That worked quite well for us for quite a while, but recently things have begun to change. As we’ve grown in popularity, we have increasingly found ourselves troubleshooting obscure install issues for Adobe AIR on various Linux flavors, many of which we were not familiar with. If a Linux customer had a problem, it took us ten times as long to provide the same incredible level of support that we could for Mac or Windows. Furthermore, our Linux customers were, as a percentage, having more problems getting AIR installed correctly. To paraphrase a recent potential customer who was having trouble getting AIR working: “If you advertise Linux compatibility, I expect it to be easy.” He’s right! We only want to advertise YNAB for platforms that we can enthusiastically proclaim, “This will work great for you! We promise! If it doesn’t, we’ll work until it does.” The fact is, we can’t do that for Linux anymore.

On top of that, Adobe no longer officially supports AIR on Linux, and we don’t want to make implicit guarantees about future compatibility with YNAB 4, 5, 6, etc. So, even though YNAB will probably work on your flavor of Linux (perhaps with a bit of Googling and some command-line know-how), we can’t guarantee it, and are no longer advertising YNAB as “Linux compatible.” If you’re the persistant sort, please feel free to install an older version of AIR and then give YNAB a shot!

YNAB 3.5 is the biggest update we’ve released since YNAB 3.0. It’s packed with new features that will help you be more efficient, and effective in managing your money. You are strongly encouraged to attend tonight’s webinar:

And you should.

I’m just going to give you the highlight reel of what was months of work, and then another month of work by our superstar betatesters to find every little bug so we could squash them.

First, let’s start with the biggest feature yet: We’ve added commas to both the Budget and your Accounts’ register. That’s right, 1000.00 is now 1,000.00.

I jest! (Sort of — no commas for a year? *sigh* See, even I don’t get every feature I want right away.)

Numero Uno: Error Checking

Warnings, reminders, and errors, oh my!

Even you Top Gun Budgeters out there know that you occasionally have a mental slip. We’ll catch them now for you. Read about my discovery of a few errors in my own file back when I was running the alpha.

Turn on Error Checking in the File menu. Then turn it off again right there as well when you see all the errors :) Just kidding! Use this very thorough guide to error checking. When all of those errors are gone, warnings are erledigt and reminders are taken care of, you’ll feel awesome. The same way you feel after you’ve straightened all the pencils in your desk drawer (pointed north, perfectly parallel) and alphabetized your bookshelf.

This will keep your Budget balanced with your On Budget Accounts forever.

What? What did I just say? On Budget?

II: On/Off Budget Accounts

You can now designate whether an account is ON or OFF Budget. Checking? On. That Loan to your brother-in-law? Just let it go man, he’s not going to pay it back. Or you could make it Off Budget. Your Mortage? Off. Line of Credit that you tap into (you’re getting better and you soon won’t at all once you’ve become Habitually Aware)? On. Credit Cards? On. Car Loan? Off.

You’ll love how we separate the different types of accounts on the left-hand navigation. Budget tab is moved to the TOP to show that it’s the KING. On Budget accounts fall underneath it to show that they’re budgeted.

C: Fresh Start

For those of you that just turned Error Checking on and don’t want the warm fuzzies that come with taking care of all the errors, employ a Fresh Start (find that in the File menu). We’ll keep the categories and account balances, but lose the rest. Ahhhhh. Bliss. And with Error Checking on, you’ll be set for that not to happen again. And no, historical data isn’t nearly as important as you’ve been conditioned to think, *but* since we’re all filing taxes right now, do make sure you’ve saved your old file.

Other Awesome Things That Don’t Get Their Own Heading

This is for the newbies out there. Taylor built a newbie…handholding tutorial. Start a new budget and you’ll see it in action. It’ll help out the new YNABer a TON and we’re very excited to have it in there. No more questions on the forums about…anything really. :)

We’ve updated the help file a ton. I’ll bet you a sugar-free donut that your question is answered in there.

Adding subtransactions automatically sets your cursor in the category field. This streamlines split transaction entry a bit.

We’re more aware of plural(s) throughout the app.

Backups are no longer made when YNAB saves only because of a settings change.

When adding a transfer transaction from an On Budget to another On Budget account, the category field is skipped (it’s not needed — and that’s enforced with our error checking mode now as well, so don’t even think about it!)

We can now display notifications on startup.

Double-clicking on a bank statement file (OFX/QFX/QIF/CSV) no longer brings up the file-chooser.

And heckfire if we didn’t fix a typo in the Payee Settings dialog.

Enjoy the update. As always, updates are free, upgrades are not (though we always price to show our customer love). And, as is obvious from the past year, our free updates are big. Typos and all.

I just started our internal build 3.2.3.2709.

I opted for what we’re temporarily calling “strict budgeting.”

And wow. I have four warnings:

I can also see from my tab view that four transactions need some attention:

I clicked on the notification at the top of my Checking account and am shown the four offending transactions (after making sure I’m showing at the top-right of the register:

Woops. Those two for Porter and Harrison are recent. From less than a month ago! I select them both and bulk-categorize them as Income : Available Next Month. (For those wondering, I was shuffling money from their own ING accounts into their new bank savings accounts that we opened for them. The outflows happened in December as “Income : Available This Month” so I figured I’d set the inflow timing to also happen in December so it’d wash completely.) Our new build doesn’t like it if I just let things wash through the budget without a category!

I’m now dealing with two transactions:

You can see from the Split that I was making an adjustment to my budget because it was overstated. It was overstated because I…had forgotten to categorize some transaction(s) in the past and couldn’t find it to fix it! (Or didn’t want to take the time to).

But wait… I fixed it with a $22.19 transaction. And my first “forgot-to-categorize-this” transaction was only for $20.50. If I delete the $22.19 adjusting transaction (because I no longer need it) and categorize my HOA fees transaction…my budget will still be overstated by $1.69.

Hrm.

Oh wait. I no longer use a credit card and that account was hidden a while ago. It was also a Budgeted Account:

Woot!

And Taylor tells me we’ll actually notify you when Hidden accounts have actions that need to be taken, so there won’t be any sleuthing necessary at all.

You can optionally turn this feature on. I love it on.

And for the record, the first time I did this (when it was “for reals”), it took me about 45 seconds to find the transactions and take care of them.

Goodbye errors. Goodbye budget being out of balance. Good night moon.

You’ll see it some time in the future.

Nice isn’t it?

You can read the full write-up here.

Head over there for a preview of a new build for both YNAB and YNAB for iPhone.

1. You don’t need to enter the outflow, then go back and categorize it as a split, as you did in YNAB Pro.
2. The split transaction entry is completely inline — no modal dialog box is a good thing.
3. You can view the contents of a split without opening it for editing.

Coming soon as an automatic update to your app. You’ll be notified on startup of the app when it’s available. Don’t ask me for an exact day — I really don’t know!