YNAB You Need A Budget

[earme]

I do use importing, but not CVS because it's a pain to re-arrange the format. I can just as easily go line by line manually through my transactions as spending the time to rearrange columns.

Evie

[GoBudgetGo]

I use it when my credit card website has problems generating the other file formats.

Thanks

[ryaske]

I am a first time user of YNAB, (this is my second day). And it took me all this time just to import my entire budget (over 2.5 years worth of transactions) from Buddi into YNAB. So I voted YES, I've used CSV import and I'm very happy it is available!

There were a few test-trials, but after a bit I got the hang of what exactly needed to be done, and have successfully converted the CSV output of Buddi into one that YNAB loads up perfectly (to the cent!), with all my daily cash transactions included (thousands)

Now that I am all synced .. I will be using both side by side for the duration of my evaluation.


Thank you for posting that free CSVed tool. Heres another tool that I use at work very often (but not free); it has saved me countless hours spent comparing large PostgreSQL databases via excel via CSV files: DiffEngineX. It does very detailed comparisons which really take the ? out of the confusion that easily arises when manually comparing or converting CSV formats.


Further, If anyone is interested in converting their budget from Buddi to YNAB .. I can share all the formulas I've derived to convert data in excel. I have to say I'm getting pretty darn familiar with excel and formulas ..

[Taytay]

That's awesome ryaske! You've definitely helped convince me that this is a necessary feature, and I'm so glad you got it working. Thanks too for the offer to help other people out with the formulas. Depending on the formats of the files, maybe we could host them for you on download.youneedabudget.com so that others could get access to them easily. Feel free to send me a PM so we can discuss it.

Best regards,

Taylor

[Eileen]

I'm currently using the Excel version of YNAB for Mac. I'm seriously thinking about getting YNAB Pro and installing it on my husband's laptop which runs Windows. One thing I've been concerned about is whether I can import from CSV. In the Excel version, I download CSV files from the bank and credit card website (or just copy and paste into Excel if they don't have a .CSV download), then move the columns as needed and paste into the YNAB register. This works slick for me - I don't like doing manual entry. So it's good to hear I can import from .CSV with YNAB Pro - don't take it away!

[VHalpenny]

Hi There,

I use it constantly.I use the AceMoney program in tandem with YNAB. One to track accounts and the other to track the budget.
I have written a macro that translates the Categories and generates the CSV file for importing based on the export from AceMoney, (Html).
(If anyone else wants the macro I'll be happy to share it).

Slán,
Vincent.

[mrparson]

I am also one that types everything in manually. It simply "feels" good to do so for me personally.

[Eileen]

This is interesting. I looked up AceMoney's website and it says it will run on a Mac using Wine or Crossover. Does anyone know whether YNAB Pro will run on Wine or Crossover? These look a lot simpler than full emulation software.

Vincent - are you importing into the Excel version of YNAB? Mac or Windows?

Hi There,

I use it constantly.I use the AceMoney program in tandem with YNAB. One to track accounts and the other to track the budget.
I have written a macro that translates the Categories and generates the CSV file for importing based on the export from AceMoney, (Html).
(If anyone else wants the macro I'll be happy to share it).

Slán,
Vincent.

[Taytay]

This is interesting. I looked up AceMoney's website and it says it will run on a Mac using Wine or Crossover. Does anyone know whether YNAB Pro will run on Wine or Crossover? These look a lot simpler than full emulation software.

I sure wish it did, but I don't believe WINE emulates .NET 2.0 very well, and thus YNAB Pro will not run. If anyone ever discovers I'm wrong about that though, please let me know. We are still working on a version for the Mac though, so hopefully at some point we'll look back on this conversation and laugh.

[ThatMikeGuy]

It's a pain since I have to re-arrange the csv file before import.

Do you do it manually via a text editor or some other tool? The reason I ask is to take the opportunity to let you know about CSVed, a freeware utility that I used back when I was playing around with importing. It has a lot of features and is very handy to use once you get the hang of it.



Just an FYI that may help ease your pain.

Steve

I tried this out and you're right. After spending a short time getting used to it, it works great. I used it to clean up my Discover download and after experimenting for a while, I got it to work fine. So I think I will now continue to use CSV importing of my Discover card data. So thanks for telling us about CSVed.

Also, thanks to the developers for including this feature in YNAB and for warning that it is an advanced feature because it does take some fiddling.

BTW, the recommendation for how to handle imported categories that are not in your category list should be changed in my opinion. YNAB recommends that you let it automatically create new categories and this is likely to upset more than it helps by populating your budget with lots of new but similarly conceived categories. So I would think that YNAB should recommend that you just move those to the memo column.

[Eileen]

We are still working on a version for the Mac though, so hopefully at some point we'll look back on this conversation and laugh.

Any guesstimate on the ETA for the Mac version of YNAB Pro?

[jesse]

Hi Eileen,
I'm purposely vague when it comes to ETAs because I'm horrible at them. It's long enough away that we should all be budgeting using some method and not wait until then. It's being coded all the time, design is being done...it's getting there. We're really trying to do this right. It's going to be great

[Eileen]

Jesse - I really appreciate that you take the time to do it right instead of just shoving it out the door! And I know how difficult ETAs are in software development. But one can always hope!

[juliette1677]

I only use CSV importing. The only thing I do manually is the category.

[Taytay]

Thanks - we're keeping CSV importing by the way. Plenty of you folks have convinced me.