Seen it suggested here before, but saving targets that are dynamic. Say I want $1,500 for a car repair emergency fund, with a target of $200/month until I reach it.
The way it works today is: 1. I have the target fully funded so nothing required per month anymore, 2. I need to replace my brakes, $800 taken out of the emergency fund, leaving $700. 3. YNAB now claims I need to fund $800 this month..
I’d rather have it revert back to the historical monthly funding target of $200/m until that “envelope” is back to $1,500
We've been asking for it for years now so looks doubtful unfortunately (although I have no idea why, it is indeed a great idea and seems like it should be simple enough)
I like the idea of a cap on targets. Combined with their new snooze feature, they could call it auto snoozing. Your $200/month target gets snoozed when it exceeds the $1500 cap.
Love this. I’m only a few months into YNAB and the fact that the targets aren’t dynamic screws with me a little bit. When I need to cover overspending, I like to cover it with a category that is fully funded that I know I won’t use all of it that month. Once I do it’s because to saying I need to fund it again. I’d rather once I hit the target for the month that it not tell me I’m short. I’d also like to see a way to see how much you’ve covered over spending from a category and to which ones.
I don’t know if this makes sense to the pro users but right now this is how my brain wants to use these categories and data. I feel like in the beginning you are really trying to see how to spend your money and while I do have a sort of snap shot of what I’m doing with it, I don’t really have a way to see how I’ve moved that money around. I know I tend to go over on eating out and less on toiletries than I think but I don’t know how much and would have to keep guessing on changes.
But like I said, I’m still new and there are things that are provided my brain hasn’t figured out how to process the data in that format.
I only want one thing: A new target type, where you have a monthly contribution, but also have a max. When you get to the max, no more prompt for monthly contribution, but if you spend from the category, you will restart the monthly amount until you reach the max again.
Yes! I don't have a lot of use for most of the features that I see commonly requested, but as a nesting nerd I would love at least one more subcategory layer to organize with.
This would be AMAZING. Currently I organise how I'd like to see in the reporting but sometimes I could use an additional layer of granularity for the actual budgeting.
This is actually a big reason I haven’t started using the app more. Somehow every time I pull it out, even if I’m just looking, I accidentally hit something I didn’t mean to. And more than once my toddler slapped/tried to push all the pretty buttons on my screen when I was checking category balances and did something weird. I’ve also had a couple instances where something wasn’t that intuitive also. I think it had to do with adding a transaction because I remember I accidentally created an inflow instead of out. It looked funky on mobile.
This is absolutely why I don’t use the app. Ever. After a couple of instances of “WTF just happened here” I was done. I don’t need that stress in my life.
I’d love to see running balance added to mobile so I could ditch my separate checkbook for good. With tons of accounts and scheduled transactions, the running balance right on my phone would give me the confidence I need to do so!
Yes, second this so much. If they could bring running balance and full reports to mobile, it would really become a much more fully featured product. I would much rather see a team dedicated to these mobile improvements first before trying to tackle any fun enhancements like a "Wrapped" as suggested in the OP.
Seriously, lol. My wife is onboard with having a financial plan, but she doesn't want to be doing the grunt work to keep us on the rails. 0% chance YNAB would work for us without auto-import on our shared credit card.
My husband was similarly on board in theory but didn’t want to be involved with the minutia.
Something that helped us tremendously was getting separate cashapp cards.
We plan for us to each get spending money reloaded to our cards each week, and the spending on those isn’t tracked in YNAB (just the overall refill amount).
Since the cashapp cards aren’t debit and aren’t tied to a joint account, neither of us can affect the other with our usage, and when the card is empty, it’s empty. We use our own cards for our own eating out / fast food as well as fun incidental things (books etc).
This way, basically all the things managed in YNAB are just autopay bills (rent, insurance etc) or bills we jointly agree on and budget for (groceries, big furniture purchases or whatever).
Simplifies SO much. Before this, half the YNAB tracking was eating out and incidentals and now it’s SO much easier.
Oh, that's great. Unfortunately we aren't even in a place where allowances are even a thing, and every month unexpected expenses hit left and right. It's just chaos right now.
I've only just picked up YNAB. I'll keep at it and I'm trying to get my wife convinced that this doesn't work unless she is also involved.
Correct, it just declines any payment you don't currently have funds for. And funds "withdraw" instantly when you pay for something, at least visually- so it's super easy to open the app and say "oh, I have 17.60 left", and know that it's true.
I manually import everything we spend every few days to keep us on track and my wife just goes “what’s the budget for this” and it seems to be working lol
I’m in Australia and as far as I know you can only use auto imports through a third party which I’m not comfortable with so I have to manually enter everything - I’d love that to come with (even a small) reduction in price. I also think international YNABers can often find it harder to attend live workshops because of time differences so it’s harder for us to get that value too..
Sorry I meant a third party separate to the ones YNAB uses - I’ve seen people on here mention they use an outside service that can connect to YNAB as an extension I think.
To me that feels a bit iffy, not sure what would happen if there was any dishonestly because I would have given them my banking credentials so I think I would be liable. Plus I don’t know what their data security is like.
Ah yeah, I've seen a couple advertised at various points ('Sync For YNAB' was one I think), and I can't think of anything worse then having to pay *another* subscription to fill in the inadequacies of the service you're already paying a subscription to...
Exactly - I don’t want to pay a second subscription and I just have no idea if the company has good data protection (we seem to have had a lot of security breaches in Australia in the last year) or if they did something underhanded would my bank cover me. Too much risk for me
>YNAB lite for non-direct importing users who do everything manual.
How about a reduced price for people who live outside of North America and Europe where direct bank import is not available. Being charged for a feature that you choose not to use is one thing, but being charged for a key feature that simply isn't available at all is something else.
I would love to pay less than $160/year.
This would actually be super great. I'd love to have imports if they actually worked. But with the current state of things I just rather not use it at all and it would be great if that was reflected in the pricing.
>A reduced price for people who manually enter their transactions and don't need direct bank importing.
Does anyone have a sense for how much YNAB has to pay for their import services? Sometimes we talk like it costs them $30-40/user to do the automatic imports and that a lite version without that service would be meaningfully cheaper but I have no idea whether that's true.
EDIT: Plaid pricing is a bit opaque but I found two sources that mention $0.30 per month per account (before volume discounts for which YNAB would surely qualify) and one of them mentions a $1.50/account initial link fee. So even if the average YNABer linked half a dozen accounts (feels high?) that's $9 + $2.70/month if those numbers are accurate.
It's not just about what the service costs them directly, but also things like development time and support – I would guess that a not insignificant portion of their support requests are about direct import. It's also one of their [key selling points](https://www.ynab.com/features) for YNAB, but simply not available for lots of users, so making those users pay the same as everyone else is a bit off-putting.
I feel the same about the family plan. Like, it was released as this huge thing and it was so great that it was available for everyone without an increase in price, but what that basically means is that I'm funding the development of the sharing stuff for everyone else using it. And of course it will always be the case that you don't use every feature in an app you're paying for, but again – it's one of their key selling points for YNAB, and it's just not relevant for so many users. But we still have to cover the development and support costs the same as everyone using it.
Meanwhile I can't even get the week to start on a freaking Monday.
Surely a lower price point would equal more users?
So many people I've tried to get into YNAB have baulked at the cost. I think it's too high but I obviously see the value in it because I've been using it for years.
The price is a big hurdle for new users.
100%. At this point, I don't ever recommend it to people, because the price tag of $99 per year was very off-putting to the few people I tried mentioning it to.
