YNAB You Need A Budget

[Patzer]

Late to the party, as a cheapskate slow adopter of new toys.

Got an iPod touch last Monday, and so far YNAB is the only app I've paid for. It's looking pretty useful if I'm willing to carry the iPod with me everywhere. (I'm still working on figuring out the best way to do that.)

The good: The interface is nice for data entry. I've entered from the account, from the budget, and (my current favorite) from the main screen. I like the fact that when I put in the payee, it remembers the last account I used for that payee. I like the fact that it highlights unsynced transactions; I can use that to update Quicken at home before I sync with YNAB. The sync just plain works as advertised when I'm at home. I don't need cloud sync, but I'll see if that's useful when/if you roll it out.

The really good: When I enter the payee "Walmart Splits" it remembers that this is a split transaction! I wish the desktop version would remember this, instead of giving me a blank category whenever I enter a payee that had a split as the last transaction.

The not-so-good: a) Entering the split transaction is a bit clumsy, but perhaps I'll get used to it. It's not like I have all that many splits; but they do tend to happen when I'm out and about, rather than when I'm sitting at the computer paying bills. b) The small screen shows the amount remaining in each budget category, which is clearly the most important number. I haven't found a way to see the amount spent in a category this month to date, other than pulling up the transactions and adding them with a calculator. I don't think this belongs on the main budget page, but it would be nice if the category detail included the current month's spending total as well as the individual transactions.

Good job on the app, and my compliments to the beta testers who helped you get it to work this well.

Patzer

[dtherio]

One comment on Lemon. I had downloaded it some time ago and played around with it a bit. After seeing the monthly costs for how I expected to use it, I searched the app store and found a number of other receipt scanner apps, many that would natively upload to services like DropBox, or potentially even better, directly into your Evernote notebook (Evernote is also free, with higher pro levels for a fee)

Dale


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I am here: http://tapatalk.com/map.php?2gytn2

[dtherio]

I have the iPhone app. The map feature seems rather unintuitive. I have the gps feature enabled, but the map only shows the bill I paid on my phone while laying in bed. No others.

I guess it would be nice to be able to enter the address of where the money is going to if you want to have a map of how widespread an area your vendors cover vs. just places you drive to.

Dale


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I am here: http://tapatalk.com/map.php?es04cx

[mozzie61]

I have the iPhone app. The map feature seems rather unintuitive. I have the gps feature enabled, but the map only shows the bill I paid on my phone while laying in bed. No others.

I was similarly puzzled in this post last year, shortly after the geotag feature was introuduced. What I now understand is that the map view at
Settings-->Payee Locations will only display the payees that you have geotagged at your current location, however if you enter a payee name, say McDonalds, and zoom the map out it will show all instances of McDonalds payees with a green pin. If you tap on the pin, the payee name is displayed, and a further tap gives you the option to delete it.

Effectively the map view is only good for displaying all payees at your current location, or a specific payee at multiple locations. Its main purpose I believe, but Basti can correct me if I'm wrong, is to allow you to delete a payee location that is no longer used or inaccurate, rather than displaying a map view of all your payees.