YNAB Mobile Apps are Now Free

Posted on March 27, 2013 by jesse

Before I get to the announcement, I wanted to let everyone know that the Android app now has Geosmart Payees, which gives it full feature parity with the iPhone! Android users will love that feature.

Starting today, we’re making our mobile apps free for both iPhone and Android. If you’ve been on the fence about whether $5 is worth it, I guess now that question should be answered :) Download the iPhone or Android app (on Google Play only for now; we are still waiting on Amazon approval).

We’ve had a lot of internal discussion about this, and I even posted a question about it on Facebook to see what you guys thought. The reaction was mixed. Some said they were happy to pay for it, and were worried that development would slow down if we didn’t charge for it.

Others said that they thought the app should be combined, and they felt a bit nickel and dimed by the second purchase.

A few even said that they didn’t have a smartphone, and wouldn’t want to subsidize development of the mobile apps with their desktop purchase.

Over the last while, we’ve increasingly felt that it wasn’t making much sense to charge for the mobile apps, since the desktop is required for them to have any functionality.

Friction during the trial of YNAB

A potential new user comes to YNAB (likely referred by a friend), sees what we have to offer, and jumps into the trial. But a big part of what’s making a lot of YNABers successful these days is cloud sync. Users can sync with their spouse’s data, enter transactions on the go, and feel more in control of their money.

But these trial YNABers were in a bit of a pickle. Do they purchase the iPhone or Android app so they can test cloud sync? (iPhone had the Lite version, but did the trialer know what the difference was based on their experience? Android didn’t even have a Lite version, so the problem was compounded).

On top of not being able to give the full YNAB experience a fair shake, we were also adding one more thing to think about when it came to answering the question of whether or not YNAB–as a package–was worth it.

Advantages to making the mobile apps free

So, we’re making them free. This has three advantages, the last one being small, but still nice:

1) Those of you worried about development slowing on the mobile side because we’re making them free, don’t worry about it. We’re fairly confident that the improved experience for trialers of YNAB will improve conversion rates, and that those improved conversion rates will translate into more revenue than was earned when we were charging for the mobile apps. (Mobile app revenue, as a percentage of total YNAB revenue, is very very small, so this idea is not at all a stretch.)

2) Those of you on the fence about the $5 app being worth it won’t have to ask yourselves that question anymore. You’ll just have to think about the one-time purchase, and go from there. The cognitive load for potential purchasers will drop, and we think that will help them come to the right decision. (The right decision, in this case, is to buy ;))

3) We won’t have to send refund checks of $4.99 to people that accidentally purchase the mobile app, not realizing that the desktop app was required! That doesn’t happen a lot, since we use a very big screenshot to warn people, but it still happens, and it won’t anymore :) Yeah for less overhead!

To those few that mentioned not wanting to subsidize mobile development with their desktop purchase, I’ll just have to come clean and let you know that you already have. The mobile app revenue has never made enough to cover their own development costs.

What about those that just purchased?

There will always be some people that just purchased. We’ve had our builds ready to go free for quite some time, and basically have just been waiting on for the various store approvals (still waiting on Amazon). So we haven’t given a second thought to which day, or time of week or month would be ideal to make this switch.

The fact of the matter is that there is no ideal time, and we have to make a cutoff somewhere.

Hopefully those that just purchased understand that the change means no offense, and that if you felt the app was worth the $5 purchase before we made this announcement, that doesn’t suddenly change how much you feel the app was worth :)

Conclusion: We’re excited

In the end, we’re excited to make this change. We think it will help a lot more people appreciate exactly what YNAB has to offer, will lead to increased sales, and will help us further development to make YNAB–the whole system–even better.

Spending Trends is Back, with a Whole Slew of Other Improvements & Fixes

Posted on February 11, 2013 by jesse

We’re about to push out another free minor (that term is used loosely here) update to YNAB 4. If you haven’t yet upgraded from YNAB 3, you can do that here at the usual discount.

At any rate, here’s what’s coming very soon (if it hasn’t already based on what I’m hearing from our developers!).

The Spending Trends Report is Back

Little did we know how much you guys liked the spending trends in YNAB 3. They’re now back in YNAB 4, but much-improved. We no longer have the issue of trend lines crossing all over each other, creating illegible masses of spaghetti. We’ve gone with the stacked bar chart that makes things much clearer on an individual category basis, while also allowing you to see the overall trend.