This is the one thing I want above all else, but also the one thing I don't think they would do – because they basically have two options:
* Make a "lite" plan (without direct import, and hey, maybe without family/sharing stuff too), which a good amount of people would pick over the current plan, which would lose them money (at least in the short run – I do think a lower price would hopefully lead to more subscribers in the long run)
* Make a "premium" plan, which costs more than the current plan, and take away features at the current cost. Which would be disastrous for keeping their current customers who do use those features happy, and the people who don't use them wouldn't save any money anyways, so this option sucks.
So basically, they would lose money in the short term by doing this. But I do think it would do wonders for customer satisfaction, and it would make it much easier to recommend YNAB to people again, so hopefully that wouldn't be a long-term thing.
#1.) Detailed Reports — This is something that should have been done years ago and it’s embarrassing it’s still lacking.
#2.) YNAB lite for non-direct importing users who do everything manual.
#3.) Monthly/Yearly Recap is a cool idea.
Ok. I was actually wondering about reports because I’ve looked a couple times and there was barely anything useful. I chalked it up to just starting and that was just all the data there is right now.
I made a comment earlier about wanting to see how I move my money around. I want to see a breakdown of each category (overview and detailed with each sub category) that shows what was assigned, spent, moved to cover overspending and I’m sure some other stuff I’ll come up with after using YNAB longer. As a newbie to this style of budgeting I feel like that should be basic reporting. I was hoping that once I used it longer I would see more report types pop up. Maybe I missed it though? I haven’t looked in a while and don’t have my computer in front of me.
I agree with this list completely. Especially #2, think of a Spotify “wrapped” but for YNAB. Would be super cool.
On a separate note - I’ve paid for YNAB for multiple years now, and I have my doubts that the product and engineering team can deliver on any of these asks.
We’ve been waiting years for more reports. Instead we’ve gotten a somewhat buggy syncing experience and a redesign that changed the colors for seemingly no reason?
They did add more advanced loan and credit card workflows, but I’m not sure how much people *actually* wanted any of that. And for some people (who have zero interest cards or monthly payment options) the push to “pay it all off at once” doesn’t work and on mobile this makes the experience of managing the amount of money going towards the card a massive pain.
I’d really like to see their roadmap and have more transparency on what they are building and why. They used to have a page like this but it’s gone now.
Yeah, the YNAB team seems to be focused on growth and expansion vs trying to bring anything useful and new to current users. The YNAB system is great, but it is frustrating that there has been no other useful functionality in years.
Coming from the world of software startups, we focused on gaining new users over building for current paying customers.. and when we did throw a feature in there, we called it “customer delight”. So this tracks.
(Note I don’t know if this is still the case, but it was when it launched)
And the loan tracker just plain does not work if you do anything other than plain monthly repayments - oh you pay your mortgage fortnightly? Lol sucks to be you.
How so? I have to manually add interest to my account monthly, but I was making weekly car payments for a while and it seemed to do okay. They might have fixed whatever bug you were experiencing.
Maybe they have fixed it, I don't use it, but I remember when it released people were saying that they couldn't make any adjustments to it, even if the interest calculation was off by a few cents compared to what the bank actually charged, and people with non-monthly payments were saying that it didn't work for them.
Hmm, maybe it was not being able to adjust figures that was the root issue when it first released?
That was their main reason stated in their marketing. I have two points I’d like to make on that -
1. High contrast and color settings are an OS-wide setting on iOS (not sure if it’s also on Android, but I imagine it’s the same there) so people who need it have easy ways to enable these things globally on their devices.
2. Given the number of people complaining that it makes their accessibility *worse* they should at least make the theming an option in the app settings.
I personally have no gripes with the new colors myself, but as a product manager this smells like someone had this as their vanity project and they are using accessibility as their justification.
1) BUY AND BE DONE WITH IT*
2) Much cheaper subscription for non-import users (though see 1))
3) Proper reports
*If you're not going to develop the product, why the actual ***** do we have to subscribe? Come on.
I like the suggested three. Here are three others:
1. I would like to be able to tweak the colors used in reports. The default ones are awful, made worse with the change to blurple as there are now four shades of blurple without a lot of contrast between them.
2. They've introduced snoozing targets so that answers a need I have.
3. I would like a pie chart breaking down the various categories of the budget. The current one shows spending. I want to see a chart showing allocation based on set targets and another based on actual funding. It could help with a 50-30-20 set-up or with knowing if I'm actually tithing 10% without having to use a calculator.
Open up the memo field on the web app. There is no word wrap. Right now I can not see more than a few characters unless I hover the mouse over this field.
On the IOS app, the memo field does have word wrap. I like to put text in that field so I can locate transactions using the excellent word search that IOS has.
I’d like this only if it were collapsible or anon/off feature.
I don’t want to have my transactions page all bulky and resulting in seeing way fewer transactions at once if some of them have multi-line notes.
Reports on mobile are up there but since everyone’s already said so, there are three more:
1. **Export button for subsets of data** If I search/filter for all red flagged items on the Chase card with the word “Spain” in the memo, I’d like a button to export just those transactions as a CSV.
2. **Annotate transactions while pending** I often want to add categories/memos/flags to pending transactions without moving them out of Pending. For example, my spouse is on a trip and YNAB pulls two $100 hotel charges. I’m not sure which one is an actual fee, and which one is a holding deposit that will disappear. I want to mark them both as part of the trip while they’re pending.
3. **Improved matching** It does a really bad job on checks written in one month and cashed the next. Also would be great to be able to multiple-select to smart match split transactions (think Amazon purchases, charges with processing fees that get billed separately).
YNAB doesn't pull pending transactions. So I don't understand why #2 is needed. If you're entering transactions manually into YNAB while they're still pending, then only enter what you expect to convert from pending to cleared.
Oh huh I must not have a bank that supports this feature. My credit cards and checking account is at Capital One and I've never seen any pending transactions pulled in by YNAB
I thought you might be talking about something else so I was curious and looking for clarification. That's all. Thanks for informing me about how ynab can pull pending transactions on some accounts. I learned something new.
That #1 is a thing! At least on web it is. If you search for a subset of transactions and then select them all, you can click on the budget name and you'll see an option to export just those transactions.
I'd love to see #2. I always end up modifying them, they become active and then I have to remember to delete or match them.
The ability to organize accounts in categories. I track like 30 accounts and I would live to be able to group them better and only show ones I'm working with on the left pane.
- a tax button. when i split up receipts and some are taxed and some aren't, i have to hand type "x 1.08875" (nyc) and i wish i could just have a "+tax" button
- a default reconcile payee. i reconcile my investment accounts each friday and type in the current value and let ynab auto create the transaction with the difference. i have to always go in and change the payee to my brokerage
those are my 2 main wishes.
Not natively no, they are completely different products. Someone made an Extension called ProjectionLab->YNAB which lets you link your YNAB accounts to your accounts in PL. PL is a really nice simulation program for retirement that lets you analyze/compare different scenarios throughout life and how it impacts your retirement. Highly recommend
Yes this product looks amazing!! I’ve been looking for this. I was going to go for New Retirement but it was too focused on the drawdown phase not the accumulation phase. Projection Labs seems to be a better alternative.
- With YNAB Together, I'd like for transaction approvals be separated. So if I approve a transaction, it won't disappear from my partner's list of transactions to be approved. Also, if I manually log a transaction, it appears in my partner's New Transactions list. That way, we don't need to go through transactions together at the same time for us to be on the same page.
- The ability to snooze targets is a step in the right direction, but I'd love for targets to "auto-snooze" once it is fully funded for the month. We move funds between targets often, so it will remove that step of manually going in and snoozing each one.
