YNAB You Need A Budget

[Maggie Magpie]

So, I'm sitting staring at my YNAB3 budget almost as if I'm waiting for it to start talking to me or something (who knows why I just stare at it?)......and as I sit there staring at it, I suddenly notice something I've never noticed before: I see a little white button over top the "Budgeted" column, that says "Quick Budget"; so I click on it and "a-hah!".....I have a number of fabulous and useful choices which I can now decide upon the next time I copy over my budget to the following month! How amazing is that? I really never saw it before and now I'm wondering if it's one of the new updates I often download when I sign onto my budget, or if it was always there.....??

So I thought I'd start this New Topic in the hopes that others will hop on and point out some "a-ha!" features. It might help oblivious folks like me.

[Patzer]

Quick Budget was always there in YNAB 3 as that button. It was there in Pro, but you had to right click in the budget column to get to it. I've been using Quick Budget to copy my par budget out another month before working on the new month for as long as I've been using a par budget.

Patzer

[Maggie Magpie]

I, too, always right-clicked to get last month's budget. I never noticed the other options. And honestly, I thought I have been right-clicking to get the par budget for YNAB3 and just the other day noticed the "get budget" button instead. Blind as a bat, I am! I'd like to see if there are any other features other are using that make YNAB3 more user friendly.....the little stuff, that is....

[Trevor]

It's situations like this that remind me that I haven't read the users guide yet. There has to be something in that 112 page PDF that I missed.

[peterpainter]

I posted in a different thread some of these little niceties. Just little things that I like and it seems to topic here so I will say them again:

I like the little asterisk at the top of the window that appears after the filename to alert me to save the file after changes.

I like the date of entries in the register that will go forward or backward one day with just one keystroke of an up or down arrow.

I like the remembered entries in the register that brings up the most frequent one and lets me just hit tab to enter it and move over to the next field. (The tab key was a favorite of mine in the old PC days.)

I like the way budget categories collapse to parent categories so I can see it all in a glance.

I like under reports for spending that I can set either parent or child categories or a combination and then mouse over the graph to see the totals category by category. Try it!

Pete

[Athelas]

I like the little asterisk at the top of the window that appears after the filename to alert me to save the file after changes.

Pete: Thanks for that observation. It is not the "Mac Standard" way to show that a file needs to be saved but it works well enough, and I had not noticed it myself.
(I wanted to thank you after the original post, but I could not find that post again. )

[jdhume]

Two recent "ah-ha!" moments here:

1. In the register screen, to the right of the column headers, there is a dropdown to add additional columns like "running balance" and "check". Adding the running balance REALLY helped me reconcile with my bank statements.

2. When editing any amount field (in the register or budget screen), if you need to add or subtract from the existing amount (e.g. add $100 to the existing food budget of $200), you can simply use the +/- buttons and the calculator will pop up automatically and add or subtract from the previous amount. No need to use the dropdown or click on the calculator button in this case.

-John

[jjsouth]

I like the date of entries in the register that will go forward or backward one day with just one keystroke of an up or down arrow.

And I appreciated this bit of information the first time you posted it, too, but didn't say as much. This is making entering transactions much faster for me!

Joyce

[malisab]

Some people don't realize that there are options on which columns to show and which not to show.

It could help someone...

[glwc]

This reminded me of my last reconciliation ... when you hover over the date in the register, you see a little window that gives you the cleared, uncleared and working balance up to that date as you are clearing entries ... without needing another column displayed.

Gloria

by jdhume » Tue Feb 09, 2010 11:14 pm

Two recent "ah-ha!" moments here:

1. In the register screen, to the right of the column headers, there is a dropdown to add additional columns like "running balance" and "check". Adding the running balance REALLY helped me reconcile with my bank statements.

[peterpainter]

This reminded me of my last reconciliation ... when you hover over the date in the register, you see a little window that gives you the cleared, uncleared and working balance up to that date as you are clearing entries ... without needing another column displayed.

I just saw that- love it!
Pete

[peterpainter]

2. When editing any amount field (in the register or budget screen), if you need to add or subtract from the existing amount (e.g. add $100 to the existing food budget of $200), you can simply use the +/- buttons and the calculator will pop up automatically and add or subtract from the previous amount. No need to use the dropdown or click on the calculator button in this case.

I had not found that yet- thanks.
Pete

[Maggie Magpie]

Wow! LOVE that running balance column....how easy does that make life??!! I was using the "Accounts" total (top left) and the "cleared" balance, however, I had future "uncleared" transactions, so this kept me always calculating backwards. Thank you jdhume!

[Trevor]

Wow! LOVE that running balance column....how easy does that make life??!! I was using the "Accounts" total (top left) and the "cleared" balance, however, I had future "uncleared" transactions, so this kept me always calculating backwards. Thank you jdhume!

There was a bug with the running balance, so if something doesn't look right when you are using it then it isn't you. I don't know if it has been fixed yet but it didn't take me very long to find it's quirkyness once I turned that field on.

[lautzu]

Wow! LOVE that running balance column....how easy does that make life??!! I was using the "Accounts" total (top left) and the "cleared" balance, however, I had future "uncleared" transactions, so this kept me always calculating backwards. Thank you jdhume!

There was a bug with the running balance, so if something doesn't look right when you are using it then it isn't you. I don't know if it has been fixed yet but it didn't take me very long to find it's quirkyness once I turned that field on.

It's not fixed yet. It's an Adobe AIR issue (I think) which causes the transactions within a given date to sort randomly. Balances within a given date are not sequential; when you get to the last transactions in your register , it also means the bottom running balance may not, in fact, be your current balance.

Having said that, still love having it (it didn't work at all in the early versions of the closed beta and drove me nuts).