You can drill into a category section, and drill even further to see the list of transactions that make up that segment. That drilldown functionality is also available in the Spending by Category and Spending by Payee reports.

I made you guys a quick video to highlight the new addition to the Reports Family:

Report Settings are Now Saved Between Runs

You know how you have that one category that always need to exclude from your report? Or how you’re always wanting to see Last Month’s report, and keep having to change the date filter? Now your report settings are saved from one start of YNAB to the next. We thought you’d like that. (We’ve enjoyed the change internally as well).

Spitshine

We’ve also continued to polish and refine the app in ways you’d likely only notice if they weren’t right. Ian (rodeoclown on the forums) sent me a list of 25 improvements, a few of which I’ve highlighted below (the rest can be found in this release’s notes when you install the update.

Changed keyboard shortcuts to make more sense: Ctrl/Cmd+R for reports. Ctrl/Cmd+T for All Accounts.
Adding a new transaction to a register now scrolls to show the added transaction.
You can now clear transactions by hitting ‘c’ while editing (but not when a text field has focus).
Category names in QIF exports now match the QIF spec.
Date filter settings are now per-report instead of being shared.

Ian also sent me a list of 36 fixes where one of the line items was “several other bug fixes”, so we’re at 36+ on the fix count.

The Quality Assurance Gauntlet

Why did this build take longer than most? We now have Vesna, our resident QA expert that keeps us on our toes :) Thanks to Vesna for helping us squash a lot of bugs!

We’re Launching “YNAB Works”

Posted on January 10, 2013 by jesse

This has been in the making for just under a year now, and I am thrilled to finally put this out there for the world.

We’re launching “YNAB Works”, a home study workbook+DVD video package to completely revolutionize the way you think about your money.

The DVD video (clocking in at about 30 minutes) introduces you to the What and Why behind YNAB’s Four-Rule Method for managing money. The workbook (83 gorgeous pages) then takes it a step further and walks you step-by-step through critical thought-provoking exercises to completely change the way you think about your money.

Who “YNAB Works” is For

Newbies

If you’re just starting out with YNAB, and want something in-hand, to walk you (and a spouse, which we highly recommend) through the method step-by-step, you’ll love this.

The Prodigal YNABers

You know, the people that left, but are making their way back.

Clients

Are you a realtor looking to help a new homeowner out? Or a mortgage lender wanting to educate a new client on what it means to really manage their money? Are you a financial advisor with clients that truly “need a budget?” “YNAB Works” is something you can purchase (in bulk at a discount), and hand to your client as a way of saying “Thank you” or “You better do this.” We’ll let you decide.

Teachers

Are you tasked with teaching your students the lessons of life? Are you looking for a friendly, easy, non-intimidating curriculum that students could work through in a few short sessions?

Pastors

Do you have church members that have the heart to be good stewards over their money, but they lack the know-how? “YNAB Works” will give your members the know-how.

Parents

Ah, how could I have forgotten you parents! Did your child just graduate, get married, or purchase their first car? Are they ready to learn the right way to manage their money, that will change their financial future forever?

Friends

If you have a friend that just can’t seem to get this “money thing” down, “YNAB Works” will do the trick. It’s friendly. It’s mind-blowing (though strangely enough, once you hear it, you’re kind of caught saying…”Well, yeah…of course.”)

Business Owners

Do you want to see your team’s productivity skyrocket? Give your team the gift of money clarity. Make it required reading for every new hire. Give them an employee benefit that goes above and beyond the standard stuff. It’s a benefit that will benefit them forever.

How to Purchase

You can read more about “YNAB Works” or hop over to our revamped Store page and purchase a copy (or two, or ten).

As part of the launch, we’re discounting “YNAB Works” by 21%, to $37. That discount is good through the end of the month.

If you purchase in bulk, you save. Purchase two, you save five percent. Purchase five, you save ten percent. Purchase ten, you save 15%. If you are just ITCHING to spread the YNAB Word, you can purchase 100+ and save 30% :)

International YNABers… :(

Unfortunately, we don’t yet have international fulfillment in place. We are working with our fulfillment center to make it available as soon as possible. Until then, you can only order if we’ll be shipping to the U.S.

YNAB 4′s Biggest Update Yet

Posted on December 4, 2012 by jesse

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Granted, YNAB 4 has only been out five months, but this version, pushed live about 12 hours ago, definitely has more new features and improvements than any free update we’ve pushed out for it yet. (All YNAB 4 updates will be free. Our next major version would be a paid upgrade. I reiterate this only to avoid eventual confusion with our update/upgrade policy.)