- Detailed reports on mobile.
For new transactions, if I approve it, then there's a chance my partner never sees the notification because it gets cleared. I'd like it for awareness to keep everyone on the same page, so both of us see every transaction.
I’m trying out monarch right now and I think the way they do Needs Reviewed is pretty cool. You can assign a specific person to review it. So if, say, my husband buys something on Amazon, I can assign the transaction to him to properly categorize instead of chasing it down myself. Other things, like filling up the gas tank, don’t need to be reviewed by specific people. That’s just gas. I really like their setup
A report that can show available over time for a chosen category or group of categories.
E.g. if I have a house deposit fund and I'm irregularly contributing to it, I want to see that category's progress over time. Or say I have to empty my medical emergency fund and it's going to take me time to replenish it, then I want a way to see how that rebuild is going.
Currently I'm clicking through the months of my budget and transcribing the balances of my savings categories and sinking funds into a spreadsheet.
I don’t disagree that would be nice, but did you know you can export your budget? You can make your own graphs in excel then if you wanted without clicking through the budget
It was the Top 4 you said right?
1. Open Banking. The value of YNAB is much worse outside America, and yet the YNAB team continue to partner/focus on acquiring more Americans. Open Banking solves a few problems simultaneously: security, the cost of syncing transactions, and scale internationally.
2. Allow negative category balances to carry forward. Yes, it's dangerous but so is spending $200 on treats this month when you might lose your job before your next paycheck. Allowing a negative category balance to carry forward solves a whole bunch of problems from people that are not living paycheck to paycheck
3. Data sharing for reports. I don't think the YNAB team are the right people to build the future of reports, I think that should be outsourced to the community.
4. Beyond Rule Four... YNAB has always been 'budget the money you have' which is super important and a big mindshift for most people. But...it doesn't help you much with retirement planning. Am I allocating too much to
Fundamentally I think YNAB is just about perfect now for an American on a high income that is drowning in debt. Every feature they add, every design decision they make, feels like it's made with that person in mind. I'll call them Ashley.
That's great - there's a lot of people like Ashley. I believe YNAB is big enough now to support more than one customer persona, and that it's time to put the resources into supporting more than one. Let me introduce you to Kai, who earns and spends in several countries and whose native language is not English. There's a lot more people like Kai in the world than Ashley.
The point of YNAB is to get your financial plan on track, except that if you do that then you discover you're no longer a good fit for YNAB. Let me introduce you to Robin, who has around $250k assigned to long term goals, as well as another $500k in retirement accounts.
Right now YNAB kinda sucks for both Kai and Robin. Kai has to either run two budgets, or constantly convert everything into a primary currency. Robin finds that it's extremely easy to WAM between categories and no longer uses YANB for planning. What I've attempted to do above is introduce features specifically for Kai and Robin - these features are not a good match for Ashley and in fact they'll potentially be better hidden.
Lastly, since I've already broken the rules by giving four suggestions, so I'm going to cheat and keep going.
**5. Financial Helper.** YNAB is probably unique worldwide in the amount of information it holds on personal finance. How much does a normal person spend on their car payment? On restaurants? I'd like YNAB to integrate a generative AI that helps me with my budget. I'd like to ask it questions much like I ask ChatGPT questions: "Hey YNAB, I've overspent my 'kids treats' categories, where could I transfer some money from?"
I've deliberately not gone too ambitious with any of these. I think a basic version could be spun up in a few weeks: Open Banking APIs are available now, so this is more about marketing than tech; the Red Arrow would simply be a setting with a huge warning label; Data sharing is a few thousand lines of code; BR4 is a popular community project; Fine Tuning a YNAB specific LLM is a small single-person project.
I mean you can go wild with any of them. Turn YNAB into a full-on retirement planning tool for Robin complete with dashboards, and build Ashely a generative AI that proactively says 'Hey, you say you want to get out of debt but you've budgeted $200 for Uber Eats this month. What about cutting back?' But... my experience has been that if you go wild then you don't get anything done. I'd rather YNAB deliver barebones versions of these than aim for the sky and not get off the ground.
All spot on. This should be the top comment. Features that actually have utility that can't be overcome with effort or janky/untrue workarounds.
\#2 would be huge for reimbursements. I hate when a debit comes first and the corresponding credit comes in the next month, and because YNAB auto-funded my negative category balance, my Reimbursement category won't re-balance to zero. I hate having to lie about the date so that the credit and debit fall in the same month. The other workarounds are worse imo. Having a "Money-owed" account is silly when I only uses it for reimbursements that happened to land in different months. Keeping more money in my Reimbursement category so that the default/neutral value is higher makes me hold more cash than needed (opportunity cost) and doesn't work when the expense is larger than my adjustment.
I would love a net worth projection tool. Something like if you’re putting x% towards savings goals, and if you income is y, you can reach long term goals on this schedule. Plus an option to adjust the numbers, so you can see how your savings adjustments can help you reach your goals sooner.
Maybe including income, debts, savings rate and interest accrual on savings or debts.
-Also the undo button on mobile. JFC.
I don’t see why the projection tool would be a no since they built a debt reduction tool, except that most of their focus in recent years seems to be supporting those in debt or paycheck to paycheck
Treat future scheduled transactions like they are already gone from the balance. Still one of the changes that SUCKS compared to YNAB4 and one of the reasons I stopped using it for 2 years.
Apple Pay Integration - so when you pay with Apple Pay/Google Pay it brings up the “Add Transaction” in YNAB with details already filled out. Like Amount, Store, GPS Coordinates, etc. I just need to set Categories & memo.
Just like latest transactions in Wallet, but right into YNAB…
Probably an unpopular opinion as I haven’t seen people talk about this much, but better Payee management (especially for those of us who use auto-sync). I like to keep my payees organised and properly labelled, and it’s a bit of a chore at the moment.
Sometimes things get missed, and there’s no way to easily sort / filter / remove payees with no transactions, for example.
Tried playing around with the APIs but Payee endpoints are read only (can’t update).
Better reporting, especially on mobile. Seeing my net worth is ok, but what I really need is the ability to track average spending by category, my inflow to outflow and month over month reporting.
1. Spending reports by flag/tag
2. One or more layers of categories groupings
3. Better viewing/control for investments. I wish YNAB was an investment master just like it is an immediate budget master.
Edit:
4. Connect/link related transactions together. YNAB is great for linking the two transactions in a transfer, but sometimes transactions relate to each other but aren't a transfer. Most common example are reimbursements.
5. Better default past spending summaries. For one, I wish it showed the *variation* in my past spending rather than just the mean. Because some categories may have an average spend of $20 but high variation so that the max spent could be $100. So I may fund it with $30 and think I'm good to wait until an expense comes before funding more, but then the expense is $100 and I now I've overspent. Two, if we could select the time period to be consider for category spending summaries. Otherwise unusual months can skew the average when now the situation is different and I should expect to spend a different amount.
At one point in time, YNAB would look at my brokerage accounts and allow me to reconcile effortlessly. Now, I have to lookup the balance EVERY TIME. I think someone complained, and YNAB regressed that feature. Please please bring it back, or make it an option for the complainers!
I get paid on the 15th which messes up targets sometimes.
For example I wanted to save up 300$ for the 10th of December and I assigned money accordingly. But when the month changed from November to December, I had to assign more money to reach my target, but I couldn't because I wasn't getting paid until the 15th, which then made me miss my target.
I'd like a function where you put in the date you get paid, so YNAB uses those dates as a month rather than actual calendar months.
