dakinemaui Yeah, I mean, when I get hit with my internet bill twice in a month because of weird timing issues on their part, I cover the "overspending" and move on with my life, knowing that the timing will shake out eventually. They just ignore me now. I don't agree with the fact that if you over spend on a credit card, the negative category balance just disappears, and so your credit card amount just goes up. I would rather see it roll forward in some instances, so I would rather be able to switch this feature on and off. I have no idea how it would work, but I think it makes sense, like I said, even if they have to put a big 'ol warning on it and make you actively choose to do it every time, I don't care. Positive Reviews: YNAB — Budget, Personal Finance - 10 Similar Apps, 4 Features, 5 Review Highlights & 30,122 Reviews. If I can get it right I’m going to get an app with settings to accommodate  multiple types of users for budgeting. I'm not sure what you are saying about the offset account. This also violates the rules. From what I've read, it's a basic budget similar to your method. nolesrule But the replacement is arguably worse than the red arrows. (YNAB doesn't coordinate with them.) Was having trouble lately with the syncing issue on our phones with the old app so I gave the web version a try for one month. Why is it different for the negative then? I'll give you two examples: 1- My wife works for a small company. Instead of running between $0 and -$X, it runs between +$X and $0. As a Mac user, that means that if I want to move forward with the base Operating System, I HAVE to move to the new service. With YNAB's envelope-based system, it means you have separate sets of envelopes in each month. You can make it carry over by right clicking the little red negative category balance. Bruce and if you use scheduled transactions, it will show the upcoming transaction(s) total to the left of the Activity column. Yes. WordTenor Shyeah, right. That being said, there's a link floating around which has a tool for running YNAB 4 on OSX Catalina (I think this is it, but I don't have this problem so I might be wrong https://gitlab.com/bradleymiller/Y64) . If the web app had that (& prompted you to cover them with existing funds), and a display saying "you overspent n categories by $x in cash/checking, and m categories by $y in credit last month" it would at least make people aware of what was happening. A simple search for the relevant reimbursement category in All Accounts gives you the pending reimbursement total. It could then theoretically just sit with a negative balance forever not forcing you to do anything about it and all the while allowing you to “budget” money that you didn’t actually have. Highlight all Negative Category Balances Red. I've oopsed a few times in that regard and it hurts. (And, PS, I do have a raise in the works at the part time job.... have to accomplish some "goals" first but yeah, that should be coming, and every little bit helps!). The interfaces is dated, though and the transfer from the old MV4 to MV5 is not going smoothly, so I thought I'd look at YNAB again to see if things had improved. Your item is likely one of the biggest in your budget so maybe not so easy to double up. You cannot spend from an envelope that does not have any money in it, first you have to take money from another envelope and if you had put more money into an envelope than you spend how will it get removed from the envelope unless you move it? I have funds for things like unexpected medical bills. YNAB has users who run the gamut in not just understanding of the software, but of basic accounting and budgeting in general. In the case of medical bills, usually once per year, after filing our taxes, we true these types of things back up to zero and start over. Carry negative balance. I loved the old version. If I roll forward, to next month, April, it doesn't say I've over spent, it says "-$0 Over Spent in Mar" So that gives me no indication. I'm going to keep looking at it hoping that being more familiar with it will settle my mind on it. I'm launching a business, which covers OTHER expenses that I have, and I am generally "working" an average of 7.5 hours EVERY day, with almost no days off. Record a reimbursable purchase as a transfer from whatever account you used to pay to the Reimbursable (tracking) account categorized to the Reimbursable category. When I finally do receive funds, particularly if it comes in with a couple other payments at the same time, it is very easy to forget that money needs to be paid directly to the CC as an "extra payment" because there is no budget category that is reminding me that it needs to go there. It should be MY problem to work out what to do if the money doesn't come in for what I over spent on, not YNAB to assume what to do with it. dakinemaui I understand that and that's how I function for my daily "life" budget. Any money left in an envelope at the end of the month gets moved to next month's envelope. farfromtheusual In your example, I would use a dedicated Feed Reimbursement category so that money doesn't interfere with whatever you're budgeting for the next purchase of your own animal's feed (perhaps treating this as a true expense to minimize the hit per month). YNAB gives you two options when you overspend in a category. I can just as easily ignore one as the other. Having a negative in a category makes the money in your other categories unreliable, because the sum of the positive category balances does not equal the sum of your cash-based accounts. If the two balances are not the same, click No and enter the balance from your bank’s records in the field provided. I would rather have a way to specify that for this particular category, every overspending is carried over to the next month as a negative balance for this category, instead of being deducted from the overall budget. nolesrule Can you elaborate? I disagree that it should be handled that way ALL the time. Sea Green Display You may wish to install the 3rd party Toolkit Extension, which cleans up a lot of these issues. *before anyone mentions "going to get another job" please recognize that my part time job pays my personal expenses. I'm asking YNAB to help me make sure I don't slip up when I'm in a precarious position even more. I'm not that guy. It's simply more useful as a bookkeeping aid in the meantime. I WANT To be able to see that over spending in the next month. Also, I am an imperfect human being and sometimes life doesn't go according to plan. I've read the previous threads about negative balances. This zeroes out all my "Work Travel" expenditures. Your assets remain untouched. Reimbursements are usually cited as "legitimate" situations, but there are several easy ways to do that without negative categories. What is weirder than that is the other users on this forum who will lecture you about how wrong you are about wanting this. Obviously not implemented yet. The bug is in the lack of