New Features

In the Scheduler, there’s now an option to “skip this payment.”
When importing transactions, you can now opt to exclude the memo field from importation. I personally lobbied hard for this one, because my bank puts a ton of very non-useful information in those memo fields.
When viewing transaction lists (with the popover) in the Budget or Reports section, there is a “Show all transactions in the Register” button that will take you to the Register with the appropriate filters set. Very handy.
Searching for multiple values of the same type now does an OR operation. So you could search for “Category: Christmas” or “Category: Gifts” to see all transactions in both of those categories. This works for payees, memos, flag colors, etc.
From the All Accounts tab, you can now search for specific accounts.
From the All Accounts tab, you can also now search for Open/Close/Budget/Off-Budget accounts.

Improvements

The Payee Settings dialog got a complete redesign. I jumped the gun and wrote about this new feature a while ago. You can read all about it here.

More improvements:

The budget screen loads much, MUCH faster.
Entering amounts in currencies using something other than “.” for the decimal separator now converts to the correct separator when the “.” key is pressed on the number pad.
Clearing a large number of transactions is now much faster.
Reconciling for the first time now runs much, MUCH faster.
If you’re importing multiple accounts simultaneously, YNAB now jumps to the All Accounts view automatically on completion.
Split transactions now show an amount remaining when the inflow/outflow is $0.
Selecting another transaction while adding a new transaction now cancels the transaction entry.
When matching imported transactions, the check # field is now ignored unless it contains an actual number.
QIFs now export using DD/MM if the date format is DD/MM.
The Closed Accounts sidebar group now has a subtotal displayed.
YNAB now accepts QIF accounts of type “CC”.
The Register now scrolls to the currently selected transaction when changing search criteria.
YNAB no longer steals system focus once it has started.
Reconciling transactions now automatically also “accepts” the transactions.

Bug Fixes

I count 59 distinct bug fixes, and many crash fixes.

Quality Assurance Pro is Now on Board!

Everyone say hi to Vesna, now our resident Quality Assurance pro! One of the reasons this build took a bit longer than we all thought was because Vesna likes to run a tight ship, so this build went through much more stringent testing than anything we’ve done in the past. I think we all agree that it’s our best build yet.

Unrelated: We’re Hiring

If you, or anyone you know, is an expert Ruby on Rails developer, we’d love to have them apply for a full-time position, working with a team that is distributed, friendly, and making a difference in people’s lives. Job details can be found here.

What’s Coming for YNAB 4

Posted on October 23, 2012 by jesse

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Back office discussions (over Skype, since almost all of us live in separate states, countries, or hemispheres) for YNAB 4 went something like this:

Team Member A: “Man, this is going to be great. I’m so glad we fixed ________.”

Team Member B: “What about payee settings? Are we going to overhaul that?”

Team Member A: “We need to…I don’t think we’ll have time.”

[Collective moans commence.]

I’m pleased to announce that, along with a ton of other fixes and improvements, we’ve completely overhauled the payee settings screen for our coming free update. It’s now much, much easier to use.

And I’ll bet 75% of you have no idea what I’m talking about. Well, you’re missing out on some serious time savings!

Our old payee screen looked like this:

The new screen looks like this:

You know that person that’s always willing to sing in front of people, but doesn’t sing nearly as well as they *think* they sing, so it ends up creating an awkward situation for everyone present? That was how I felt about our old payee settings. Awkward. A bit embarrassing.

You’re About to Become a YNAB Power User.

For those of you that have never seen the Payee Settings with the old version (again, no surprise if you haven’t used it–it was very confusing), you’re about to learn how to shave significant time off your YNAB workflow. Some of you may even miss the time you had previously spent with your budget. It’s okay…but we all think you should find an additional hobby to fill the time.

Managing Duplicates

The easiest way to manage duplicate payees is through the Payee Settings. For instance, our car and homeowner’s insurance goes through Bear River Mutual. I scan through my list and notice I have a duplicate situation:

That just won’t do.

Excellent.

I know a bunch of you just breathed a big sigh of relief, knowing there’s no longer that duplicate payee sitting in my budget file. Please ignore the Bear Paw one right above. Come on, just ignore it. ;)

Managing Payee Import Rules

I have a combined payee now, and I notice that it has a bunch of “import rules” attached to it:

Payee Rules are handy little devils. And I think it’s important you know how to use them if you ever import your transaction files from your bank.

