I’ve long said that time should be spent managing the budget, not managing accounts (if you take care of your budget, the account balances take care of themselves). However, YNAB users wanted an easy way to make sure that what the bank was doing was what they were doing. After quite a bit of thought, I came to the conclusion that we truly could have the best of both worlds: simple account tracking with an extremely effective budgeting methodology laid across the top.

As a result, YNAB Pro 2.0 was born.

Managing your money just got easier.

Hats off to Taylor on this. I finally finished compiling the change log on the upgrade page (you can get to it by starting up Pro — it will detect that your version is outdated and bring you to the download page) and realized just how much work he poured into this new version.

First things first: a lot of bugs were fixed.

Okay, now on to the good stuff.

You can now import transactions from your bank file in both .ofx and .qfx (webconnect) format. This works like a champion. Newly imported transactions are checked against what’s already in the Register for potential matches — they’re marked in bold until you Accept or Delete them.

Honestly, I never really gave the whole import thing much credence. I figured Julie and I already spent such a minimal amount of time managing our money that it couldn’t possibly do much more. Holy smokes was I wrong. Reconciling is a piece of cake. Julie said, “It’s not that it saves so much time with entering transactions, just in going back and checking and re-checking to make sure you included everything from the bank.”

She hit the nail on the head. The time savings is unbelievable. I stand humbly corrected. I’m down with importation. Very down.

Okay, another very cool feature. Every transaction can now be flagged for whatever reason you like. The flags come in various colors. Some are going to want to flag transactions as Not Yet Cleared, or Come Back to This Later, or Why Did I Buy This. It’s entirely up to you. The functionality is there either way.

The Budget and Register now have a built-in drop-down calculator. This is nice for very obvious reasons. Need to figure out how much you should budget for that semi-annual bill anyone?

There are other little things that will make data entry faster. You can now start typing the Master Category of a transaction. When it pops up, just hit the “:” button and the Master Category will automatically be filled in. You can then type to find the Category.

I know I’m forgetting some other features as well.

Thanks goes out to the many active forum members that provided such invaluable feedback. Please keep it coming! We’ll be starting on improvements shortly.

I’m pleased to announce a very quick turnaround for 1.1 of YNAB Pro (there may be more where that came from). With the release of 1.0, many users immediately began asking about the ability to print. Well, that ability is now available in 1.1.

Also, as an added help for those that would like to find a transaction or group of transactions quicker, or reconcile to their bank statements a bit easier, filtering functionality is now included in the Register.

A few other minor bugs were fixed in response to a few crash reports sent in by users.

If you would like to download 1.1, please use the URL included in the email you received when you purchased. If you no longer have that email, you can contact me and I’ll work it out.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time on a new setup guide for the YNAB system and am happy to say that one is finally here. I’ve combined both YNAB and YNAB Pro into one guide, while also talking quite a bit about each of the Four Rules. My hope is that greater understanding will lead to more implementation. I also really made an effort to walk new user’s through the nitty-gritty of getting started, step by step.

Download the new Setup Guide

Thanks to Georg, Karin, and Erin for their questions and helpful comments that spurred some behind-the-scenes changes to YNAB 3.0 to bring about 3.1.

