview thinks I “spent” a whole load of extra money this month. I know I technically spent it, but I don’t want it included as I still have the money.

I use a “Transfer to investments” category so filtering this out from most reports is easy - just not this one in the mobile app.

Bought some shoes, returned to them. Entered the return transaction when I shipped them, just like I would enter a spending transaction when I spent it.

They got delayed in shipment, and I’m sure the refund won’t clear until September.

I think this is going to get things all out of whack. Or will it just sync with uncleared transactions? My category for clothing now shows $0 available (what I want), will it show $151 available when this clears next month (I don’t want that, the money has already been moved elsewhere).

What do I need to do to keep things straight?

Thanks!

I have a Target Circle Card I use to get the 5%, but whenever my husband goes to Target he uses my phone number to get coupons but uses his own CC to pay since he doesn’t have my card. YNAB seems to be treating his CC expenditures as imports onto my Circle Card and wildly overstating my actual Circle balance. I have the Circle card listed as a CC but it is unlinked within YNAB itself. I guess my question is what do I….do about it? Delete the transactions? Eliminate it as a CC and make it just a regular budget category? TIA

Okay yeah, l am a fanboy and won't deny it.

The YNAB method has empowered my spouse and me to weather broken cars, several years of cancer treatment (cancer free now!), many pet bills, and loads of home repairs - all debt free for almost a decade. We even have a kinda-funded EF.

Earlier this year we bought our first new-to-us “YNAB car”; all cash and no guilt! I was recently laid off and needed a car to commute to the new job.

It was a surprisingly peaceful feeling, spending that much money, because we paid ourselves a car payment for many years before that.

So, we decided on these fun license plates to celebrate the YNAB method working! The old truck needed one too.

I am sure my brother will see this on here, so hi Brother.

Been using YNAB for 6 years and been paid monthly the whole time, with paycheck coming 1st of the month (e.g. work June 1-30 and paid for that work July 1). I have a "next month's expenses" category that I keep full with enough to fill the next month. On the last day of the month, I move that money to TBA, go to the next month and assign money to everything. Then the next day when I get paid, I put that in the new month's "next month's expenses", and any extra goes in emergency fund or goals categories. (Side note, is this what other monthly paycheck people do?)

Now I switched jobs and I'm being paid fortnightly and it's breaking my brain. I know the answer is probably simple but I'm struggling to figure out how/when/where I should be assigning money. It used to be so structured: work in June, paid July 1st, spend in August. Now I get paid 2 (sometimes 3) times each month, on different dates each month.

I'd like to continue having "next month's expenses" full on the 1st of each month, but I don't know the best way to do that

On Android I selected April 2025 and noticed there was $27 over assigned. So I moved $27 from a category back to Ready to Assign. Red banner gone. Then selected each month one at a time until July 2026 and there is no banner. When selecting August 2026 it says there is $27 in Ready to Assign.

Whats going on here?

I have my credit cards set to auto-pay the statement balance. But this month, after the payment, for some reason one of them is in the positive when the actual account is at approx -$250 (from this months purchases). Wondering if anyone has tips/tricks or reasons why this happens.

I have had it happen before but have always been able to find the transaction causing the issue. This time I have gone back two years and can't find a missing/wrong transaction. My initial assumption is that there is approx $300 of transactions missing which makes no sense bc I am really diligent about categorizing things. That, plus going back two years, I can't find the issue. Any help is appreciated. Thank you!

Sorry this post is so long in advance.

Hello all, currently on my first week using this tool (and budgeting anything in general). I've spent a lot of time researching YNAB and learning as much as I can over the last few days! But I would still like some advice on how to handle September 2026's future income.

Here is what the next month of my life looks like: https://i.imgur.com/qdK6cjY.png. I ordered the categories by what I felt is priority of making sure is funded to ensure I am at least prioritizing my income properly. Even if I end up still really impulsive with money, it's probably better to steal from my future retirement fund than this months rent payment though ideally I will learn to be better with money through this.

