YNAB You Need A Budget

[Bee&Bea]

I like the way the reports show me all the categories and totals on one page. In order to figure the state taxes, I need to record sales as retail and wholesale, and whether it was something manufactured or just repaired/modified. It works great to use those categories and get a report for the whole year. But if I categorize them that way, they don't show as income, just inflows into those categories. Can I create Income subcategories so they still show as income? Otherwise, there's never any income showing. I put notes in the memo section with those categories also, but the reports don't show them, and when I exported to a spreadsheet the memos didn't show either.

[WairereRose]

No, we can't create income subcategories in the sense you mean.

What I do is have income budget categories where I show the inflow to, and negative budget the amounts out each month. This shows rather strangely in the reports, but it may give a picture a little more clear for you. I don't use the reports much at present.

It means having extra categories, as instead of outflowing costs related (eg, state tax) you have a separate 'expense' state tax category.

[Bee&Bea]

I'm not sure I understand negative budgeting the amounts. So you list the income as either available this month or next month, and then budget the amount in the appropriate category?

What I found works for me since we don't have a ton of transactions, when I was ready to do the taxes, I recategorized everything as type of sale, did my reports, then changed everything back to income available this or next month. It didn't take that long. If we had lots of transactions, it would be a pain. Still took less time than trying to sort it out in Quicken.

[WairereRose]

No, when you record the transaction record it as an inflow to the 'sales' category. This makes a positive balance appear in the category.

Instead of budgeting a positive number to the Sales category (as you do for the other categories you want to spend from) you type -30 (for example) which takes the balance from that category and moves it to the Available to Budget number at the top of the screen.

[blackdiamond]

If you're consistent with your notes you should be able to export to Excel and use the auto sort capability to isolate the various categories using the memo field. Have you ever done this?

[Bee&Bea]

I think I get it now. I tagged the $500 income as sales, then put -500 in the budget column to make it available to budget. As long as I remember to do that, it will work great.

I did try exporting to Excel, but when I opened it in MS Works spreadsheet, the memo column didn't show up. Works doesn't always import Excel files correctly.

Thanks!

[WanabeFree]

I have never understood why it would be so difficult to implement income categories just like expense categories.
Even if it was limited to Personal, Business & Other it would sure make things a whole lot easier for all of us who also use YNAB as our Personal & Business Budgets.
Whats the big deal if you only want one Income category then just use one. All these convoluted work a rounds just complicate what I feel should be a simple fix.

[rodeoclown]

What's simple conceptually is not necessarily simple to implement in software - especially when the concept of how income currently works is assumed through the whole software.
We are looking into ways to improve income handling (like adding additional categories), but there is no timeframe for its inclusion yet.

[brown685]

It isn't even simple conceptually. For every additional income category you add, you have to add 2 real categories.

It would be.

Personal Income - Available this Month
Personal Income - Available next Month
Business Income - Available this Month
Business Income - Available next Month
Other Income - Available this Month
Other Income - Available next Month

If you had more, it would become even more confusing.

Personally, I think a double category system would work better. That is, you have one category for the budget and one category for reporting. The default would make them the same category. Then for income you simply have available this month or next month as your 2 income categories for the budget. You would put business, personal, other income categories into the reporting category.

Of course, this adds it's own level of confusion, but it could be something that is simple to turn off. It could be off by default and those who wanted it would turn it on.

This would probably have to be a part of a major over-haul of the reporting system.

James

[WanabeFree]

What about the idea of 2 separate budgets, one for personal and one for Business but the ability to merge them into one report ? I sort of tried to do this on my own but it was more confusing to look at Personal income that came from Business profits without double entering some of the same income twice. I tried using a business expense account to monitor Personal income from my business but it just got too complicated. So I went back to one Budget with only one type of income category but set up a separate expense category for all Business expenses. For now I just track my business income separately in quicken and manually merge the data in a spreadsheet.

[EricaMelb]

What's simple conceptually is not necessarily simple to implement in software - especially when the concept of how income currently works is assumed through the whole software.
We are looking into ways to improve income handling (like adding additional categories), but there is no timeframe for its inclusion yet.

Hi Rodeoclown, I see you're from Australia, AS AM I! mwuahaha.

Can I ask, do you use YNAB to run your business (if you run a business which I am assuming you do, if not, your reply will still be relevant) - is it compatible with the Australian tax system?

My partner runs a small service-based business from home, no employees apart from himself, and he's talking about buying MYOB. I am hoping to persuade him to use YNAB first. But I am hesitant, and I have no accounting knowledge. I assume if I can set up a dummy file and show him how to put in expenses and costs, then print that out somehow, and give it to the accountant, all should go well...

Anyway, would love to hear your thoughts.

[rodeoclown]

Hi Erica,
I only have a personal budget in YNAB - my business requirements are pretty simple so they just get bundled in there.
Just recently Jesse (aka The Boss) moved YNAB onto YNAB: http://www.youneedabudget.com/blog/2012 ... b-to-ynab/

There's nothing in there that won't work with our tax system... but there's also nothing that will directly help with it either. It can definitely help with the running of the business, but when it comes time to give stuff to the accountant, you would need to export your data and let the accountant play with it in Excel. We are improving this side of things, but it's not there yet.

Check out that link above, and the Small Business section on the forum to see how you can use it for business. It might work, but depending on his business, it may not.

[EricaMelb]

Sorry, I should have said I read Jesse's blog post on moving to YNAB. That's what got me thinking about moving my partner's accounts to YNAB.
Thanks for replying. The way you put it - about exporting to excel for an accountant to play with-makes it seem less intimidating so I'll have a go!

[rodeoclown]

Awesome!
Let us know how you get on.

(I should add - you've got a 34 day trial to test it out on, but if you need a bit longer to test, email support@youneedabudget.com and they'll get you set up with a trial extension.
That said, if it's his personal business being run from home, you can use your existing software without having to buy another copy).

[EricaMelb]

Hehe, should have added that we're paid-up YNAB owners too!