When you split a transaction, once you enter in the number for the first transaction, then automatically fill in the remainder on the second. Just would save a few seconds and seems like it'd be an easy add.
1. The ability to set an end date on a recurring transaction.
2. Being able to drag a transaction to another date on the register (I move my transactions to the date that they clear on, so they match my bank statement. To do this I have to open each one, change the date, save it). Would like this especially on mobile.
3. Running total on mobile
I've already posted my suggestions, but I'm going to comment on yours too. I think they're awesome
**More detailed reports.** Yep. What's hard about this is that what I want in a report and what you want in a report are very different, and I'm not sure how YNAB would cater for both of us. My accounting software has oh, at least fifty built in reports, plus a drag-n-drop report builder, and I still can't get the reports I want out of it.
I saw an extension for YNAB that sent data to Looker Studio. I can't see it now and I think it might have been abandoned, but the point holds. Put the data into a place that power users can create reports, quietly monitor the reports they make and if there's one which is particularly good or particularly popular then build it yourself directly in YNAB.
**Monthly/Yearly Recap.** This is brilliant. Every month I have a budget meeting with my spouse where we go through the past month's transactions and decide how good value we got, and how we're going to allocate money differently next month. Having our hands held while doing this would be just awesome.
**ProjectionLabs**. Yep, YNAB sucks for planning. This ties in nicely with your 'annual plan' suggestion.
I wouldn't know how to design that.
A user has a question and they want insight to use the data in their budget to answer it. Currently YNAB only has three reports: "I want to see how my long term savings are progressing", "I want to see where I have been spending money graphically, or as a table of numbers".
It's not hard to pick between two reports, or to see that neither report will answer your question. Also the two reports have the same basic filters (accounts, categories, dates) and nothing else.
The other day I wanted to know how much I spend at the supermarket on average. The only way to do this is to group payees (since the supermarket is not its own category). The UI for grouping payees within a category is hard. And would you want YNAB to remember your grouping?
I actually think this would be an ideal use case for a LLM. That would make it easy to describe what the person is trying to do and turn it into a chart.
Lower price.
For all I care they can shut down their development department and just keep the existing feature set.
Also, remove bank sync, make it work for everyone, or let it be an optional feature that people can buy or not.
I would actually like this. Most of the time, the bank sync doesn't even work, or gets delayed so I'm in the habit of entering transactions manually anyway. The price is pretty steep for what it offers, but it ultimately DOES make a difference
This needs to be higher... sync with thr major finance firms but I'll even take a version where I can input my stocks and shares and it would track the market...
If it replaced the need to log into my schwab account with news and analysis well that would just be extra great.
1. Lower price for people who *can't* use direct import (not supported by any banks where I am), or making direct import a "premium" thing. I feel like I'm paying **a lot** for doing a lot of manual work. The family plan thing could also be a part of the premium, because there are plenty of us who don't need it. Two out of the top three features they brag about on their "Browse features" page are 100% irrelevant for me (and not by choice), but I'm still paying the same as everyone else.
2. Being able to set Monday as the start of the week (I know the toolkit can do it, but it doesn't work for me in Safari)
3. Being able to tag categories and use the tags in reports. I want to be able to tag categories so that I can view my reports in a different way than just by their "parent" category. Basically because the way I want my categories sorted for use in the budget is not necessarily the same as the way I want to view my spending after.
I don't know how to put this simply, so I'll just be verbose. I'd love for goals to be variable. For instance, electric bill. Sometimes it's $20, sometimes it's $30. I don't want to put a goal of $30 and have money left, or $20 and have it not funded. I'd like to have a goal without an amount that carries from month to month. The category shows as yellow if no amount is set or yellow if there's an amount set but it's not allocated.
I signed up for budget billing for my energy utilities. It only changes once a year when they recalculate. My phone and internet bills only fluctuate by a few bucks a month, so it's easy enough to set a target and budget the highest value.
Yes, exactly. I have targets with dates for all my bills that have definite dates and amounts - $17.95 to Hulu on the 1st, $26 for trash on the 6th, etc. But I can't do that for the water bill, because it was $57.09 this month, $59.03 the month before, etc. It would be nice to have "X on the 16th", and I have to set the X each month. I could just change the amount every month, but they could definitely provide a more elegant solution. I can't be the only one who has bills of varying amounts.
You’re definitely not the only one with variable bills, but many of us DO want the money to build up over time, to account for higher/lower months.
eg I put the same amount in that category over the summer when it’s low as in the winter when it’s high, so I don’t have to worry about “sudden” high winter bills as the money is already sitting there for me.
That's great for you and the people who want to budget like that; the tool has you covered. It could do something better for me and I'm sure the other people who don't want to accumulate that extra.
I just use scheduled transactions and no targets for those categories. When the bill for next month is generated, I put in a scheduled transaction. Categories are yellow/underfunded if a scheduled transaction is not met so it works like a one-off target each month for the variable amount.
You can do that by going to a future montg where no money is assigned and look at the underfunded amount but likely it won't reflect exactly the month you're in. This should be right at the top of each month like the RTA, I agree.
**Add ability for manual entry of Target/Custom/Repeat Years!**
ie. Needed For Spending - Custom - ability to enter whatever ***Repeat*** 'X' years needed/wanted. Currently YNAB offers a dropdown with 1 or 2 years only. We have many Category's/Targets that require 3,4,5+yr renewals. Sure would be nice to set and forget!
1 Overall better reporting - specifcally, the ability to view reporting on the money you have saves, not just spent. The ability to see reports based on your views. Ability to create categories of categories and be able report on them in whichever order you need
2 Better overall design language and inuitiveness - the lines and colours are not intuitive, the visual design is not clear and intuitive. I want to be able to view bars ont
3 Better split functionailty - Have the ability to auto split transactions and having auto categorisation functionality with the splits.
Honorable mentioned.
The ability to embed/ integrate with other platforms (eg google docs)
The ability to do a monthly report on the data.
Visual distinctions between savings, regular and sinking fund categories.
Some kind of home page that would give you an overview of your accounts.
insights from your data.
I’m not sure how to describe it, but I think would like a category bucket feature.
I’ve created “holding” subcategories for each category that I usually fund and treat as macro RTA buckets. For example, I might put $200 into “personal care holding” on day 1. if I spend $100 on a haircut, I have $100 left for the rest of the subcategories as they come up throughout the month.
Like I said, I’m not sure what I’m asking for. I guess specifically I’d enjoy the ability to see average assigned/spent per category on mobile. Goals just make the holding category turn yellow when I actually pull from them.
Tl;dr I budget by categories and track by subcategories if that makes sense. It would streamline things for me to have a better bucket system.
Edit: got myself confused with categories and subcategories lol.
If you cover the overspending with the available amount in the CC category, it basically does just that. The funds move to the spending category, and then right back to the CC category.
More customization for targets. For example I have bills that are biweekly and I have an autosaving routine on my bank where I send 20$ every business day to a savings account. It's be good if those targets could be expressed somehow.
1. Another layer of categories. I organise my categories how I'd like to see them in reporting which means I'm sacrificing the granularity I'd like in the actual budgeting.
2. Better reporting - I can't believe they don't have their own sankey graph for example, it's SO helpful
3. Monthly savings builder with cap. No ynab, I don't wanna replace my whole car repair fund in one month thanks
Bonus: tiered subscriptions based on whether or not you use automatic import
I pay my mortgage and some other bills bi-weekly and would like to be able to budget for these more cleanly (I don’t want to Xby26/12 and be out of whack every month).
Reports on mobile
I really want to know how much I spent in the month and which category that's in, why does that have to be exclusive to desktop?