• The “Transfer” inflow has been removed. See this post over at the forums for the long answer. The short answer is that it was causing more confusion than it was worth.
• The “Date Format” option that was necessary for International users is now gone. It was annoying me from the get-go and, thanks to a few user tips, I ended up using a slicker way to get the job done. International (dd/mm/yyyy) formats (or any other date format for that matter) will be happy to know that this extra step is gone.
• An outflow category can now use amounts entered as inflows (as in the case of refunds, rebates, or reimbursements). YNAB Pro did this, and I thought it best that YNAB followed suit.
• The inflow column is now the last column in the Register. It’s basically switched places with the Outflow column. Reasoning: there are many more outflows than inflows. This will save you from having to hit an unnecessary extra tab every time you enter an Outflow.
• The percentages as calculated on the Overview sheet were only triggered with Primary income. The denominator was also Primary income as well. This dated back to when I was the sole user of YNAB (and it didn’t have a name, except for ‘the budget’ in our house); I wanted to see what percentage of my Primary income was taken by XYZ expense. This has confused a lot of users who expect the percentages to add to 100% (a fine expectation). Now the category percentages’ denominator is the total expenses.
• Those who do switch to 3.1 will notice a bit of increased Registry entry speed. I had inadvertently specified an unnecessarily large database range for the Register. It needed to be literally one fifth the size. I didn’t know this was affecting performance but it was. Lag time between Registry entries should now go *almost* undetected.
• The Income statement has now changed to a more generic “Inflows” and “Outflows” label. Doing this completely eliminated the need to mark certain categories with asterisks. The additional small bit of value added was not worth the investment on the user’s part.
• No need to mark savings categories with asterisks any more (see above).
• Printing on the budget sheet will now give you a print out of all the categories and their current balances. This will be handy for sticking the list on your fridge periodically.
• Everyone has probably noticed that the balances don’t add across until the end of the year. The reason I don’t do that is because the Budget sheet looks very, very scary when there are numbers flying everywhere. So, to that end, the original YNAB only tallied the new balance once that month had started. That is annoying. Everyone knows that a good budgeter likes to get the budget set up a few days in advance. So, the balances now tally one week prior to the new month starting.
• The prior balance column has been eliminated. It served one purpose, for one time only and wasn’t worth the hassle. From now on, if you do have balances when starting YNAB, you just enter a Supplemental inflow and budget them.
• A default category called Buffer is now included with the rest of the default categories. It will help people transition from a life without Rule #1, to one of bliss and financial peace…really.
• There’s no longer a need to enter a start date. Its sole purpose was to calculate the monthly average on the Overview sheet. The first transaction entered in the Register now determines what the denominator is for computing the average.
• I shaved two pages off the setup guide, and then decided to redo the entire thing, which added about 25 pages to it. I dig into the rules in a lot of depth, discuss savings categories to a great degree, and try and paint the picture that a life without YNAB is a life of…well…less money.
• Added another default 300 or so lines to the Register.

To grab the latest version, shoot me an email and I’ll get you a download link.

Perhaps this is selfish, but for longer-term growth of the YNAB method and improvement of the Software, both YNAB and YNAB Pro, I’ve launched forums. I say it’s selfish because I’m hoping over time the many dedicated YNABers will help me answer newcomers’ questions with clarity.

As the success of YNAB has grown, the volume of email I receive is growing — a lot. My hope is that the forums will be a place where people will be able to go to discuss YNAB issues with each other, come up with great new ideas for improvements, and help out those that are just starting.

The FAQ has helped a lot, but I also deal with questions that are so specific, from people that are sometimes really in need of some solid advice, that I can’t think of a better way to get great advice than from a solid community of people dedicated to managing their money efficiently and effectively.

And as you can see from this post, when I do reply, I’m much too wordy.

Head to the forums

On another note, I’ve added a subscription tool to the blog on the right-hand side. You can enter your email address and subscribe to YNAB’s feed easily. You’ll be emailed after every three updates (if three is too often, I can always change it).

Well, it’s finally here.

YNAB Pro is a stand-alone Windows application that will blow you away. It certainly has me. I’ve been using it successfully for the past three months and, while YNAB in Excel is still my baby, I’m — erm — never going back.

Back at the start of this year, I was contacted by Taylor Brown, who had a question regarding Excel’s capabilities handling a certain task. I wasn’t sure of the answer, but one thing led to another and we began discussing the possibility of YNAB being created as a stand-alone application. Taylor has extensive programming experience and a lot of enthusiasm for the principles that YNAB espouses. He was a perfect fit and we got cracking. Now, about ten months later, we have YNAB Pro.

If you’re already a YNAB user (and if you aren’t, why the heck not?!), you can “upgrade” to YNAB Pro. Just contact me and I’ll send you a special link that allows you to purchase YNAB Pro at 50% off.

(Basically, it’s as if you purchased Pro from the get-go, never working with the original YNAB system).

Oh, before I go off on what’s different, let me mention that I will continue to support, improve, and upgrade the spreadsheet version of YNAB. There are way too many people that really like using a spreadsheet-type approach for their finances. YNAB has become very popular, and I’d be a fool to let that go. Count on the same support you’ve received up until this point.

Just a few things worth mentioning:

• Of course Pro stays true to the Four Rules of Cash Flow.
• You can import your data from YNAB for Excel into YNAB Pro.
• Because Pro supports Master Categories, (Food: Groceries, Food: Restaurants), if you do import, you’ll need to assign your categories to Master categories.
• International currency and date formats are handled so well it gives me chills just thinking about it.
• Pro boasts gorgeous reporting that satisfies even the accountant in me.
• There is now built-in Receipt Splitting. Basically you select “Split” from the category dropdown and it takes it from there. The Splitter also has a built-in drop-down calculator for quickly calculating things like sales tax. (Well, the Splitter also can auto-distribute amongst categories, handling sales tax for you).
• The Budget looks beautiful. It’s organized by Master category, which are collapsible. My wife and I have loved this part of it, as it speeds up budgeting quite a bit.
• You can have as many categories as you like. Rename them, delete them, move them to other master categories, etc. The sky’s the limit.
• The date entry for transactions automatically sets at today’s date. There’s also a dropdown calendar that’s quite cool. Oh, and you can use the up/down arrow keys to move forward/backward through days as well.
• THERE’S A SCHEDULER. Honestly, I didn’t think the Scheduler would be so helpful, but it really is. I’m guilty of saying, “Oh gosh, how long does it take to enter Rent every month?” Well, man did I underestimate the time we were spending entering the same things every month. Heck, it serves as a bill-paying reminder to boot. The Scheduler now handles all of our automatic paycheck deductions, retirement contributions, rent payment, etc. It’s so easy to use, you’re grandma would feel comfortable in the driver’s seat.
• Helpful tooltips now make understanding come faster. By that I mean that when you hover over certain numbers in the budget, a nice tooltip will appear explaining why that number is what it is. It’s helped me a number of times understand what happened and why.
• Another extremely cool feature is Auto-Suggest Budgeting, which basically means you can right-click on a cell in the Budgeted column and see some common options to select and budget for that month: last month’s budgeted amount, last month’s spent amount, the average of the last three months, or what you have scheduled for the current month. It is handy. I’ll leave it at that.
• For the geeks I should mention that the data is stored in xml format, so you can have access to it in other ways quite easily.
• Familiar “Outlook” feel for navigation, along with keyboard shortcuts (again, for the geeks, myself included).

You may want to check out some screenshots of Pro as well.

Man am I excited to get this out there. It still has the Rules. It’s just built in such a way that the money management process has been significantly reduced. I honestly thought my wife and I had it down to about as fast as you can get it. We’ve shaved it in half. The redundant entries are now taken care of automatically, entries into the Register are faster due to the date entry improvement, and the right-click suggestive budgeting saves us even more time.

Your budgeting just got faster.

UPDATE 10/26/06: 24 hours later it looks like the response has been great. I’ll be contacting those who volunteered in the next little while with the details.

To any YNAB users out there that feel pretty darn comfortable with the system as it stands (and maybe some of you who are just starting!), I’m looking for a few betatesters for something I’m working on that’s very YNAB-related.

Contact me here with “betatesting” as the subject line and I’ll fill you in on more details.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Well, we found a public library relatively close to our new location, I got a library card and we should be good to go. The apartment manager said it takes three to four weeks to get internet setup. I have no idea why. If that really is the case then this library is going to come in handy. It looks like I’ll be on “maintenance mode” until then with a few improvements I’ve been wanting to make.

(I would try and make them on the computers here, but they’re running the rather old Excel 97.)

So, I should be back to checking and responding to email daily. Thanks for your patience everyone!

Shortest version: we’re right in the middle of moving from Utah to Texas, approximately 1,200 miles.

Shorter version: the hotel last night, it was a Days Inn in El Paso, TX on Yarbrough Rd — don’t go there — claimed to have high-speed wireless. It was so slow it was unusable. If it did load a page, it didn’t load the next one. I was dying being cutoff from everything.

Short version: 60 miles out of El Paso our trusty car’s engine started making strange clanking noises. About 30 seconds later smoke started coming from the engine. I thought we had run out of oil (though we had the oil changed right before our trip, had no reason to believe it would be low). I dumped in three more quarts and turned the engine. It sounded very close to starting, but then I noticed oil gushing from the engine.

Long version: We had it towed back to El Paso. A cursory look revealed a large hole in the oil pan, which means we ran over something. Other possibly serious damage may (and probably did) occur. El Paso just experienced flooding, so engine work there is very crowded. They can’t even begin to diagnose (which will probably cost $600) until Thursday. We left our car there and rented something to take us the rest of the way to Dallas. After taking a few wrong turns, we’re finally here in another hotel with actually-functioning internet. A pizza is on the way. Tomorrow we’re actually moving our stuff into our new place. Here’s hoping everything goes smoothly. I am tired. Our plan is to have the car fixed if it’s not a total loss (it’s an inexpensive car) and I’ll probably fly back to El Paso to pick it up in a few weeks. In the meantime, we need to do faster what we were already planning on doing — find a “family” car — so we don’t have to keep paying through the nose for the one we’re renting. There’s nothing I hate worse than being in a bargaining position where I need a car. Luckily the new job doesn’t start for a few weeks yet. And luckily there wasn’t an accident.

My apologies to everyone who hasn’t received YNAB on time. It seemed yesterday was particularly unreliable (that just figures). I won’t be available tomorrow until the evening (if at that). Thanks for your patience with me until then! This is one time where I am certainly not glad I’m a one-man show.