YNAB’s Frequently Asked Questions provide answers to questions perhaps not answered in the comprehensive user guide or in the video tutorials.
Important note: If you download the latest version of the AIR file (the actual installation file for YNAB 3) and after it is complete you encounter a file named “YNAB3_Live_0.9.6.2016.zip” then you need to change the file name extension from “zip” to “air” before you attempt to install it. Internet Explorer (and possibly other browsers) insists upon renaming the air file to a zip since they don’t recognize the ‘.air’ extension. We are working behind the scenes to prevent this but until a fix is in place please rename the file before you double-click it and you will be up and running quickly.
YNAB (pronounced “Why-NAB”) is an acronym for “You Need A Budget” and is the name of both the software and the budgeting methodology that we teach.
YNAB can perhaps best be decribed as a saving and spending plan for your money. Not money that you expect to come in later but only the money that you have on hand right now (in cash or in the bank).The idea is really simple, take what you have, decide where you need and want to save and spend it then execute on your plan.
Ultimately YNAB works best on a full “Buffer” which is essentially a month’s worth of money saved aside to be able to budget out the entire month with.
You’ll want to make sure you go through YNAB U, specifically Day Three: Oh, the Insanity!. Also, our Buffer video tutorial is very comprehensive.
You just want to save money, and cut expenses until you can make it through the entire month without touching any of those month’s paychecks. It’s an intense sprint — not an endurance race. You just need to eek by and not touch those checks for the entire month!
Once you’ve done that, you’ll start the month with all of the prior month’s paychecks available for budgeting. You’ll have recorded those paychecks in the prior month in YNAB as ‘Income : Available Next Month’ and they’ll be ready and waiting for you.
Financial bliss.
Absolutely!
All that you need to do is to budget (assign to a specific job) the money that you have on hand right now (in cash or in the bank) toward the bills and other needs that you have that will occur before you get paid again. Then when you get paid again simply repeat the steps. As you near the end of the amount that you have available to budget simply don’t budget that small amount. It will sit there waiting to go to work for you and in a sense has been given the job of being a mini-buffer already. As long as you keep an eye on the future and spend conservatively then you will eventually be able to save up enough money to budget out the whole month with a full ‘YNAB buffer’.
YNAB 3 will run on Windows, Macs and Linux as long as they are capable of running Adobe AIR. So, as long as your computer meets the minimum rewquirements below then it should be able to run AIR and thus YNAB 3!
Note: Please keep in mind that the list below is only a guide and for more information as well as the official list please check out the Adobe site here.
Windows
Mac OS X
Linux
YNAB 3 requires Adobe AIR to be installed on your computer or it will not run.
Adobe AIR is a runtime environment on which YNAB 3 runs. It’s fairly bleeding edge technology (at the time of this writing), but you’ll see it become more mainstream as time goes on and other companies adopt the technology. Other companies that are using Adobe AIR include AOL, eBay, NASDAQ, Facebook, and Time Magazine.
The reason that we picked Adobe AIR as our development platform was mainly due to the cross OS compatibility. It allows us to write and maintain just one codebase that can be lanched on Windows, Mac, or Linux. Which makes it far easier for everyone involved including users who have both Macs and Windows PCs.
Overall this means we can develop faster, focusing much more on improvements and new features, and a lot less on maintenance.
It also means we can develop and implement new features much, MUCH faster!
The quickest way is by clicking the large orange button labeled “Install YNAB 3″ that you will find on this page.
If that doesn’t work or you’d rather do it yourself then follow the steps below.
If these steps did not work then go here for other things you can try.
If you purchased YNAB then your license key can be found under the “Description of your Order” section in the email that you should have received after you ordered. The email receipt will have a subject line like this:
Order Placed – YNAB-123456789012-123456.
It may be that your receipt was filtered as spam. Check your spam folder and see if it’s there as well.
Alternatively, you can always look up your order by entering your order email address. That will provide you with your license key and a fresh download link.