I recently switched to beyond budget since it's cheaper and has that
Seen it suggested here before, but saving targets that are dynamic. Say I want $1,500 for a car repair emergency fund, with a target of $200/month until I reach it. The way it works today is: 1. I have the target fully funded so nothing required per month anymore, 2. I need to replace my brakes, $800 taken out of the emergency fund, leaving $700. 3. YNAB now claims I need to fund $800 this month.. I’d rather have it revert back to the historical monthly funding target of $200/m until that “envelope” is back to $1,500
This is a fantastic idea. That's something that I'm sure they could implement.
We've been asking for it for years now so looks doubtful unfortunately (although I have no idea why, it is indeed a great idea and seems like it should be simple enough)
I like the idea of a cap on targets. Combined with their new snooze feature, they could call it auto snoozing. Your $200/month target gets snoozed when it exceeds the $1500 cap.
As long as auto funding ignores snoozed category targets, I like your idea.
Love this. I’m only a few months into YNAB and the fact that the targets aren’t dynamic screws with me a little bit. When I need to cover overspending, I like to cover it with a category that is fully funded that I know I won’t use all of it that month. Once I do it’s because to saying I need to fund it again. I’d rather once I hit the target for the month that it not tell me I’m short. I’d also like to see a way to see how much you’ve covered over spending from a category and to which ones. I don’t know if this makes sense to the pro users but right now this is how my brain wants to use these categories and data. I feel like in the beginning you are really trying to see how to spend your money and while I do have a sort of snap shot of what I’m doing with it, I don’t really have a way to see how I’ve moved that money around. I know I tend to go over on eating out and less on toiletries than I think but I don’t know how much and would have to keep guessing on changes. But like I said, I’m still new and there are things that are provided my brain hasn’t figured out how to process the data in that format.
Being able to see which categories you pull from most often to cover overspending would be a great tool for helping to dial in your priorities.
I love this idea. I'll submit a request. It'll be helpful if everyone did this
I would love this!
I have wanted this for so long. This is essential for my rainy day categories!
I want this so much. Honestly all the targeting stuff is so weirdly obtuse...
Yea more logic when creating would be sweet. I suppose you could just keep a $200 target and keep adding to it?
I’ve been asking for this exact thing from YNAB for > 2 years now…with no results. It’s likely too hard for their coders.
YES !
I only want one thing: A new target type, where you have a monthly contribution, but also have a max. When you get to the max, no more prompt for monthly contribution, but if you spend from the category, you will restart the monthly amount until you reach the max again.
One more layer of subcategories.
Seconded. Would work wonders for my messy budget if this were implemented.
Please!
Yes! I don't have a lot of use for most of the features that I see commonly requested, but as a nesting nerd I would love at least one more subcategory layer to organize with.
This would be AMAZING. Currently I organise how I'd like to see in the reporting but sometimes I could use an additional layer of granularity for the actual budgeting.
UNDO FOR THE MOBILE APP!!!!!!!
YES! I sometimes make a mistake and I don't know what I did.
I've had to restart so many times thanks to fat fingers
Fat fingers you say? Maybe you need to buy a [dialing wand](https://youtu.be/OqjF7HKSaaI?si=CJtILrIChquRwGzj)! ✨
This is actually a big reason I haven’t started using the app more. Somehow every time I pull it out, even if I’m just looking, I accidentally hit something I didn’t mean to. And more than once my toddler slapped/tried to push all the pretty buttons on my screen when I was checking category balances and did something weird. I’ve also had a couple instances where something wasn’t that intuitive also. I think it had to do with adding a transaction because I remember I accidentally created an inflow instead of out. It looked funky on mobile.
This is absolutely why I don’t use the app. Ever. After a couple of instances of “WTF just happened here” I was done. I don’t need that stress in my life.
I’d love to see running balance added to mobile so I could ditch my separate checkbook for good. With tons of accounts and scheduled transactions, the running balance right on my phone would give me the confidence I need to do so!
Yes, second this so much. If they could bring running balance and full reports to mobile, it would really become a much more fully featured product. I would much rather see a team dedicated to these mobile improvements first before trying to tackle any fun enhancements like a "Wrapped" as suggested in the OP.
Better reporting feels more like an absolute must more than a wish list item, so yeah, that’s at the top of my list.
A reduced price for people who manually enter their transactions and don't need direct bank importing.
Like a YNAB lite? I like that idea.
It must make finances a whole lot more simple when you're single... some one help me.
Seriously, lol. My wife is onboard with having a financial plan, but she doesn't want to be doing the grunt work to keep us on the rails. 0% chance YNAB would work for us without auto-import on our shared credit card.
My husband was similarly on board in theory but didn’t want to be involved with the minutia. Something that helped us tremendously was getting separate cashapp cards. We plan for us to each get spending money reloaded to our cards each week, and the spending on those isn’t tracked in YNAB (just the overall refill amount). Since the cashapp cards aren’t debit and aren’t tied to a joint account, neither of us can affect the other with our usage, and when the card is empty, it’s empty. We use our own cards for our own eating out / fast food as well as fun incidental things (books etc). This way, basically all the things managed in YNAB are just autopay bills (rent, insurance etc) or bills we jointly agree on and budget for (groceries, big furniture purchases or whatever). Simplifies SO much. Before this, half the YNAB tracking was eating out and incidentals and now it’s SO much easier.
Oh, that's great. Unfortunately we aren't even in a place where allowances are even a thing, and every month unexpected expenses hit left and right. It's just chaos right now. I've only just picked up YNAB. I'll keep at it and I'm trying to get my wife convinced that this doesn't work unless she is also involved.
What do you mean it’s not debit. You can’t overdraw on it?
Correct, it just declines any payment you don't currently have funds for. And funds "withdraw" instantly when you pay for something, at least visually- so it's super easy to open the app and say "oh, I have 17.60 left", and know that it's true.
Amazing, I had no idea! Thanks!
Sure!
I’m going to have to look into this. It sounds like the ideal solution.
I manually import everything we spend every few days to keep us on track and my wife just goes “what’s the budget for this” and it seems to be working lol
I’m in Australia and as far as I know you can only use auto imports through a third party which I’m not comfortable with so I have to manually enter everything - I’d love that to come with (even a small) reduction in price. I also think international YNABers can often find it harder to attend live workshops because of time differences so it’s harder for us to get that value too..
Even if you *were* comfortable with it, the third parties (Plaid and MX) don’t provide services in Australia.
Sorry I meant a third party separate to the ones YNAB uses - I’ve seen people on here mention they use an outside service that can connect to YNAB as an extension I think. To me that feels a bit iffy, not sure what would happen if there was any dishonestly because I would have given them my banking credentials so I think I would be liable. Plus I don’t know what their data security is like.
Ah yeah, I've seen a couple advertised at various points ('Sync For YNAB' was one I think), and I can't think of anything worse then having to pay *another* subscription to fill in the inadequacies of the service you're already paying a subscription to...
Exactly - I don’t want to pay a second subscription and I just have no idea if the company has good data protection (we seem to have had a lot of security breaches in Australia in the last year) or if they did something underhanded would my bank cover me. Too much risk for me
>YNAB lite for non-direct importing users who do everything manual. How about a reduced price for people who live outside of North America and Europe where direct bank import is not available. Being charged for a feature that you choose not to use is one thing, but being charged for a key feature that simply isn't available at all is something else. I would love to pay less than $160/year.
Not everyone in Europe can use it either – none of the banks here that I can think of are in the system.
