Another YNAB question.

Anoneemoose

Hi and sorry for another one!

I am just updating all of my accounts and I seem to have slightly more in certain accounts than I have budgeted, for example..we transfer a certain amount to a basic account each month for groceries and petrol. At the beginning of the pay cycle, when it was transferred, I budgeted the full amount, split between the two categories; groceries and petrol. Every time we have spent something from that account, the transaction has been added and the budget has updated accordingly, as you would expect.

The problem is, I have looked at the account on the bank and we have more in cleared money than is left to be spent on the budget categories. And everything is accounted for, all transactions cleared. All money has been allocated to a budget category, but even when I add all of the 'left to spends' up, we still have more cash than we do to spend.

Any ideas why??

Thanks in advance.

Anon.

sentientpoet

Are you missing any 'pending' transactions on your bank account that could make up for the difference between your bank balance and the YNAB account balance? Alternatively, are there any credits to your bank balance that you haven't reconciled in your YNAB version (thinking small amounts of interest, that sort of thing - took me a while to figure that out as receiving interest on my balance was not something I had experienced for a while!)?

Anoneemoose

sentientpoet wrote: »

Are you missing any 'pending' transactions on your bank account that could make up for the difference between your bank balance and the YNAB account balance? Alternatively, are there any credits to your bank balance that you haven't reconciled in your YNAB version (thinking small amounts of interest, that sort of thing - took me a while to figure that out as receiving interest on my balance was not something I had experienced for a while!)?

Hi,

Thanks for replying. Nope, everything is accounted for, including pensing transactions, that's why I am confused! The only thing I can think it may have something to do with is an account I set up for cash spends. I had £45 in my purse when I set it up, so added that as the starting balance. Then I added any cash spends to it as transactions. Some of the cash has been used for other categories, one example being grocceries and cleaning..I paid the window cleaner £4 this morning and added it under that category. So, you would think that my groceries and cleaning account would have less in because I transferred the actual money from that account to my 'spends' account. I have a feeling it must be something to do with having cash as an account.

On my old way of doing things, I would withdraw cash and just record what the main bit was spent on as that was enough accuracy for us, but this would be withdrawn from one of our actual accounts.

I have just read this back and I think I am confusing myself lol!!😂😂

I will go back to it and see what I can decipher.

onedayiwill

I think you are overcomplicating things for yourself.

Accounts are where your money is kept. Categories are what your money is spent on. YNAB doesn't care where your money is kept - current account, savings account, cash etc. It's all just one pot of money to be allocated to categories as far as YNAB is concerned.

Trying to designate a bank account to groceries and petrol, for example, makes things complicated if you also sometimes spend cash on those categories. I have to admit to being a little confused the problem as you described it in the first post, but I'm willing to bet that some of the confusion is you're trying to make a bank account balance match with categories that your have also spent cash on.

Is your bank balance in YNAB correct? Is the balance of your cash correct in YNAB? If yes, then that's the important thing. Then, if you have budgeted to zero (as YNAB the method teaches us), you should find the total of all your category balances adds up to the total of your bank accounts and cash.

Anoneemoose

onedayiwill wrote: »

I think you are overcomplicating things for yourself.

Accounts are where your money is kept. Categories are what your money is spent on. YNAB doesn't care where your money is kept - current account, savings account, cash etc. It's all just one pot of money to be allocated to categories as far as YNAB is concerned.

Trying to designate a bank account to groceries and petrol, for example, makes things complicated if you also sometimes spend cash on those categories. I have to admit to being a little confused the problem as you described it in the first post, but I'm willing to bet that some of the confusion is you're trying to make a bank account balance match with categories that your have also spent cash on.

Is your bank balance in YNAB correct? Is the balance of your cash correct in YNAB? If yes, then that's the important thing. Then, if you have budgeted to zero (as YNAB the method teaches us), you should find the total of all your category balances adds up to the total of your bank accounts and cash.

I think you're right. All of my actual bank account balances tallied with the YNAB balances. It was the budget categories that didn't add up correctly. As you say, I think that was due to cash spending, even though I had tried to sort that out. I have removed the cash account now and it pretty much rectified itself, I just had to amend some of what I had budgeted to account for it, but it all adds up now.


I know we don't need all the accounts, but that's how we did it previously so it seems(ed) easier to carry that on. As in we spend £x in Sainsbury's on that card and it is recorded on that account, but also deducted from the budget balance..this did work until I added the cash at a later date and complicated things.

sentientpoet

Out of interest, which version of YNAB are you using?