You need a budget (YNAB) advice thread

Minty123

If your balances match, reconciling should be fairly easy.

I would reconcile if I was you because otherwise, further down the line when your balances don't match up, you will have to go through months and months worth of transactions to find the culprit.

By regularly reconciling, you will be able to find problems quickly as you don't need to reconcile the same transactions more than once.

Red-Squirrel_2

What does reconciling actually do?

TooClumsy

@PlymouthScubaGirl @andyfromotley is correct, you are spending this money twice if you spend from one category and process a refund as an income to spend. If you have £300 in your spending category and you do a £80 Tesco shop, you input the expense and your category balance should be £220.
If you then return products from this £80 purchase (lets use £48 as your example), you need to input that as Income from Tesco into the SPENDING category. This will increase your category balance from £220 to £268 and this is how much money you have left to spend until your next wage/month.

@Elmly, you might have missed my message above to you, I've pasted it below:

@Elmly reconciling is very important to do! It means that your bank account(s) (which is the actual live amount of money) matches what YNAB thinks you have.

If you don't reconcile, it will lead to inaccuracy in your budgeting as ynab may think you have more money to budget, than you actually do and you may carry on spending it (taking it away from other categories) or over budget and forcing you to borrow from savings.
Natwst CC: £708.0

Elmly

ok still very confused.... ive just reconciled... i put in todays date and my account balance (which is the same as ynab) and it just put cleared next to all the transactions... is that right?

TooClumsy

@RedSquirrel Reconciling is the equivalent of you checking over your statements to make sure you havent been charged twice/wrong amount. As the input is manual in YNAB you can easily have duplicate transactions, especially if you have more than one on-budget account.

Once YNAB and your accounts are reconciled you can fully trust that YNAB is accurate with your spending. If you dont reconcile, you can miss mistakes that will throw off your figures going forward.

YNAB and your accounts are essentially mirrors that show the same information in a different format, so if you have duplicate transactions in YNAB your category balances are out and fair enough you will be better off if you didnt overspend elsewhere, but you need to be able to rely on your category balances, otherwise you would overspend or make decisions based on the wrong information.

TooClumsy

@Elmly, thats right, then you have to click on 'Finish Reconciling' I believe and then the 'CLEARED' next to your transactions will become small padlock icons that indicate these are reconciled transactions.

Elmly

that was so much easier than i thought lol

tizerbelle

I'm another YNAB addict. I even have a category for Ground Rent, into which I budget 10p a month for 11 months and 4p for the 12th month to cover the extortionate annual fee of £1.14!!

I recently succumbed and got myself a smart-phone (only a MotoG though) mainly so I could have the YNAB app as well as the desktop version. The daft thing is, most of my shopping is done online not out and about and I don't spend so much that I forget what I spent, where, by the time I get home!

You may or may not understand the ludicrous levels of excitement I felt when I was out walking the dog and found a £1 coin on the floor. It was quickly scooped up, shoved in my pocket and a transaction added to YNAB to add the "income" to my Purse account. (The only annoying bit being you can't budget the money to a category on the app - have to do that on the pc)

MrsDavo

Hi All!

Just started using YNAB on the free trail, and I like it so far!

Amazing to see your debt there in black and white - with a total! Scary stuff.

Anyway, Pre Ynab Debt - So lets say I have one debt, balance of £100. I budget £25 to it this month. When the payment comes out of my bank account, do I go to the bank account, and transfer it to the pre ynab debt? Bit confused on how that bit works?

May need to go back and watch the video again!

Pixie5740

Yes, when you come to make the £25 payment to your credit card you need to go to your current account and transfer £25 to your credit card account.