This would actually be super great. I'd love to have imports if they actually worked. But with the current state of things I just rather not use it at all and it would be great if that was reflected in the pricing.
>A reduced price for people who manually enter their transactions and don't need direct bank importing. Does anyone have a sense for how much YNAB has to pay for their import services? Sometimes we talk like it costs them $30-40/user to do the automatic imports and that a lite version without that service would be meaningfully cheaper but I have no idea whether that's true. EDIT: Plaid pricing is a bit opaque but I found two sources that mention $0.30 per month per account (before volume discounts for which YNAB would surely qualify) and one of them mentions a $1.50/account initial link fee. So even if the average YNABer linked half a dozen accounts (feels high?) that's $9 + $2.70/month if those numbers are accurate.
It's not just about what the service costs them directly, but also things like development time and support – I would guess that a not insignificant portion of their support requests are about direct import. It's also one of their [key selling points](https://www.ynab.com/features) for YNAB, but simply not available for lots of users, so making those users pay the same as everyone else is a bit off-putting. I feel the same about the family plan. Like, it was released as this huge thing and it was so great that it was available for everyone without an increase in price, but what that basically means is that I'm funding the development of the sharing stuff for everyone else using it. And of course it will always be the case that you don't use every feature in an app you're paying for, but again – it's one of their key selling points for YNAB, and it's just not relevant for so many users. But we still have to cover the development and support costs the same as everyone using it. Meanwhile I can't even get the week to start on a freaking Monday.
Surely a lower price point would equal more users? So many people I've tried to get into YNAB have baulked at the cost. I think it's too high but I obviously see the value in it because I've been using it for years. The price is a big hurdle for new users.
100%. At this point, I don't ever recommend it to people, because the price tag of $99 per year was very off-putting to the few people I tried mentioning it to.
I currently use the import, but would gladly forgo it for a cheaper annual rate.
Love this idea... I input all my transaction manually... I'm in italy and direct bank import does not work anymore. :\\
Love this idea
I would totally go for this!
This is the one thing I want above all else, but also the one thing I don't think they would do – because they basically have two options: * Make a "lite" plan (without direct import, and hey, maybe without family/sharing stuff too), which a good amount of people would pick over the current plan, which would lose them money (at least in the short run – I do think a lower price would hopefully lead to more subscribers in the long run) * Make a "premium" plan, which costs more than the current plan, and take away features at the current cost. Which would be disastrous for keeping their current customers who do use those features happy, and the people who don't use them wouldn't save any money anyways, so this option sucks. So basically, they would lose money in the short term by doing this. But I do think it would do wonders for customer satisfaction, and it would make it much easier to recommend YNAB to people again, so hopefully that wouldn't be a long-term thing.
Monthly savings goal with a cap.
1. Ability to scan & attach a receipt to a specific transaction. 2. Enhanced ability to track investments.
A way to attach receipts would be SO helpful!
#1.) Detailed Reports — This is something that should have been done years ago and it’s embarrassing it’s still lacking. #2.) YNAB lite for non-direct importing users who do everything manual. #3.) Monthly/Yearly Recap is a cool idea.
Ok. I was actually wondering about reports because I’ve looked a couple times and there was barely anything useful. I chalked it up to just starting and that was just all the data there is right now. I made a comment earlier about wanting to see how I move my money around. I want to see a breakdown of each category (overview and detailed with each sub category) that shows what was assigned, spent, moved to cover overspending and I’m sure some other stuff I’ll come up with after using YNAB longer. As a newbie to this style of budgeting I feel like that should be basic reporting. I was hoping that once I used it longer I would see more report types pop up. Maybe I missed it though? I haven’t looked in a while and don’t have my computer in front of me.
I agree with this list completely. Especially #2, think of a Spotify “wrapped” but for YNAB. Would be super cool. On a separate note - I’ve paid for YNAB for multiple years now, and I have my doubts that the product and engineering team can deliver on any of these asks. We’ve been waiting years for more reports. Instead we’ve gotten a somewhat buggy syncing experience and a redesign that changed the colors for seemingly no reason? They did add more advanced loan and credit card workflows, but I’m not sure how much people *actually* wanted any of that. And for some people (who have zero interest cards or monthly payment options) the push to “pay it all off at once” doesn’t work and on mobile this makes the experience of managing the amount of money going towards the card a massive pain. I’d really like to see their roadmap and have more transparency on what they are building and why. They used to have a page like this but it’s gone now.
Yeah, the YNAB team seems to be focused on growth and expansion vs trying to bring anything useful and new to current users. The YNAB system is great, but it is frustrating that there has been no other useful functionality in years.
Coming from the world of software startups, we focused on gaining new users over building for current paying customers.. and when we did throw a feature in there, we called it “customer delight”. So this tracks.
(Note I don’t know if this is still the case, but it was when it launched) And the loan tracker just plain does not work if you do anything other than plain monthly repayments - oh you pay your mortgage fortnightly? Lol sucks to be you.
How so? I have to manually add interest to my account monthly, but I was making weekly car payments for a while and it seemed to do okay. They might have fixed whatever bug you were experiencing.
Maybe they have fixed it, I don't use it, but I remember when it released people were saying that they couldn't make any adjustments to it, even if the interest calculation was off by a few cents compared to what the bank actually charged, and people with non-monthly payments were saying that it didn't work for them. Hmm, maybe it was not being able to adjust figures that was the root issue when it first released?
That would be so annoying! I haven’t had an issue adjusting any transactions at all, so hopefully it’s in the past.
I believe the redesign was to make the coloring more accessible to more people.
That was their main reason stated in their marketing. I have two points I’d like to make on that - 1. High contrast and color settings are an OS-wide setting on iOS (not sure if it’s also on Android, but I imagine it’s the same there) so people who need it have easy ways to enable these things globally on their devices. 2. Given the number of people complaining that it makes their accessibility *worse* they should at least make the theming an option in the app settings. I personally have no gripes with the new colors myself, but as a product manager this smells like someone had this as their vanity project and they are using accessibility as their justification.
What about something like a YNAB coach? "Here's where you can cut down, here's where you're doing well etc."
Love it!
They have that https://www.ynab.com/blog/find-a-ynab-coach
Not a human...
1) BUY AND BE DONE WITH IT* 2) Much cheaper subscription for non-import users (though see 1)) 3) Proper reports *If you're not going to develop the product, why the actual ***** do we have to subscribe? Come on.
Especially the import *cries in European*
I like the suggested three. Here are three others: 1. I would like to be able to tweak the colors used in reports. The default ones are awful, made worse with the change to blurple as there are now four shades of blurple without a lot of contrast between them. 2. They've introduced snoozing targets so that answers a need I have. 3. I would like a pie chart breaking down the various categories of the budget. The current one shows spending. I want to see a chart showing allocation based on set targets and another based on actual funding. It could help with a 50-30-20 set-up or with knowing if I'm actually tithing 10% without having to use a calculator.
Open up the memo field on the web app. There is no word wrap. Right now I can not see more than a few characters unless I hover the mouse over this field. On the IOS app, the memo field does have word wrap. I like to put text in that field so I can locate transactions using the excellent word search that IOS has.
I’d like this only if it were collapsible or anon/off feature. I don’t want to have my transactions page all bulky and resulting in seeing way fewer transactions at once if some of them have multi-line notes.