The gist of a payee rule, is that if a transaction is imported from your bank, and it fits one of the rules, then it will be automatically renamed to that payee.

For example:

If an imported payee contains “Bear River Mutua Ins.” anywhere in its imported payee, then it will be renamed to Bear River Mutual.

YNAB will automatically create rules when you rename an imported payee, which is why you see a lot of my “Is : Bear River Mutua Ins. Paymt 0812″. At some point in the past, the transaction was imported with that as the payee, and I renamed the payee to Bear River Mutual, so the rule was automatically created.

Many banks and/or payees will dump a lot of junk in the payee field, like the transaction ID, or the date of the transactions, or the store number (Walmart #23 vs. Walmart #37…they’re all the same to me), and we OCD types certainly don’t like things junking our payee list, so the rules help.

Can you see from the above, that my rules with this payee are now redundant? If an imported payee contains “Bear River Mutua Ins.” then I don’t need a rule capturing the payee if it’s “Bear River Mutua Ins. Paymt 0812″ because my first rule already captures it.

So, with our fancy new payee settings area, I’ll consolidate my rules down to just one:

Now any transaction that contains “Bear River” will be automatically renamed to Bear River Mutual. You know, since my homeowner’s and auto insurance (both through Bear River) are under my Bills : Fixed category, I could take this one step further and have the payee not only automatically renamed, but also automatically categorized, using the dropdown right above the rules section.

When creating a rule, just click the little ‘+’ button next to an existing rule and you can go to town. Your options are:

Removing a Payee from the List

The only way to genuinely remove a payee from your Payee Settings is to no longer use it in any transactions.

However, if you just want to clean up your dropdown of choices when entering a transaction (and you know you do…), that’s easy enough.

Select the payee you’re going to remove, and then un-check the box that says “List and autocomplete this payee.” The payee will no longer show up in the dropdown, and if you’re typing the payee, it will not show up as an autocomplete option.

Once you’ve done that, in your list of payees, you’ll see an icon indicating it’s not being included:

You notice that Boden that’s bold? Blockbuster Video (bless their hearts, we haven’t been there in years), is also bold. A bold payee means it has rules attached to it.

Comb through your payee list, combine duplicates, create renaming rules and auto-categorization so importing time is cut by two-thirds (I’m serious people! That’s totally doable!). You’ll love it.

Payee Settings, the feature you never knew existed, now much improved in YNAB 4.

I wanted to show screenshots of the new Trends Report, but alas, it’s not *quite* ready for show and tell yet. That will likely have to come in the free update after this one.

I don’t have a firm date on when our next update will go out, but it should be fairly soon, provided all still continues to go well in the betatesting arena.

P.S. This is totally off-topic, but for those of you that use Valve’s Steam for gaming. YNAB is up for their Greenlight, where we would actually be available on the Steam platform for purchase. We have to get votes though, so if you want to vote for us, you can do that here. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, that’s okay too! (If we do end up selling on Steam, it won’t change anything at all for you guys, it will just be another channel in which we can market YNAB. Gamers need a budget.)

We’re Looking for a Full-Time iPhone Developer

Posted on September 11, 2012 by jesse

We build the best budgeting software available. Our iPhone app consistently ranks in the top 25 paid finance apps on the App Store. Customers really like it, but we’re far from satisfied.

If you’re interested in helping us improve our iPhone app (eventually revamping it as well), and you’re a great iOS developer, we’d love to have you apply!

About You

You’re an experienced iOS developer who would like to work with us on a 40 hours/week contract (or employee, depending on your locale) basis. Compensation will be based on experience (contractors obviously set their own rates). We see this position as open-ended, without a project end date.

You would be:

Working with an existing, well-architected codebase.
Helping us improve performance, fix bugs, etc.
Learning an awesome Cloud Sync technology.
Creating new features as needed (we have a lot left to do here).

You’re the one we’re looking for if you:

Are a top-notch iOS developer.
Have experience working in version control (Git, Mercurial, etc.)
Have excellent debugging skills.
Have great OO design and architecture skills.
Write code that is easy for other programmers to understand and use.
Use descriptive variable names in your code.
Have excellent spoken and written English (we’re an international team, so accents are fine!)
You’re self-motivated, and thrive with directions like:
- “This part of the program is too slow, and these are the places that might be good to start looking.”
- “This component needs to be rearchitected to allow for X. How do you think we should do it?”