If you haven’t purchased YNAB yet but only downloaded the trial and it is asking for a key?
Then contact us directly via the support form and we can help you from there.
Please make sure you’re entering the email address you used when purchasing, as that is the email address we’ll have on file with your order. This applies even if you no longer have that email or access to it. It won’t hurt to try several different email addresses to see if one works. If you’ve tried all of that and still can’t find your order, you can contact us and we’ll get you squared away.
YNAB 3 requires a brand new key. Your YNAB Pro key will not work with YNAB 3.
This is the key entry window for YNAB Pro (which we no longer sell)
This is the key entry window for YNAB 3
Please note the example key, 5 sets of 5 digits plus 1 digit all seperated by dashes.
Your key for YNAB 3 will follow the same format and when you enter it we recommend that you paste it in from your email, dashes and all.
You can upgrade to YNAB 3 for a discount by using our Upgrade Tool. Simply enter your email address and we’ll find your order and provide you with a special discount purchase link.
YNAB’s End User License Agreement allows you to use YNAB on multiple computers, as long as it remains for your personal use. If you’re getting rid of your old computer, you can uninstall YNAB on that machine.
On your new machine, go to our Order Lookup and enter your purchase email address. You’ll be provided with your license key and a redownload link. Follow that download link and install the software on your new machine. When prompted, copy and paste your license key into the newly-installed software and you should be almost all set.
You’ll probably want to keep your budget (data) file from your old machine. Before you retire your old machine for good, email the budget (data) file to yourself as an attachment. If you’re working with YNAB 3, the file will end in .ynab3. If you’re using YNAB Pro the file will end in .ynab.
Now, from your new machine, save the file you emailed to yourself somewhere memorable (most users choose to save in a My Documents/YNAB/ folder). Fire up YNAB on your new machine and go to File -> Open. You’ll now have your new data fired up with your new software, on your new machine. Go get yourself a soda or something.
A single purchase of the software covers as many installations as you need as long as it is only for your use (and/or your immediate household; spouse, children living at home, etc.) and that you do not share it with others by installing it on their computers.
1. Grant of License. The Author hereby grants to you (an individual) the revocable, personal non-exclusive, and nontransferable right to install and activate the Software on multiple computers solely for your personal and non-commercial use. Sharing this Software with other individuals is in violation of this license.
If you’d like to share the budget file amongst your various installations then you can do so by any one of the following methods:
Regardless of how you share your file we highly recommend that you save it every time after making any changes and that you backup your file in a safe location on a regular basis. YNAB does not have version control, or conflict resolution built in. It will be up to you to manage that.
In case you’re wondering, the very same YNAB 3 budget file can be shared between Mac, Windows and Linux operating system installations without the need for any conversion. The software itself will run on any of the operating systems mentioned as well as long as they can run Adobe AIR. These are the system requirements for Adobe AIR.
You can redownload YNAB Pro here.
YNAB Basic is no longer available. It was retired at the end of 2009. RIP.
You can update your email, name, and contact preferences all through our contact preferences page.
You can let us know your email preferences by visiting our contact preferences page and clicking Yes (or No!) by different mailing options. We mail our newsletter out twice-monthly and will occasionally send out something else if we find it truly exciting.
If you don’t like the software, it doesn’t suit your fancy, rubs you the wrong way, disappoints, annoys, etc. then you can opt for a no-questions asked (really? You hate our software? But WHY?!) refund.
Now, obviously this is open for abuse. We expect you to be honest and recognize that YNAB, as a business, supports our team’s tireless efforts both day (and night, if we’re up against a deadline). We trust you to be trustworthy.
Before I divulge our super-secret link where you can request a refund, please know that we are very willing to go the extra mile to help you get started. We offer free online classes, a slew of video tutorials, and a very thorough help system (embedded in the software). If there’s something we can do to convince you that getting a refund would be the worst thing you could possibly do, please give us that chance!