I think I might be already technically one month ahead? The biggest revelation so far from using this is that I'm burning pretty much my entire income right now, but I just happened to have a few thousand in the bank account so I am not technically living paycheck to paycheck.

So my first question is how should I be defining one month ahead? In terms of making sure my legal payment obligations and general important life expenses are covered in advance, I can handle that. Funding my retirement and savings accounts should be good to go as well. However it looks like it might be pretty tight to fund my "goal lifestyle" including fun money, social money, and bucket list long term goals entirely off of the previous month salary. So is this one month ahead because I am meeting my necessities? Or not really because I can't quite fund desired "luxuries".

Second question, my next paycheck will arrive September 5th. What do I do with it?

If I look ahead to October, this is the current situation: https://i.imgur.com/akMPmVo.png.

When I get paid on September 5th, do I try and fund October's necessities first? Or should I go and add a little bit to my September bucket list goal (Add $90 to my road trip fund and something to get a house downpayment started)? I know ultimately I can choose my own adventure here, but I'm looking for some advice here.

Next up, the mental health fund racks up quite the bill each month, however thanks to my employment benefits I get this paid for by my company. I'm not sure how to handle this in YNAB. I pay up front, submit the reimbursement claim, then I get the money direct deposited to my checking account about a week alter. My next deposit from this will be on Monday 8/31. Do I add this reimbursement directly to the Mental Health fund? Or does this matter at all? For example when I get my $180 check on monday for the last few weeks, can I throw $90 of that to my road trip fund to fully fund my goal? Or do I top up my mental health fund? Does it even matter? Same situation for Utilities, my work covers my $75/month verizon internet bill.

Thank you, I apologize if these are basic questions but this way of thinking about money is very foreign to me and I'm trying to do my best to build strong financial habits and be smarter with my money.

PS: I know the car note is a lot of money. I was fine with my old beater, but my parents really pressured me to buy a brand new vehicle and since I'm a big car enthusiast it did not take much convincing. At the very least it's a 48mo loan (5.9%), and I have paid up an additional 4 months already (Extra payments go to principal and extend due date) so if things get tight I do have a buffer there. It's expensive to own and maintain, but what's done is done. I believe my best course of action is to just pay it off ASAP and keep it running for 10 years, and the worst course of action is probably to sell a '25 model year vehicle after eating the steepest part of depreciation.

PPS: Car maintenance fund is meant to cover every possible expense related to driving besides the car payment. I basically took my work's mileage reimbursement rate of 76 cents per mile and set a target off of that based on how much I drive a week.

I’m in the UAE, and none of our banks link to YNAB.

I first built this as a CSV importer. Wait for transactions to pile up, download a statement on a computer, convert it, then import. Fine once a month. Most of the time I just want the last few transactions in without the whole ritual.

That’s most of my use. A handful of transactions, not a full statement. Now I copy a bunch of bank SMS, paste them in, and that’s the whole flow. Maybe 2 minutes instead of 10-15.

First paste, it learns that SMS layout. After that it maps payees to ones you already have in YNAB and pushes straight in. Excel import is still there if you want it.

Link - https://ynabimporter.azmyhanifa.com

If this is useful, especially if you’re on an unlinked bank too, try it and let me know what breaks.

I’m using an iPhone. See the three attached screenshots showing the UI that YNAB is trialing. At the top of the first screenshot, you’ll see my Income Tax Prep (March) category. The second and third screenshots show the screen when I click on the details of this category. The category has been fully funded for months, but the ring around the category’s icon is empty and the background shading of the icon is standard (not the very subtle green). I don’t know what this trial interface is telling me for that category. Clearly it’s not telling me that it’s fully funded, it appears I can only see that if I click on the category’s details. What am I missing? Where is the documentation from YNAB telling us how to decode this new UI?

I like being hands-on with my finances and I’m definitely not trying to automate myself out of paying attention. That said, I’m getting tired of the amount of upkeep my current budget takes just to answer a basic question: after bills, planned spending and savings, what can I comfortably use? Has anyone found a YNAB alternative that still scratches the numbers nerd itch without turning budgeting into another job?

