YNAB You Need A Budget

[smallLife]

I was curious what systems people used for the colored flags and how they have assisted them in the budgeting process. Right now I can't think of anything they could be useful for that my category descriptions don't already handle but it's always good to hear how other people manage their budget.

(As a side note, don't you wish you could have open and detailed personal finance conversations in real life?)

[INAB26]

Personally, I only use them on my scheduled transactions...green for anything on autopay, and for those I have to initiate each month, I have system of clearing the flags on the 1st and then marking them orange when I set them up to be paid. I hide the flag column in the register

I'm sure there are a lot of other ways to use them, but I like the register fairly uncluttered. I don't use the memo column either.

[Trevor]

I use the flags during my reconciliation process. It has been helpful for me in the past to have transactions that are on the same statement to have the same color flag. Haven't made use of them for budgeting in any way.

[Malisa]

Interesting INAB, I have elaborate notes in the memos of my scheduled transactions, but I can see flags being useful as far as which are auto drafted and which I need to 'go out' and pay.

Trevor, I wonder if you've gotten a chance to use reconciliation in 4 yet and if so, do you still see the need for the flags? I've used flags in that way before, but haven't seen the need with the reconciliation wizard.

[Trevor]

Trevor, I wonder if you've gotten a chance to use reconciliation in 4 yet and if so, do you still see the need for the flags? I've used flags in that way before, but haven't seen the need with the reconciliation wizard.

I don't need them to pull of reconciliation anymore. For the few reconciliations that I have done on recent statements, I have been setting flags after the reconcile but I'll probably drop that habit soon

[Anonybrit]

When I enter a business expense for which I am going to claim reimbursement, I flag it.

When it has been re-imbursed, I clear the flag.

[dmdunca44]

I use the flags on my two PIF cards. They help me keep track of which statement the transactions aree for. As the billing period changes, so do the flag colors. Also when a transaction is pending, but net yet cleared, the flag shows me thwt it is pending.

[thefish30]

Red=I have a question for DH
Blue=I have to adjust this later
Purple=last time I reconciled (different from last cleared)

[kevman479]

I only use flags when I put a transaction in my phone to remind me me to split the transaction when I am on my pc

[Turf_Hacker]

We use flags to indicate the transaction has been entered in the paper check register. My DW likes having the paper register with her (I think this is mainly habit), so we keep it up to date with YNAB.

[ccpopham]

When I first saw the colors, I would use them to indicate items that were set on autopay from the account holder with red or automatically sent from my bank blue. But then I noticed in the mobile software, that unless I open a transaction, I cannot see if the transaction had cleared or not. So I started using the colors for a quick indication of that in the mobile software because I can tell at a glance. I now use the red indicator for items that are scheduled to automatically come out like my cable bill (I get a discount for using auto pay). This is the same as before, but now when anything clears my account, I both check the cleared box and then change the color to green. Now when i pull the account up on my phone, I have a quick indicator as to what is going on without actually opening each transaction and this also gives me a more overall view from my phone.

[Elessar]

My flag system is for credit card reconciliation, pre-YNAB4. I needed to solve the following problems:

1) I needed to record that the transaction had been registered at my credit card provider, to catch those pesky purchases that I 'forgot' to enter
2) I needed to know what my last statement's balance was
3) I need to know what my current statement's balance is
4) I download my credit card statement as a QFX to confirm everything at the end of each period

With all those things in mine, I discovered that whenever you download, your transactions are automatically 'Cleared'. This makes the cleared balance equivalent to your last statement balance, and the uncleared balance your current statement. Even better, the total of those (working balance) accurately represented my debt to the credit card company.

So I didn't want to mess with the cleared column, given how well it was achieving 3/4 goals.

So I went to the flag. I flag an item some color to show my credit card has cleared it. This allows me to determine what's uncleared, and what I failed to enter into YNAB. I use two colors (green and yellow) so that each time I check my statement, I don't reuse the previous color. This way, I don't wonder if I had already cleared it today, or several days ago.

I think this will still be necessary even in YNAB4, as the lock icon is valuable, but doesn't support #2/#3.

TL;DR? I have over-engineered my reconciliation process.

[wdisharoon]

Green for income and I'll use red for a transaction that cause an overspending. I'll use yellow for a troublesome transaction - a return or bad purchase.

[Patzer]

In YNAB 3, I used blue as a reconciled indicator. That is no longer needed in YNAB 4, as the built in reconciliation works better than my YNAB 3 workaround did.

I still use red flags for my scheduled transactions. I don't have very many, and I want the red flag to highlight them for me when they go to the register. Mostly, I need to review them and see if I need to change the date. They happen to be all scheduled for the first of the month, but they actually happen on the first business day of the month.

Lately, I've been assigning arbitrary flags to new transactions in YNAB 4 so I can screen by flag. Then I can export to QIF for what shows on the screen, and import the QIF into Quicken. I haven't yet decided whether this will be a long term practice; I'm testing to see if it saves any labor over just entering the transactions in Quicken. Probalby not for one transaction at a time, but possibly if I come home having entered 3 or 4 transactions into my iPod for YNAB 4.

ETA: The blue flags used to be permanent. The red flags and the (whichever color) I use for exports would get cleared after I take the action I need to take or confirm that no action is needed.

Patzer

[tsinc]

I use blue flags to highlight credit card transactions that I don't know what they are when I download from the bank. My wife often makes purchases that we dont discuss. I do my best to guess by the name of the store what category the spending belongs in. On her own time my wife will answer the blue flags by turning them purple when she corrects the category (I often guess poorly) or puts an explaination in memo column.