That being said, you can always request a refund. We batch process these weekly. If we’re doing it tomorrow, it’ll be there in a few business days. If we just did it yesterday, it could take up to a week. The refunded monies will go back on the card (or into the paypal account) you used when you purchased on that fateful day.
Please keep in mind that once we issue the refund it may take as many as 30 days for the money to actually arrive back in your hands.
Most of the time, issues when installing YNAB 3 can be easily solved by following the steps below. (Some common error messages that these steps will help with include, “The application could not be installed because the AIR file is damaged,” as well as errors that include “Error: #0″.)
On Windows:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\If that doesn’t work, users have found that downloading YNAB 3 using another browser sometimes works. We suggest Firefox or Chrome.
On a Mac:
/Library/Frameworks/Adobe AIR.framework (Please note that this is the /Library folder in your root folder/hard drive – NOT the /Library folder in your home folder)/Applications/Utilities/Adobe AIR Application Installer/Applications/Utilities/Adobe AIR UninstallerIf the above doesn’t work, also make sure you turn off your file during the installation process. (Turn it back on once the installation is finished.) Some firewalls don’t cause an issue, while others do :)
This rare issue is usually caused by a bug in a program called “Folder Lock”. If you have Folder Lock installed, please uninstall it and try again. If that does not fix it, please contact support.
This is because the Adobe certificates need to be marked as trusted. You can follow these thorough instructions to resolve this error.
Follow our instructions for transferring your license key and you’ll be all set (it covers doing a new install of the software and transferring your data to your new machine).
If you are running the BETA of AIR 2.0 released in late 2009, YNAB 3 will not work. That’s because the only the second release of the AIR 2.0 Beta has been updated to work with the latest AIR programs like YNAB. Please install the latest release of the AIR 2 Beta, released in February of 2010, in order to get YNAB 3 to work.
If you want YNAB to open when you are downloading a file from your bank, open YNAB and go to File->Manage File Associations (or on the Mac, go to YNAB->Manage File Associations). From there, you will be able to tell YNAB to automatically open downloaded bank files. If you would like other programs to open your bank files instead, you can follow the instructions below:
On Windows
The following can be found at Microsoft’s Knowledge Base:
On a Mac
Updates to the software are free. We push those out fairly frequently (at least monthly, sometimes even more frequently than that).
We may charge for upgrades. An upgrade is where we introduce significant features, overhauls, improvements, etc. Our first “upgrade” was when we launched YNAB 3 — though YNAB Pro saw serious feature improvements that we continually put under the updates umbrella
Basically what we’re saying is this: we may charge for upgrades in the future. It’s how we can economically justify this whole effort! Bear in mind that we will never cripple a prior version, so you need not feel compelled to upgrade for fear of losing the functionality that you already paid for and own.
One more note on upgrades — we don’t like the annual lock-step upgrade process because it seems like it’s a slippery slope to begin adding features merely to call it an upgrade and charge users again. We’re on the hunt for other sustainable models that will allow us to remain profitable without sacrificing the software’s long-term quality of being simple and effective.
YNAB 3 has the following improvements over YNAB Pro
You can use our Upgrade Tool. Simply enter your purchase email and you’ll be provided a special link to purchase at the discounted upgrade price.
Absolutely! YNAB 3 opens .ynab (YNAB Pro) budget files with ease. You’d then just File -> Save and you’d have a .ynab3 (YNAB 3) file on your hands.
YNAB 3 can also open your YNAB Basic spreadsheet, but only if it’s an .xls. If you’re using OpenOffice (NeoOffice on the Mac), you’ll need to save your .ods as an .xls. You can do this by going to File -> Save As and choosing .xls as the File Type.
Caveat: If you’ve customized your YNAB Basic file at all, it may very well break the import into YNAB 3. Importing is a fickle thing when the file can be so easily changed.
Yes. You should definitely check out the Quick Start Guide.
We offer eight to ten online (webinar) classes each month. Those are in a group setting where you see YNAB demonstrated and explained by a live instructor. You can also submit your questions and have them answered by the instructor.