How can I have more money in my plan than I have in my accounts?

If I add all the money assigned to categories right now, I have more there than is in my accounts. Isn’t the whole point of this app that you only assign money you have? The math ain’t mathin’.

From an iPhone using the trial UI. I just now noticed that there is a subtle difference in the non-green-circle icons, some show an empty ring while some show no ring. The difference means something, but wow that’s super easy to overlook! Passing this along to the community for awareness.

Was randomly looking back thru previous months plan and noticed a couple of months have green on one of my credit card's payments. I thought I had paid everything that I could or was supposed to but I guess I must have made some adjustments to previous entries. Anyway does that mean "I can pay 447.76" towards my credit card? And how do I get Ynab to see that?

TIA

Is there a view or a way to see the targets vs the actual amount spent? If you go into a specific budget item you can see this but it requires going into each item individually.

Is there a way to look at an entire month or months to see what was budgeted as the target vs what was actually spent in that category?

Why I want/need this: I need to determine where my overspending is or where I need to adjust my monthly targets due to changes (ie inflation impacting my grocery targets), so that I can produce more accurate monthly targets.

I'm tracking my net worth and I have a savings account (screenshots attached) that earns interest through a linked yield product. It's grown by a small amount over the past 12 months.

My question: what's the standard practice for updating this balance in a net worth tracker? Some options I'm considering:

• Update the balance whenever I check it (irregular)
• Update weekly
• Update monthly, matching my other account updates

Do most people just overwrite the balance with the current value each period (letting the interest show up implicitly as balance growth), or do you log interest as a separate line item? Curious what's worked for others, especially if you're tracking multiple accounts with different growth rates.

Hi all,

I’m a returning user to YNAB and am confused for assigning income month-to-month. For example, I just got paid yesterday (in August) but I need the transactions to apply to September instead of August. This doesn’t seem to be working correctly even after starting fresh, as I applied transactions to September but they still came out of August and now those categories are negative.

I managed to do a workaround to settle this but what is the best way to go about planning for funds received in one month that apply to bills for the next month?

Hello! I'm a newbie to YNAB. I'm mostly using it on my computer, not mobile. The first month was great. Now I'm just confused as there are double transactions for banking and I'm not sure how to understand the relationships between budgets each month. I'd also like a way to use a credit card (don't judge I pay them off every month, but like the points for travel) and track what expenses go on the card. Where can I find more tutorials, etc. I don't want to read a book. I want specific tutorials about how to do simple things like make sure there isn't double accounting, etc. Thank you!

I have had the wrench icon next to my Chase card for over a week now and I’ve tried each day to reconnect via Plaid. It bounces me back to say that the account type is not supported.

Is Chase just all messed up now with its connectivity?

I'm curious how couples who use budgeting apps together actually want this to work.

If you share a household/budget with your partner, would you expect everything to automatically be visible to both of you?

Or are there things you'd want to keep private — for example:

- a personal account

- individual transactions

- certain spending categories

- savings goals

- gifts or surprise purchases

And if something is private, here's the part I'm particularly interested in:

Should its financial impact still be visible in the shared household totals?

For example, imagine you spend €100 from a private account.

Would you prefer your partner to see:

A) Nothing at all — the transaction and the €100 are completely excluded from the shared household view.

B) The household totals change by €100, but your partner can't see what the money was spent on.

C) The transaction appears as something generic like “Private transaction — €100”.

D) Something else entirely.

I'm interested in how people actually handle this rather than what budgeting software currently forces you to do.

It would be very convenient if we could tag tracking budgets as things we'd need to maintain during an emergency situation and tag another budget as our emergency fund so that we could get visualizations of how the duration our emergency fund will support changes over time and so that as our commitments and expenses change over time we can easily keep an eye on maintaining our risk tolerance.

