A good budgeting app???

moments_of_sanity

Hi Toomuchdebt,

I have cleared out all transactions and started again and this time I get a completely different figure???? The amount on the left hand side under 'Budget accounts' is almost correct apart from my account which is £2.27 over what I actually have? All the other figures are correct and I have input all the details correctly by allocating what account they have come from, what the payment was for and the amount and now it is telling me I have £177.43 left to budget? I have no idea where I am going wrong with this. So frustrating, I may well give up and go back to my spreadsheets!!!!

Neither me or my eldest DD, who has an A* in A level maths can work it out :rotfl:

moments_of_sanity

moments_of_sanity wrote: »

Hi Toomuchdebt,

I have cleared out all transactions and started again and this time I get a completely different figure???? The amount on the left hand side under 'Budget accounts' is almost correct apart from my account which is £2.27 over what I actually have? All the other figures are correct and I have input all the details correctly by allocating what account they have come from, what the payment was for and the amount and now it is telling me I have £177.43 left to budget? I have no idea where I am going wrong with this. So frustrating, I may well give up and go back to my spreadsheets!!!!

Neither me or my eldest DD, who has an A* in A level maths can work it out :rotfl:

I think I am thinking about this too hard......I have come to the conclusion that it assumes I have £177.43 left to allocate to a budget but in actual fact I don't have any left so I have added a miscellaneous under everyday accounts and allocated the £177.43 to that so that I am now left with a '0' amount to budget. I can't seem to balance it any other way.

What have I done wrong?

SeduLOUs

moments_of_sanity wrote: »

I think I am thinking about this too hard......I have come to the conclusion that it assumes I have £177.43 left to allocate to a budget but in actual fact I don't have any left so I have added a miscellaneous under everyday accounts and allocated the £177.43 to that so that I am now left with a '0' amount to budget. I can't seem to balance it any other way.

What have I done wrong?

Strange one, but you definitely shouldn't need to be dumping money in a category if you don't think it's gone right. Maybe you do actually have that money, but let's see.

You say the bank account isn't correct at the moment, so let's start there - you can 'reconcile' the bank account and mark everything as cleared and finalise the reconciliation and when you've done that you'll know your bank is as per your statement and there's no weird transactions going on or being posted to the wrong side (i.e. as income instead of an outgoing).

You then need to check that all of the transactions you have posted in the on budget accounts are assigned to a category so that they correctly sit in the outflow column for their category and reduce the balance accordingly. You should have exclamation marks glaring at you next to your account balance if any of these are missing so it should be obvious.

There is a summary at the top of the budget screen that tells you how much income you have had for the month and how much of it has been budgeted. The balance of this is your 'available to budget' figure - is the income figure correct? Is there anything showing as brought forward from December?

When all that is done, you should find that the balance column total (budgeted less outflows) should match the balance of your bank accounts - does it?

If you can't figure it out you could post us a link to a screenshot of your budget - close all the subcategories and we should be able to see what is going on just by seeing the master categories.

If not comfortable to post on a public forum you can email a screenshot to me if you prefer?

moments_of_sanity

SeduLOUs wrote: »

Strange one, but you definitely shouldn't need to be dumping money.

You say the bank account isn't correct, so let's start there - you can 'reconcile' the bank account and mark everything as cleared and finalise the reconciliation and when you've done that you'll know your bank is correct.

You then need to check that all of the transactions you have posted in the on budget accounts are assigned to a category so that they correctly sit in the outflow column for their category and reduce the balance accordingly.

There is a summary at the top of the budget screen that tells you how much income you have had for the month and how much of it has been budgeted. The balance of this is your 'available to budget' figure - is the income figure correct? Is there anything brought forward from December?

If you can't figure it out you could post us a link to a screenshot of your budget - close all the subcategories and we should be able to see what is going on just by seeing the master categories.

If not comfortable to post on a public forum you can email a screenshot to me if you prefer?

Thank you, I have no idea how to do a screen shot so will get DD to help me once she has finished her Uni revision.

I think I am confusing myself by not budgeting in the savings as although I have included it in the accounts listing, I didn't allocate any money to it. I did originally confuse myself as I input the amount of cash in each account this morning onto YNAB but that was after £182 had gone out of my account for some DD's so when I marked them as 'outflow' it took them off the amount I had left

Can anyone help me post a screen shot please? I have tried via my laptop and the screen shot option and also saved the images to my Drop box but can't get any of them to go into this thread?

Pixie5740

greensalad wrote: »

OK after some help from people I've managed to get YNAB sort of working for me. I am still not entirely sure how to handle my overdraft though. Unless i just "lie" and boost my income every month by £500 to cover my £500 overdraft.

Wish this program would make allowances for overdrafts though...

At the moment I have created an off-budget account with £500 in. I have then transferred the £500 as "income for January" to my current account, so my balance and budget appears £500 better off in my current account.

I think you just make your OD a pre-YNAB debt and then pay it down bit by bit until it's eventually gone.

Pixie5740

moments_of_sanity wrote: »

Thank you, I have no idea how to do a screen shot so will get DD to help me once she has finished her Uni revision.

I think I am confusing myself by not budgeting in the savings as although I have included it in the accounts listing, I didn't allocate any money to it. I did originally confuse myself as I input the amount of cash in each account this morning onto YNAB but that was after £182 had gone out of my account for some DD's so when I marked them as 'outflow' it took them off the amount I had left

Can anyone help me post a screen shot please? I have tried via my laptop and the screen shot option and also saved the images to my Drop box but can't get any of them to go into this thread?

Have you signed up to any of the webinars or watched the tutorials on YouTube? Specifically the ones about how to deal with savings?

I have savings accounts and the amounts in them tally with my savings goals. For example: house deposit, SDLT, solicitors fees, rainy day, emergency fund.

SeduLOUs

to do a screenshot, press the print screen button on your keyboard (with YNAB open) and then click the paste option into a picture editing software like paint.

You can then save the image and upload it to google drive, flickr, onedrive, photobucket or any other cloud based stuff and post a link here.

The £182 leaving your account sounds similar to the amount you have now got available to budget.

If you put you starting bank balance as it was this morning, and then posted transactions that had happened before that figure, then you nee to adjust the opening balance line on the bank statement to fix it.

Are you sure you've 'spent' the money via your accounts screen and not changed the amounts in the budget column?

Is your bank reconciliation now matching up? Is your income figure correct?

If there's no amount in your savings account yet it shouldn't be messing anything up.

Justwe03

I got this on the steam sale the other day I nee to have a proper sit down and watch the webinars when the kids are back at school.

I get student finance 3 times a year so I am really stuck how to work that into the system :-/

SeduLOUs

Justwe03 wrote: »

I got this on the steam sale the other day I nee to have a proper sit down and watch the webinars when the kids are back at school.

I get student finance 3 times a year so I am really stuck how to work that into the system :-/

When you get your first payment post it all to income.

Imagine for ease you get £800 every 4 months. You probably want to spread it out to have £200 per month.

Budget the £200 accordingly for the current month and stick the other £600 in a category called "student loan buffer" or whatever you want.

When the next month comes, type -£200 into the budget column for the buffer category and it will release it for budget for the next month (leaving £400 in the category for the remaining 2 months).

How you split it up is up to you, just wanted to post a simple example.

jadlgw

I've got January all set up on YNAB do I have to type all my bills manually into February or does it move everything over automatically at the end of the month?