95% of particpants in these online classes say they were either helpful, or very helpful in getting started.
If you’d like, there is also one-on-one coaching available. You can purchase one hour of coaching (done by our extremely talented coach, Erin Lowell) for $69.95. Erin will clear up any and all questions you have and will definitely see to it that you start off on the right foot! You can Where is my YNAB file (budget) saved by default? [top ↑]
Windows
My Documents/YNAB/.
Mac
user/home/documents/YNAB/.
The cost is $69.95 and includes one hour-long private webinar where the coach can work directly with you on your budget live on your computer as well as a simultaneous phone conference tailored to your specific situation.
The focus of the private webinar is up to you so whatever you’d like to work on with YNAB, then that is what your coach will go over with you. You can sign up via this link.
You’ll need to install YNAB on each of the computers you intend to use (this is okay according to your End User License Agreement). You can use your same license key to activate each installation. If you don’t have your license key, you can retrieve it through our Order Lookup.
If you’d like to share the budget file amongst your various installations then you can do so by any one of the following methods:
Regardless of how you share your file we highly recommend that you save it every time after making any changes and that you backup your file in a safe location on a regular basis. YNAB does not have version control, or conflict resolution built in. It will be up to you to manage that.
In case you’re wondering, the very same YNAB 3 budget file can be shared between Mac, Windows and Linux operating system installations without the need for any conversion. The software itself will run on any of the operating systems mentioned as well as long as they can run Adobe AIR. These are the system requirements for Adobe AIR.
YNAB can handle virtually any single foreign currency, but it does not support multiple currencies in a single budget file. We have our eyes on this functionality for a future release, but do not have a specific date set.
One workaround is to set up a budget file for each currency. While this isn’t as elegant as having it all in one file, it’s the best we have to offer at this point.
Absolutely. The best way to approach any paycheck cycle situation if you don’t yet have a full buffer is to only budget what you have on hand (in cash or in the bank) towards what you need to pay before you get paid again. Then when you do get paid again simply repeat the process. If you budget an amount to a category and then need to budget more to that category (like placing cash in envelopes) then just add it to what is there already (or what is remaining for a category balance) to the point that you need for that category/envelope.
Any category that still has a balance in it will flow from one month to the next automatically as well.
As long as you are able to leave even the smallest amounts of money un-budgeted at the end of each budgeting session then you will be able to eventually save up enough money to equal an entire month’s worth of expenses – a full “Buffer” – and then budget using money earned in the previous month. Then, as the month goes by, you will tag any and all income as ‘Income:Available next month’ allowing the cycle to repeat forever removing you from the doubt and uncertainty of having to time paychecks and guess at how best to approach your budget.
The accepted equation for findind balance between your YNAB Budget and your bank balance(s) is:
Total Category Balance + Available to Budget + Income : Available Next Month = Sum of On-Budget Account Balances
Here are some steps to trouble shooting what may be wrong:
Step One – Reconcile your YNAB Accounts with your Bank Accounts. Make sure you have included all the info from the bank, and that your YNAB file is up to date with the bank.
Step Two – Determine which Accounts are ON BUDGET and which Accounts are OFF BUDGET. To determine if an account is “On-Budget” look at the initial transaction.If the initial transaction has been categorized then the funds from that account have been brought into the Budget. Since the formula only needs to know about your ON BUDGET Accounts – since you are balancing with your Budget, it’s important to know which Accounts are ON BUDGET.
Step Three – Have you categorized all outflows that should have been categorized? If you spent money – and the money left your life – then the transaction should be categorized.
Step Four – Have you categorized outflows when you shouldn’t have? If you just moved money between two ON BUDGET Accounts, then you didn’t spend any money and there is no need to categorize.
Step Five – Have you entered transactions with a future date that haven’t left your Accounts yet? That would mean the Budget thinks the money is gone, when in reality, it’s still in the bank. Enter transactions in real time as they occur.