notification. Reach goals, easily track every expense, and gain total control of your money. When I put in my fake overspending in my checking account, everything goes red. My 34-day trial expired Thursday or Friday, so April was the only month I used it and I never got to see how balances carried. Then use the Temporary Debt approach instead. I have to go back to the original month of the purchase to be able to make adjustments to the debt owed. I have one such headache. Case and point this past Wednesday I was working late, and had to come back in early Thursday morning. Hi Clint ! But just because there are some UI issues in some cases that still need to be fixed doesn't justify doing it intentionally. (YNAB's official documents are in error in this respect, suggesting use of Inflow: To Be Budgeted in some cases, and will lead to issues with reporting and spending totals.). With a rolling fix, there would be no time period to go back to. With our slush funds, though, we carry the negative balance until the monthly replenishment gets us positive again. This is useful, especially if you've gotten busy over the last days of the month or on vacation, like dakinemaui said. The resulting negative balance allows me to see at any given time how much is needed to reimburse me for their spending. For my reimbursables which are of the girl scout type variety it would be no biggie. I understand people hate the workflow they're used to being upturned, but do understand why YNAB changed it: if one would carry a negative balance forward on every category, big problems would arise in how to pay for the last ones! roll with the punches. I've been struggling with this issue for months, and finally decided to ask if I was missing something. Put in your expected income each month and then categorize it. Each time I collect money, I add the transaction and apply it to the feed category, which reduces the over spending. But I got the same response when I brought it up. You take all the money you currently have, and split it between a bunch of envelopes. Very rarely is over spending on the credit card. I stopped "discussing" when I realized you were not even considering what I was saying, and that you'd rather vent. It's gotten much faster than it used to be, but it can still take a little while. I'd rather see the red and know exactly how much I loaned myself from other categories. nYNAB. If I don't catch this, YNAB rolls over to the next month, and suddenly none of my numbers make sense. I always thought I was one of those I-know-what-I'm-doing types. It's taking me longer to change it than I'd like, but it will change for the better in the future. At least give us the option. (Eventually I plan on getting an extra month ahead on my rent so I am actually budgeting July's rent this month (which once I get a full month ahead otherwise would have been earned in May). I can understand venting, but mischaracterizing creates a mess of true/false statements for new users to wade through as they're looking for answers. Making a float stop at the month makes more global sense than any other arbitrary line, and the infrastructure is already set up to allow me to go back and fix if I wish. Budget for the initial expense, then treat the reimbursement as income 2. Struggling with how to handle 'new debt' in nYNAB. farfromtheusual And for the record, anyone who understands the mechanics of this version of YNAB would understand how to go about manually simulating the red arrow if it's that important. If I roll forward, to next month, April, it doesn't say I've over spent, it says "-$0 Over Spent in Mar" So that gives me no indication. Just thought I would say hi and commiserate. I'm therefore confused about the argument, can you explain how you manage to pay for these things if you can't cover it from any other budget line? Also I had a second-row seat to that particular merger, since one of my brothers is reasonably high up there. ha ha after I clicked to post this I saw I was given the name Lavender Piranha funny  ha ha. This is where YNAB really shines in terms of helping you save a ton of money. Overview. And as you put it, many of us are voting with our money leaving the product over it. I don't know that there is a good answer but the current system is not consistent in how it handle this across months. At the end of the month, any over spending (i.e. Do you not have CC rewards categorized as TBB? The  money transfers that month and you'll have to track how much you took  out of each category on what excel?...terrible. Maybe it will be in the future, but right now you don’t have enough capital to be running it. farfromtheusual Optional advanced features? Furthermore, a fundamental principle is that the total in the budget must match total cash. I don't want YNAB deciding that it doesn't think it's a "good practice" and zero out the category so that the over spending just disappears into the ether. Just another example of why it would be helpful to have the flexibility of choice in this situation. It's a personal preference and the way my brain likes to work with and be aware of where my money is going/has gone. The budget numbers all blend together in my view. So if there's no reminder, I can easily ignore the fact that my balance went up, and just put those funds into another category that needs attention right then and there. In YNAB, depending on how you have your carry-over set up, you could either start with -$100 or all the envelopes reset and you would start with $0. It looks like it’s work well for the other guy here. Adding my voice for better reimbursement handling specifically, and better negative balance handling generally. Order arrives in the middle of the month. I'll just have to try it. Green means move.). We are the executors of an estate that is being settled. Another example; the 'SFTF / next month workaround'. I think my solution here is to find another software. It's just a tip I picked up and like to use. I admit I'm a devotee of the red arrow. If you don't budget both payments in the month they are coming out of, then it will be overspent and YNAB will automatically reduce your amount you are able to budget next month. If you have one real-world outflow (e.g., a cabin fee), record a split transaction with each kid's name on the memo line with a categorized outflow transfer on each split line. While, yes, this is true, that doesn't meant that next week I won't have it. And I got confused beacuse all the unused money does get carried over to the next month's same "envelope" and not the TBB. Every month now I have to go through and change the date on a handful of item - when I shouldn't have to do this. This is where YNAB really shines in terms of helping you save a ton of money. Click on the negative balance and select "subtract from next month's available balance". Has been beaten into quarks by now so far I have submitted feature requests to YNAB for. 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