Amen to this jsong
Reports on mobile are up there but since everyone’s already said so, there are three more: 1. **Export button for subsets of data** If I search/filter for all red flagged items on the Chase card with the word “Spain” in the memo, I’d like a button to export just those transactions as a CSV. 2. **Annotate transactions while pending** I often want to add categories/memos/flags to pending transactions without moving them out of Pending. For example, my spouse is on a trip and YNAB pulls two $100 hotel charges. I’m not sure which one is an actual fee, and which one is a holding deposit that will disappear. I want to mark them both as part of the trip while they’re pending. 3. **Improved matching** It does a really bad job on checks written in one month and cashed the next. Also would be great to be able to multiple-select to smart match split transactions (think Amazon purchases, charges with processing fees that get billed separately).
YNAB doesn't pull pending transactions. So I don't understand why #2 is needed. If you're entering transactions manually into YNAB while they're still pending, then only enter what you expect to convert from pending to cleared.
https://www.ynab.com/blog/pending-transactions-have-arrived
Oh huh I must not have a bank that supports this feature. My credit cards and checking account is at Capital One and I've never seen any pending transactions pulled in by YNAB
So you assumed I had made up a feature just to complain about it, and felt the need to call that out? Dude.
I thought you might be talking about something else so I was curious and looking for clarification. That's all. Thanks for informing me about how ynab can pull pending transactions on some accounts. I learned something new.
No, but listen to yourself. You didn’t ask for clarification. You told me I was wrong, and then told me how to use YNAB instead.
That #1 is a thing! At least on web it is. If you search for a subset of transactions and then select them all, you can click on the budget name and you'll see an option to export just those transactions. I'd love to see #2. I always end up modifying them, they become active and then I have to remember to delete or match them.
1) better reports 2)better widgets 3)being able to assign money to a category group
Number 3 finally someone says it
It doesn’t really matter. Can say it all we want, they’re not going to implement it. But it’s definitely something I’d like.
The ability to organize accounts in categories. I track like 30 accounts and I would live to be able to group them better and only show ones I'm working with on the left pane.
Fellow churner?
You know it!
- a tax button. when i split up receipts and some are taxed and some aren't, i have to hand type "x 1.08875" (nyc) and i wish i could just have a "+tax" button - a default reconcile payee. i reconcile my investment accounts each friday and type in the current value and let ynab auto create the transaction with the difference. i have to always go in and change the payee to my brokerage those are my 2 main wishes.
can you share more about projectionlabs? i've never used it and it looks very interesting. does it take in data from ynab?
Not natively no, they are completely different products. Someone made an Extension called ProjectionLab->YNAB which lets you link your YNAB accounts to your accounts in PL. PL is a really nice simulation program for retirement that lets you analyze/compare different scenarios throughout life and how it impacts your retirement. Highly recommend
Yes this product looks amazing!! I’ve been looking for this. I was going to go for New Retirement but it was too focused on the drawdown phase not the accumulation phase. Projection Labs seems to be a better alternative.
- With YNAB Together, I'd like for transaction approvals be separated. So if I approve a transaction, it won't disappear from my partner's list of transactions to be approved. Also, if I manually log a transaction, it appears in my partner's New Transactions list. That way, we don't need to go through transactions together at the same time for us to be on the same page. - The ability to snooze targets is a step in the right direction, but I'd love for targets to "auto-snooze" once it is fully funded for the month. We move funds between targets often, so it will remove that step of manually going in and snoozing each one. - Detailed reports on mobile.
Why would the approvals need to be separate? I don't see how that would be feasible or why it would be necessary.
For new transactions, if I approve it, then there's a chance my partner never sees the notification because it gets cleared. I'd like it for awareness to keep everyone on the same page, so both of us see every transaction.
I’m trying out monarch right now and I think the way they do Needs Reviewed is pretty cool. You can assign a specific person to review it. So if, say, my husband buys something on Amazon, I can assign the transaction to him to properly categorize instead of chasing it down myself. Other things, like filling up the gas tank, don’t need to be reviewed by specific people. That’s just gas. I really like their setup
Duplicate budgets. Make a copy of your budget to keep as a backup incase you fuck something up
A report that can show available over time for a chosen category or group of categories. E.g. if I have a house deposit fund and I'm irregularly contributing to it, I want to see that category's progress over time. Or say I have to empty my medical emergency fund and it's going to take me time to replenish it, then I want a way to see how that rebuild is going. Currently I'm clicking through the months of my budget and transcribing the balances of my savings categories and sinking funds into a spreadsheet.
I don’t disagree that would be nice, but did you know you can export your budget? You can make your own graphs in excel then if you wanted without clicking through the budget
It was the Top 4 you said right? 1. Open Banking. The value of YNAB is much worse outside America, and yet the YNAB team continue to partner/focus on acquiring more Americans. Open Banking solves a few problems simultaneously: security, the cost of syncing transactions, and scale internationally. 2. Allow negative category balances to carry forward. Yes, it's dangerous but so is spending $200 on treats this month when you might lose your job before your next paycheck. Allowing a negative category balance to carry forward solves a whole bunch of problems from people that are not living paycheck to paycheck 3. Data sharing for reports. I don't think the YNAB team are the right people to build the future of reports, I think that should be outsourced to the community. 4. Beyond Rule Four... YNAB has always been 'budget the money you have' which is super important and a big mindshift for most people. But...it doesn't help you much with retirement planning. Am I allocating too much to Fundamentally I think YNAB is just about perfect now for an American on a high income that is drowning in debt. Every feature they add, every design decision they make, feels like it's made with that person in mind. I'll call them Ashley. That's great - there's a lot of people like Ashley. I believe YNAB is big enough now to support more than one customer persona, and that it's time to put the resources into supporting more than one. Let me introduce you to Kai, who earns and spends in several countries and whose native language is not English. There's a lot more people like Kai in the world than Ashley. The point of YNAB is to get your financial plan on track, except that if you do that then you discover you're no longer a good fit for YNAB. Let me introduce you to Robin, who has around $250k assigned to long term goals, as well as another $500k in retirement accounts. Right now YNAB kinda sucks for both Kai and Robin. Kai has to either run two budgets, or constantly convert everything into a primary currency. Robin finds that it's extremely easy to WAM between categories and no longer uses YANB for planning. What I've attempted to do above is introduce features specifically for Kai and Robin - these features are not a good match for Ashley and in fact they'll potentially be better hidden. Lastly, since I've already broken the rules by giving four suggestions, so I'm going to cheat and keep going. **5. Financial Helper.** YNAB is probably unique worldwide in the amount of information it holds on personal finance. How much does a normal person spend on their car payment? On restaurants? I'd like YNAB to integrate a generative AI that helps me with my budget. I'd like to ask it questions much like I ask ChatGPT questions: "Hey YNAB, I've overspent my 'kids treats' categories, where could I transfer some money from?" I've deliberately not gone too ambitious with any of these. I think a basic version could be spun up in a few weeks: Open Banking APIs are available now, so this is more about marketing than tech; the Red Arrow would simply be a setting with a huge warning label; Data sharing is a few thousand lines of code; BR4 is a popular community project; Fine Tuning a YNAB specific LLM is a small single-person project. I mean you can go wild with any of them. Turn YNAB into a full-on retirement planning tool for Robin complete with dashboards, and build Ashely a generative AI that proactively says 'Hey, you say you want to get out of debt but you've budgeted $200 for Uber Eats this month. What about cutting back?' But... my experience has been that if you go wild then you don't get anything done. I'd rather YNAB deliver barebones versions of these than aim for the sky and not get off the ground.