Step Six – Have you handled Transfers correctly? A Transfer should only have a category if money is leaving the Budget. If you moving money around within your ON Budget Accounts, there is no need to categorize.
Common reasons that your personal equation isn’t balancing would be:
You can see the answer directly above if you’d like to balance your Budget with your bank balance(s).
If you’re reconciling your bank statement/online bank balance with your YNAB account balance, you’ll want to look at the ‘Cleared Balance’ of the account to be reconciled:
The working balance shown above is including all transactions in your account register. If you want to reconcile to a specific date, you can hover over that date in the register:
You can also see the running balance of your account by clicking on the small gear icon at the top right of your account’s register and selecting ‘Running Balance’. Bear in mind that the Running Balance is your ‘Working Balance’ — meaning it includes both cleared and uncleared transactions.
Regardless of the method you use to see your account balance, you’ll simply look at your bank statement, or look online at that specific date and if your balances match up, you’re reconciled. YNAB does not have a reconciliation wizard or a way to mark a transaction specifically as “reconciled” (though users do use flags to have basically the same functionality).
Please see our detailed guide to CSV importing
YNAB imports the following file formats. Please note the advantages/disadvantages for each:
| Format Name | File Extension | Important Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Quicken Financial Exchange | .qfx | You’ll sometimes see this designated as “for Quicken 2005 (Mac) & 2007 (PC)” or “for Quickbooks 2007 or later”. |
| Open Financial Exchange | .ofx | You’ll see this designated as for Microsoft Money 2002 or later. You may also see it designated as for Microsoft Office Accounting. |
| Quicken Interchange Format | .qif | You’ll sometimes see this written as “for Quicken 99 to 2004, or Microsoft Money”. Transactions are not uniquely identified, so YNAB can’t tell if you’ve already imported a transaction (and ignore it). You’ll need to make sure you stay on top of the date range of your last import. |
| Comma Separated Values | .csv | Not standardized at all across banks. If your bank offers any of the above formats, don’t use CSV. It’s not that it’s bad data or anything, you just need to massage the data before YNAB can import it. |
If your Quicken or MS Money software can export to any of the formats that YNAB imports (see above), then yes, YNAB can import those files.
However, although you can import all of your old Money/Quicken data into YNAB Pro, we don’t recommend that you import historical data.
The reason for this is simple, YNAB works as a forward looking saving and spending management plan for your money. As such, it is not concerned with vast amounts of imported history. Having access to that history as a matter of record may have value, but it’s more important to fully understand how YNAB works before loading in that much data.
The main reason for this is if you suddenly import years worth of data, then in order to keep your brand new budget correct, you would have to go back to the earliest date of the imported data and budget each and every dollar to make it all match up in every single month. Depending on the amount of historical data, that could be a daunting and tedious task.
Consider these points:
I’d be willing to bet a milkshake that you don’t refer back to your historical data enough to even merit any of the work. If you do, you have it in that old software. Just let it go :)
The short answer is yes. A quick browsing of the files that we import will show you just what you need to know.
You certainly can. We don’t take feature requests through our support queue (we try and keep that queue focused on helping people that can’t get help anywhere else on the site), but you can certainly post your idea in our Feature Discussion forum. (That forum is not for YNAB Pro features. We are no longer improving the YNAB Pro codebase and will be retiring support for it at the end of 2010).
Do keep in mind that we are not a small company. We’re a tiny company. We only develop as fast as we can afford.
Also, we really vet new features because our biggest fear is that we end up traveling the road of software gone before us that added features simply for the sake of addingi them and then, one day, woke up and found they had a messy piece of software on their hands that had lost its true purpose.
We feel the need for speed. We want to have YNAB 3 running much faster than it is in its current v.9 state. We’ll definitely get there.
YNAB everywhere. We want you to be able to update YNAB on the go. Our first attempt at mobility will be with the iPhone.