If that sounds like your ideal environment, read on!

Bonus Points

If you already use and love YNAB, you score major bonus points. We love recruiting from within :)

Location

Remote. The YNAB team is located in Arizona, Maine, Massachusetts, Utah, Switzerland, Italy, (sometimes Texas), Australia, the UK, Canada, California, Kentucky, and Washington. You’ll do well if you get your best work done without office distractions :)

To Apply (Every Step Needs to be Completed)

Your cover letter can be your email. No need to send anything separately.
Send your resume in PDF form.
Please include links to iOS apps you’ve built, and describe your role in building those apps.
Include “IPHONE FIVE” in the subject line of your email. If you don’t, we won’t read the email.
Applications should go to: iosdev092012@youneedabudget.com.
Please complete the following two questions. This shouldn’t take you very long, and will save us all a great deal of time in the long run :)

1) Write a function “countTo” that returns a string containing every number from zero to the number passed in.

So, when I call ‘countTo’ like so:

[YourClass countTo:10];

It should return the following string:
“0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10”

+(NSString *)countTo:(NSUInteger) value {
   //Your code goes here
}

Note: There are no tricks here, and I don’t care about efficiency of the code. We estimate this will take you less than 2 minutes. In other words, don’t over think this. If you’re surprised we’re asking such an easy question, good. :)

2) manually write the setter that would be created by synthesizing:

@property(nonatomic, retain) NSString *title;

We look forward to hearing from you!

A look at YNAB 4.1.127 (Reconciled Transaction Filter, Row Highlighting…)

Posted on September 10, 2012 by jesse

If you’re more of the video-loving type:

We made a whole ton of fixes, some small improvements, and managed to get in two fairly cool features.

Budget Row Highlighting

Let’s face it, eyes grow tired of tracking along lines. Now, when you hover over a row on the Budget, we highlight the row. It makes it easier on the eyes to connect balances to their categories. It was a nice touch, and I’m glad it’s there.

Filter Out Reconciled Transactions

There’s now a little filter toggle next to the ‘Dates’ filter with each account register. You can hide your reconciled transactions so that what you see is truly all you need to worry about. This cleans up the register for each of your accounts tremendously. Used it last night with our budgeting and I love it.

(On that note, check out the search feature, where you can type ‘Is:’ and see a whole budget of true/false searches to run, ‘cleared and reconciled, only unreconciled, only reconciled, etc.)

Campaigning for Updates

I’m going to try and do better about making these improvements known. Our standard procedure for the past five years is to release major upgrades every once in a while (for which we charge) and then, in the meantime, issue minor free updates that often have very cool features in them (not just bug fixes!). So this is one of those free updates. There are more to come!

Ian’s currently working on squashing a performance bug mainly related to some Windows software called ‘Webroot’ that is making YNAB c.r.a.w.l. It’s his highest priority.

Taylor (just hopped off the phone with him) is profiling the Budget screen at the moment. For you non-software cool people, that just means he’s trying to make it faster; faster loading, faster interacting, etc.

Word Of Mouth

Thank you all for spreading the word about YNAB! We really appreciate the vote of confidence you’ve given us, when telling your friends and family about YNAB. We’ll continue doing our best to earn your kind words.

YNAB for iPhone & Android – Questions Answered

Posted on July 12, 2012 by jesse

Grab YNAB for iPhone here.

Get YNAB for Android on Google Play or on the Amazon App Store (for Android phones and the Kindle Fire)

YNAB 4 is required for Cloud Sync. If you haven’t yet upgraded, you can upgrade here ($40 if you purchased on or before December 26, 2012, free if you purchased thereafter).

Please read this post. It will likely answer some questions you may have, and will save our support team from having to individually answer hundreds of the same question ;)

Will the latest app versions work with YNAB 3?

Yes. But only using the manual wi-fi sync protocol. When you’re doing your setup on your phone, select Wi-Fi sync. (Exception: the iPhone Lite app only offers Cloud Sync). You can change your sync method at any time on your phone by clicking the settings button at the top-right of the main screen.

I already own a prior version of YNAB for iPhone/Android, what will the upgrade cost?

It will be a free upgrade. On your respective device, simply follow the links above and you’ll be brought to the YNAB App page where you can download the update for free.

I don’t own YNAB for iPhone/Android, what is the cost?

