YNAB You Need A Budget

[RG2010]

I came across a tip the other day, while browsing through the forums, that I didn't know about.

Although there may be some forums like this floating around in here, I thought I would get this started to have "Tips & Tricks" in one place to make it easier to find. Perhaps if there is enough, maybe Jesse and the team can add it to the YNAB manual?? Just a thought

If you come across any tips/tricks in the forums that are still applicable and are not listed here, or you know of a tip/trick not mentioned in the forums, please feel free to add it!

So, what was the tip I found?
http://www.youneedabudget.com/forum/post123177.html#p123177

I have always found selecting or typing the date into my transaction to be the more time consuming part when adding an entry to my register. I was thinking that it may be beneficial to add a formula type of input. For example, today is July 5th, 2012.

If I enter the letter 'n' for the date, it will be days current date in the date field. If I do 'n - 1', it will be yesterday. Or, I could enter 'n + 7', and it would be next Thursday (July 12th). I thought this may be a handy way to input date in addition to the current way.

You can just type - for yesterday and + for tomorrow or +++ for three days from now. You can accomplish the same thing with the up and down arrows (down for past, up for future). Typing a "t" will get you to today if you're somewhere off on some random date.

I'm not big on keyboard shortcuts, but I use those ALL the time.

"." also works for today's date.

This is one tip I'll be using from now on!!

[Ian]

When needing to adjust a number, type an arithmetic operator to pop the calculator e.g. you want to reduce a budgeted amount by a figure because you are playing whack-a-mole, just press the minus key and the calculator will pop up.

[TurtleSVS]

Click on Uncleared Transactions at the bottom of any account view to see only those transactions. Super handy for Monday morning review of a weekend out spending and entering those expenditures in the iPhone.

[Budget_Ninja]

New to YNAB4 - I didn't know it was there until I discovered it.

Quick budget option 'Balance to 0.00' will adjust the budgeted amount of the category so that the category balance is reduced to zero. Very handy at month end for categories you don't want to build a balance in.

[los lobos marinos]

To 'Auto-Fill' a memo field in an account register if its the always same for a specified payee, head over to payee settings and there is a check-box to enable this function. There's also a another check-box for amounts if they're always the same too.

[litterbug]

Right click brings up a context menu anytime you have a transaction or transactions selected in a register, which allows you to recategorize, approve, clear, or move to another account, the selected items without having to use the edit transactions button.

Right click on any column header to bring up a dropdown that allows you to select which columns you want to show in a register.

[Taytay]

We just stickied this post because we really like it. Because of that, we'll probably move any sort of off-topic or "how do I?..." posts into their own thread if we see them.

Enjoy!

[los lobos marinos]

When building a buffer at the beginning of your YNAB journey:
Enter an income transaction as a split transaction, allocating some for this month and some for the next month

[Malisa]

When needing to adjust a number, type an arithmetic operator to pop the calculator e.g. you want to reduce a budgeted amount by a figure because you are playing whack-a-mole, just press the minus key and the calculator will pop up.

* and / will also bring up the calculator.

/ especially helpful when figuring out how to slice up a large bill over a number of months.
$345 bill due in 4 months, then in the cell type 345/4 enter and it'll put $86.25 in the cell

* especially helpful on splits to figure out sales tax.
If an item costs $16.99 and your tax rate is 7.75%, in the outflow column on that line of a split type 16.99*1.0775 and that will give you 107.75% of 16.99, which is 16.99 + tax or $18.31

[MRKlink]

This may seem obvious, but it took me a couple months, and someone mentioning it on the forums to find this out.

You can hide/show the balances on your accounts by clicking the little arrows that are at the bottom of the accounts area (next to the Add Account button). When the balances are hidden, you can hover over the account name, and it will show you the balance of that individual account (plus any notes you may have for the account).
This is especially helpful if you have trouble spending to your category balance vs. bank account balance.

[mozzie61]

You can just type - for yesterday and + for tomorrow or +++ for three days from now. You can accomplish the same thing with the up and down arrows (down for past, up for future). Typing a "t" will get you to today if you're somewhere off on some random date.

I'm not big on keyboard shortcuts, but I use those ALL the time.

"." also works for today's date.

m also takes you to the first day of the month, and M or h the last day

y takes you to the start of the calendar year and Y or r to the end - not sure how many times I'd use this one

All these keyboard shortcuts and more can be found here.

[TurtleSVS]

* especially helpful on splits to figure out sales tax.
If an item costs $16.99 and your tax rate is 7.75%, in the outflow column on that line of a split type 16.99*1.0775 and that will give you 107.75% of 16.99, which is 16.99 + tax or $18.31

And if you don't want to do that, try to save a split transaction without allocating all of the total. YNAB will offer to split the remainder evenly. I do this all the time with Target because I use a RedCard (5% off EVERYTHING), so those splits are always a little wonky.

[Anomalant]

Not sure if these are tip worthy but as a brand new YNABer I thought I'd share and perhaps get feedback. There maybe better approaches...

• We find it helpful to place the actual dates my monthly recurring expenses are due IN the category name. So all our Monthly Expenses (cellphone, tv/internet, gas electric, car insurance, etc.) have their due date next to them when we're looking at budget. It's nice to know that information just by glancing at the categories, especially if the dates are new to you.

• For our savings goals, we made decisions on when we need to accomplish the goal and back into it. Then we put that monthly amount we need to save in the category name as well. For example I'm anticipating the need for a new car in 4 years, with a down payment of 10,000. So we took 10,000 and divided it by 48 months and put "(209x48)" in the category name. This keeps you from entering those savings goals in the budget when you don't have income yet, but allows you to see what your projections are for the monthly savings.

We're testing these things out to see if they work for us. Do you do anything like this improve your YNAB experience?

[taterskh]

I have our categories and subcategories either listed based on priority or for monthly bills due date. I also put the amount due plus the due date in the actual category name - such as car payment 1 $200 (3rd).... We don't have a budget yet and have to budget weekly for my paycheck and biweekly for my husband's so this let's me look quickly at what needs to be paid etc....

[HelenA]

• We find it helpful to place the actual dates my monthly recurring expenses are due IN the category name. So all our Monthly Expenses (cellphone, tv/internet, gas electric, car insurance, etc.) have their due date next to them when we're looking at budget. It's nice to know that information just by glancing at the categories, especially if the dates are new to you.

I take this one step further and put the amount in too. That way if it is a 5 Monday month (one of outgoings shows up on a Monday) I can quickly see why there is an extra payment in it.