Direct connect. We’re looking at directly connecting with your bank to pull down new transactions automatically. This is not an inexpensive proposition and weighing different business models that could support it (our current business model of: continue to add new features to the software while rarely calling it and charging for an upgrade wouldn’t work with a Direct Connect feature. Well. It would, but we’d have to shutter the shop in a matter of months.)
No. No. No. YNAB cares about when you receive money, what you want to do with that money, and then what you actually do with that money.
I hope we never offer any of those features because that would mean we’re experiencing feature creep, which leads to feature bloat, and then eventually software death.
Honestly, do you need your software to break down your mortgage payment for you when you can just log into your mortgage provider and view it there? And we can almost guarantee that you’ll never run into any technical snags when doing such a thing. It’s honestly not worth the work. We’d rather be adding features that help you do what YNAB does best, even better.
No. The likelihood of that feature being added is close to zero. Checks are just becoming obsolete. You may consider using your bank’s check writing service. It’s probably pretty slick, and doesn’t cost you a stamp.
You could export your data to a CSV and crunch numbers all you’d like. You could also use the Net Income/Net Worth graph to get a high-level overview of your inflows vs. expenses.
However, a proper P&L, with Income at the top and then expenses grouped by category, we don’t yet offer. It may be a report we’ll be adding in the future. Reports are a tricky thing though — as soon as you add one, you have people wanting three more. A year later you have a bloated mess on your hands and people can’t even find the reports that are actually useful because you have them so confused. We tread very carefully here.
You can send your bug report to bugs@youneedabudget.com. Please be extremely specific with your bug report! We may not respond, which means we already have seen that bug submitted and we’re working on it. We may certainly respond if we need more information from you.
Keep in mind that we’re a tiny business with a BIG userbase. We code as fast as we can afford!
Mainly because it’s software. We launched YNAB 3 into beta on December 28th (front doors open type launch) of 2009. It’s being improved daily. It’s very stable as is, but we still see lots of room for improvements. Bear in mind that when we fix bugs and improve performance, those are updates and are completely free.
It’s just our way of giving back to the Credit Card industry by making fun of them. It’s a nifty USB drive that looks like a credit card. It has YNAB pre-loaded on it (along with all of our video tutorials) so you can have a backup of your software download and install it right from the USB drive if needed.
If you’d like to order the YNAB UNCredit Card USB, you can purchase it here. It’s fantastic for parties.
You can purchase a copy of The YNAB Way if you’d like. We’re working on an updated version to be released at a later date.
We’re currently working on an iPhone application. That’s our “dry run” for seeing the responsiveness to mobility. If it goes well, we’ll look into other platforms as well.
If you’d like to be notified of when we release the YNAB’s iPhone app, you can sign up here, or manage it in your contact preferences.
Since YNAB 3 development is currently at a break-neck pace, by the time you received your hard copy of the software, it would be obsolete. If you must have a backup of your download on CD, we’d suggest you download the file directly, and then burn it onto a CD.
Once the development pace for YNAB slows, we’ll make hard copies available.
We stopped improving the codebase for YNAB Pro in 2009. We’re still supporting it (maintenance updates if needed, support materials, etc.) through 2010.
YNAB 3 is the replacement for YNAB Pro and its future is bright.
YNAB Basic was retired and discontinued as of December 31, 2009.
We have materials available upon request that you’re free to use. We only ask that you obviously respect the copyright and trademarks of YouNeedABudget.com. If you’d like to request materials, you can contact us directly here.
Emails sent to the above address without the “Request for Educational Materials” subject line will not be seen or read by the YNAB team.
If you would like to provide the YNAB software to your students, there are discounts available for bulk purchases. Please contact us directly here.. Emails sent to the above address without the “Request for Bulk Pricing Quote” will not be seen or read by the YNAB staff.
We have materials available upon request that you’re free to use. We only ask that you obviously respect the copyright and trademarks of YouNeedABudget.com. If you’d like to request materials, you can contact us directly here.
Emails sent to the above address without the “Request for Educational Materials” subject line will not be seen or read by the YNAB team.