The cost of the app is $4.99. If you’re an iPhone user and not certain there’s value in entering your transactions on the go, consider trying the free YNAB for iPhone Lite first. (YNAB for Android Lite will come once the Android version has feature parity with the iPhone.)

I’m an iPhone user, what are the differences between the Full and Lite versions?

The Lite version does not have Geo-Smart Payees (where we use the phone’s location awareness to automatically set the category and payee when you begin adding a new transaction).

The Lite version does not have Favorite Categories, where you can designate certain categories as Favorites for quicker entry.

The Lite version does not have the home screen, or account view. It offers only your budget categories, and the ability to add new transactions.

The Lite version does not do wi-fi syncing where you can initiate a manual sync between your desktop and phone when they’re on the same network, or create an ad-hoc network. The Lite version only does Cloud Sync. Because of this, the Lite version cannot sync with YNAB 3.

The Lite version does not have the ability to clear/unclear transactions, or set/remove flags on transactions.

The Lite version will not have new features added to it (we’ll obviously fix bugs and make sure it’s ready for future OS versions and all of that). The full version will see significant future improvements.

I have multiple iOS/Android devices, do I need to purchase the app multiple times?

iOS

If all of your devices are iOS and they share the same iTunes account, YNAB for iPhone will be available for download (go to the App Store, search YNAB, find the app, and click the Install button).

If you have two different iTunes accounts, you can follow these instructions to make sure you don’t have to purchase twice.

Android

If you use the same Google account between Android devices, you can install YNAB for Android on all of those devices. If you use a different Google account, you’ll have to purchase the app for each device with a different email address. OR, you could consider purchasing through the Amazon App Store, where Amazon allows you to authorize separate devices to install and run the same app. Instructions for this are here.

Do I need to purchase twice if I have an Android and my spouse has an iPhone?

Unfortunately, yes. Where our desktop is one price for multiple Windows or Mac machines, the different App Store requirements don’t allow us the same luxury.

What are the Device/iOS requirements?

iOS

The app runs on any device with iOS 4.3 or later.
However, Cloud Sync is only possible on devices that can multitask (iPhone 3GS and later, iPod 3rd generation with 16GB and later) and have at least iOS 4 running. This means you’d still have to use the manual wi-fi sync that was used in YNAB 3. Please update your OS version!

Android

The app will run on any Android phone using Android 2.1 or later. The app will also run on your Kindle Fire, though it is not optimized for the larger screen. By that I mean that you’re getting essentially a larger screened version of the phone app.

I have unsynced transactions on my old version of YNAB for iPhone, what do I do with those?

If you’re using YNAB 3, you don’t need to do anything different. The new version of YNAB for iPhone will still sync with YNAB 3 via the manual wi-fi sync protocol.

If you’re using YNAB 4 on your desktop, follow these steps to sync your transactions before upgrading:

Open your budget in YNAB 4 on your desktop.
Go to File -> Budget Properties and under “Cloud Sync this budget?” select “No, make it local.”
Go to File -> Wi-fi sync with Mobile Device and follow the instructions there.
The transactions will come from your iPhone and land in YNAB 4 just fine. However, the iPhone will report that the sync failed (the old version of the iPhone can’t talk with YNAB 4 both ways, it can only send transactions).
The ‘sync failed’ message is expected.
Go to File -> Budget Properties and activate Cloud Sync.
Update your iPhone app and choose Cloud Sync during the initial setup.

If you’ve already update the iPhone app, on setup choose to Wi-Fi sync first. Once you’ve done your wi-fi sync to get those unsynced transactions into YNAB 4 (by doing steps 1-3 above), go to the main screen on YNAB for iPhone -> Settings -> Sync Method and choose Dropbox.

If you’ve already “lost” your unsynced iPhone transactions, Taylor, our lead developer, wrote a forum post that instructs you on how to get them back. We really don’t want you losing them.

How do I cloud sync when we have two (or more) separate Dropbox accounts?

Option 1 (Easy): Set up each phone to Cloud Sync, and when prompted to authenticate with Dropbox, simply login with the “primary” Dropbox account you’ll be using. Only YNAB for iPhone/Android will have access to the Dropbox account on that device, and access can be removed at any time by logging in to Dropbox and deactivating the authorization.

Option 2 (Advanced): This article explains Cloud Sync in detail. You’ll want to scroll down to the last topic, “How do I share a budget file with someone?”

Do I need to install Dropbox on my iPhone/Android device?