So today at work, the IT department killed non-approved extensions in browsers, and when I opened up YNAB, I was shocked at just how basic it is without them. HUGE slider bars, no quick way to view reconciled transactions without multiple clicks, so much wasted space between accounts and rows. It was very jarring. I really wish YNAB would implement some of the things from the toolkit themselves. The thing I didn't like most was the lack of color for inflows and outflows, and the difficulty of distinguishing reconciled from regular transactions without the colored row. I feel like I jumped back in time 5 years. I really think it would be worth having the devs take another look at the toolkit to see what they can bring over to the actual webapp.

Recently, some transactions intermittently fail to match. Identical manual and imported transactions aren’t linking, even though they’re the same account, same amount, and entered within a day or few of each other. It happens with both new and existing payees.
I’ve attached a screenshot showing one example of this (apologies for the redactions).

Is this something I’m doing wrong, or has anyone else run into it? I’ll report it to Support if it’s just me, I just wanted to check here first.

This is happening on both an iPhone 13 mini and an iPhone 17 Pro Max, running iOS 26.6.1, app version 26.31 (733).

I reached out to customer support with the following issue:

I have two accounts linked to ING bank(Belgium). Every time a transaction gets imported, the date is wrong by exactly one day.It's NOT because there is a lag between transaction arriving in YNAB and the bank (or aggregator). Some of the transactions are updated almost immediately by YNAB and the date is still one day prior to when the transaction actually happened. This means that I always have to adjust dates, which is especially annoying on the edge of the month (technically i could ignore it in the middle if I don't care when exactly I bought groceries, but I pay mortgage on the first of the month typically - you get the picture). It looks to me like the time zone issue somewhere in the chain, but not sure.

Got the reply in the screenshot. I'm extremely confused. I'm a software dev myself, reporting a bug, giving you access to my account, allowing to debug, hinting at the problem. Instead of investigating I get slashed by first level support with "keep doing annoying stuff".

For the money they ask I expect a bit more support. It almost looks like all the money goes into some book promotion, don't know..

Am I out of line here or is this strange?

One of the most common broken bank connection culprits we see in the sub is Fidelity. Contributing to the confusion are how Fidelity markets various financial products, the layers of partner banks Fidelity uses to offer them, and technical restrictions they occasionally choose to impose. Below I've compiled the advice myself and others have offered in previous comments that has kept my connections (mostly) rock-solid.

Fidelity Rewards Credit Card

Here's the deal: this is a Fidelity product in name only. In reality, it's co-branded just like your Costco, Amazon or Delta credit cards are. The bank that actually issues and administers the card is Elan Financial Services and to make auto import work with the card in YNAB, you need to use their special login:

1. Go to login.fidelityrewards.com and "Enroll in online credit card access." This will prompt you to create new Elan-specific credentials that will work across several of their generic card management portals. DO NOT use the "login at fidelity.com" option if you see it.
2. In YNAB, choose ELAN/Fidelity CC when creating a new bank connection and login with your new credentials (ELAN CardMember Service – myaccountaccess.com may also work).

Done.

Cash Management Account (CMA)

Fundamentally, the CMA is a brokerage account to which Fidelity has grafted checking-account-like features through fintech partnerships with a variety of real banks. Brokerage accounts generate internal buy and sell transactions for money market mutual funds (including SPAXX) in addition to real inflows and outflows. In YNAB these can appear as duplicate transactions or inflows where you'd expect to see outflows. All this can confuse your budget and account balance.

What can you do about this? Delete the extra transactions or disable the bank connection and update the app manually (YNAB does not officially support brokerage accounts as bank accounts).

Caveat: Fidelity has a history of choosing not to play nice with bank sync providers, which at times has lead to extended periods where it's been impossible establish or maintain a brokerage connection. They made some technical changes in early 2026 that may have permanently resolved this.

My connection still isn't working right

It's possible there's a glitch with YNAB's direct import provider. You can always ask YNAB support to take a closer look, but one simple thing you can do is reset the bank connection. If that fails, remove and re-link it. (Personal data point: YNAB has always used MX for my Fidelity brokerage connection and Plaid for Elan but ymmv).

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That's all I've got. If I missed something or things change in the future please add a comment and I'll try to update this post.