No. When you press the “Link Account” button in the Cloud Sync setup, you’re brought to a page where you can login to your Dropbox account and allow YNAB access to it. You are not required to install anything extra.

Will there be a full-featured iPad app?

Because of the many questions surrounding an iPad app for YNAB, I wrote a fairly lengthy post over in our forums. There’s where you’ll find pretty much every question answered (at least I hope!).

Will this version of the iPhone app run on my iPad?

Yes. Just like any other iPhone app that isn’t optimized for the iPad, you can run it in the small view, or tap the 2x button to expand it to the size of the full iPad screen.

Will there be a full-featured Android tablet version?

At the moment, we are making no plans for a full-featured Android tablet version. If we see that it becomes economically viable, we will—with opportunity cost obviously taken into account.

When will the Android version have all the (two extra) features of the iPhone?

We are working on them right now. By right now I mean that code is checked in daily to get us there. Split transactions are our first priority, and then we’ll get Geo-Payees in there. At that point, we should have parity.

I’ve reviewed YNAB for iPhone/Android, but now that you have Cloud Sync, I’d like to adjust my review (upward).

Well gosh, thanks for asking. If you left us a review that docked our prior version a bit for not having Cloud Sync, we’d love to have you make any necessary edits ;)

Full iPhone App is In Review, YNAB Lite, and the Kindle Fire

Posted on July 10, 2012 by jesse

Quick update here.

Yesterday the full iPhone app went into review! It’s still in review and we have high hopes it’ll pass this time. We were heartened to see it go back into review after having to submit a new binary over the weekend.

And as a bonus, the Lite app also went into review.

We also submitted the latest Android version (available on Google Play) to the Amazon app store. It should play nice with Android phones and the Kindle Fire. It’s been submitted, but by now you guys know the drill. We wait for the review to happen :)

Thanks to all of you for your glowing review of YNAB Lite! We really appreciate it. The next update that’s coming through will fix a few issues that nailed us on the 1.0 release.

YNAB for iPhone Status Update (Full App Rejected Again)

Posted on July 9, 2012 by jesse

The good news is that YNAB Lite has been in the wild since Friday evening. Over the past 2-3 weeks, while waiting for the review, we’ve been fixing bugs and doing little tweaks to YNAB Lite. So we were ready to immediately submit 2.0.1, which is now Waiting for Review.

There was one crash that caught us off guard, and were able to update the Desktop App to handle that. It was on the phone’s side of things, but since we don’t have to wait for Apple approval on our own desktop release, we were able to get that out quick. If you’re experiencing a crash on sync, make sure you’ve updated to the latest version of YNAB 4 (you can do that by going to Help -> Check for Updates in YNAB 4).

The exact timing of things with YNAB for iPhone (Full) over the weekend is murky for me. I believe Saturday morning we found out it was rejected because we include links to YouNeedABudget.com, where someone could purchase our desktop software. Our links were there to let people know that the iPhone app REQUIRES a $60 purchase of Desktop software, and here’s where you find more… we pulled those links.

We also had a link to our support page in the app, but pulled that to be safe.

Some of you more familiar with Apple’s policies probably know that they don’t like you shuttling iPhone users away to purchase directly from you.

We were surprised to fail the review in this regard, since we’ve included links to the YNAB site from Day One of being in the App Store (and featured, no less!).

We’re also very grateful that the Lite app made it through, considering it has the same links that the Full version has.

So on Saturday we submitted a new binary. We had to submit the new binary to be able to pull out the links. This means we start at the back of the line with the full app. On the plus side, all of the little fixes we’ve made to the app since it was originally submitted for review are now included in the new binary.

We’re sorry it’s taking so long to get the Full version in everyone’s hands — especially those that have already purchased and are simply waiting to get it as a free upgrade!

YNAB Lite is a fine stopgap until the Full app is released. It lets you check your budget balances on the go, and record transactions at the point of sale. It will definitely help you stay up to date on your budget and make sure you stay aware of your goals. It’s a fine app :)

(To clarify, the differences between Lite and Full are that the Full version: has an accounts view, allows wi-fi sync, category favorites, and my favorite: geo-aware payees, where when you go to add a new transaction, it recognizes you’re probably standing in Home Depot, and pre-fills the payee to Home Depot, and categorizes the transaction to whatever category was last used by Home Depot; you end up entering the Amount and hitting ‘save.’ Unless you have a dozen accounts, in which case I don’t envy you for so many other reasons :))