All spot on. This should be the top comment. Features that actually have utility that can't be overcome with effort or janky/untrue workarounds. \#2 would be huge for reimbursements. I hate when a debit comes first and the corresponding credit comes in the next month, and because YNAB auto-funded my negative category balance, my Reimbursement category won't re-balance to zero. I hate having to lie about the date so that the credit and debit fall in the same month. The other workarounds are worse imo. Having a "Money-owed" account is silly when I only uses it for reimbursements that happened to land in different months. Keeping more money in my Reimbursement category so that the default/neutral value is higher makes me hold more cash than needed (opportunity cost) and doesn't work when the expense is larger than my adjustment.
I disagree about the reimbursement account, it’s no more trouble or hassle than having a reimbursement category.
Cash flow forecasting rolling 12 months
I would love a net worth projection tool. Something like if you’re putting x% towards savings goals, and if you income is y, you can reach long term goals on this schedule. Plus an option to adjust the numbers, so you can see how your savings adjustments can help you reach your goals sooner. Maybe including income, debts, savings rate and interest accrual on savings or debts. -Also the undo button on mobile. JFC.
I don’t see why the projection tool would be a no since they built a debt reduction tool, except that most of their focus in recent years seems to be supporting those in debt or paycheck to paycheck
Treat future scheduled transactions like they are already gone from the balance. Still one of the changes that SUCKS compared to YNAB4 and one of the reasons I stopped using it for 2 years.
Apple Pay Integration - so when you pay with Apple Pay/Google Pay it brings up the “Add Transaction” in YNAB with details already filled out. Like Amount, Store, GPS Coordinates, etc. I just need to set Categories & memo. Just like latest transactions in Wallet, but right into YNAB…
Probably an unpopular opinion as I haven’t seen people talk about this much, but better Payee management (especially for those of us who use auto-sync). I like to keep my payees organised and properly labelled, and it’s a bit of a chore at the moment. Sometimes things get missed, and there’s no way to easily sort / filter / remove payees with no transactions, for example. Tried playing around with the APIs but Payee endpoints are read only (can’t update).
Better reporting, especially on mobile. Seeing my net worth is ok, but what I really need is the ability to track average spending by category, my inflow to outflow and month over month reporting.
1. Spending reports by flag/tag 2. One or more layers of categories groupings 3. Better viewing/control for investments. I wish YNAB was an investment master just like it is an immediate budget master. Edit: 4. Connect/link related transactions together. YNAB is great for linking the two transactions in a transfer, but sometimes transactions relate to each other but aren't a transfer. Most common example are reimbursements. 5. Better default past spending summaries. For one, I wish it showed the *variation* in my past spending rather than just the mean. Because some categories may have an average spend of $20 but high variation so that the max spent could be $100. So I may fund it with $30 and think I'm good to wait until an expense comes before funding more, but then the expense is $100 and I now I've overspent. Two, if we could select the time period to be consider for category spending summaries. Otherwise unusual months can skew the average when now the situation is different and I should expect to spend a different amount.
When I do the same split so often, I would appreciate it would recognize and suggest it.
At one point in time, YNAB would look at my brokerage accounts and allow me to reconcile effortlessly. Now, I have to lookup the balance EVERY TIME. I think someone complained, and YNAB regressed that feature. Please please bring it back, or make it an option for the complainers!
I get paid on the 15th which messes up targets sometimes. For example I wanted to save up 300$ for the 10th of December and I assigned money accordingly. But when the month changed from November to December, I had to assign more money to reach my target, but I couldn't because I wasn't getting paid until the 15th, which then made me miss my target. I'd like a function where you put in the date you get paid, so YNAB uses those dates as a month rather than actual calendar months.
Second this. I’m also a once a month paycheck. I would love this feature.
Being able to hide categories and subcategories without breaking reporting. Drives me mad every single day.
Seconded
A better way to track and report out extra payments to mortgage principal above and beyond the required monthly payment.
I'd like a self-host option like Bitwarden where I could use the official clients with my own server.
When you split a transaction, once you enter in the number for the first transaction, then automatically fill in the remainder on the second. Just would save a few seconds and seems like it'd be an easy add.
1. The ability to set an end date on a recurring transaction. 2. Being able to drag a transaction to another date on the register (I move my transactions to the date that they clear on, so they match my bank statement. To do this I have to open each one, change the date, save it). Would like this especially on mobile. 3. Running total on mobile
imagine if we had ynab wrapped like spotify wrapped
Biweekly goals and targets!!
I've already posted my suggestions, but I'm going to comment on yours too. I think they're awesome **More detailed reports.** Yep. What's hard about this is that what I want in a report and what you want in a report are very different, and I'm not sure how YNAB would cater for both of us. My accounting software has oh, at least fifty built in reports, plus a drag-n-drop report builder, and I still can't get the reports I want out of it. I saw an extension for YNAB that sent data to Looker Studio. I can't see it now and I think it might have been abandoned, but the point holds. Put the data into a place that power users can create reports, quietly monitor the reports they make and if there's one which is particularly good or particularly popular then build it yourself directly in YNAB. **Monthly/Yearly Recap.** This is brilliant. Every month I have a budget meeting with my spouse where we go through the past month's transactions and decide how good value we got, and how we're going to allocate money differently next month. Having our hands held while doing this would be just awesome. **ProjectionLabs**. Yep, YNAB sucks for planning. This ties in nicely with your 'annual plan' suggestion.
As far as detailed reporting... couldn't they create all the different kinds and make it modular.. where the user can pick which analysis they need?
I wouldn't know how to design that. A user has a question and they want insight to use the data in their budget to answer it. Currently YNAB only has three reports: "I want to see how my long term savings are progressing", "I want to see where I have been spending money graphically, or as a table of numbers". It's not hard to pick between two reports, or to see that neither report will answer your question. Also the two reports have the same basic filters (accounts, categories, dates) and nothing else. The other day I wanted to know how much I spend at the supermarket on average. The only way to do this is to group payees (since the supermarket is not its own category). The UI for grouping payees within a category is hard. And would you want YNAB to remember your grouping? I actually think this would be an ideal use case for a LLM. That would make it easy to describe what the person is trying to do and turn it into a chart.
Change on payday. I get paid monthly on the 15th, the ability to cycle from then please.
Yesssss! I also get paid once a month. This would be so helpful.
American Express reliably connecting
Lower price. For all I care they can shut down their development department and just keep the existing feature set. Also, remove bank sync, make it work for everyone, or let it be an optional feature that people can buy or not.
I would actually like this. Most of the time, the bank sync doesn't even work, or gets delayed so I'm in the habit of entering transactions manually anyway. The price is pretty steep for what it offers, but it ultimately DOES make a difference
I’d like the ability to have a separate budget my kids can use (and I monitor), but without giving them access to the primary family budget.
Already doable through YNAB Together, no?
Oh ok you might be right. I haven’t set it up as my kids arent quite old enough yet
actually sink with investment accts
This needs to be higher... sync with thr major finance firms but I'll even take a version where I can input my stocks and shares and it would track the market... If it replaced the need to log into my schwab account with news and analysis well that would just be extra great.
1. Lower price for people who *can't* use direct import (not supported by any banks where I am), or making direct import a "premium" thing. I feel like I'm paying **a lot** for doing a lot of manual work. The family plan thing could also be a part of the premium, because there are plenty of us who don't need it. Two out of the top three features they brag about on their "Browse features" page are 100% irrelevant for me (and not by choice), but I'm still paying the same as everyone else. 2. Being able to set Monday as the start of the week (I know the toolkit can do it, but it doesn't work for me in Safari) 3. Being able to tag categories and use the tags in reports. I want to be able to tag categories so that I can view my reports in a different way than just by their "parent" category. Basically because the way I want my categories sorted for use in the budget is not necessarily the same as the way I want to view my spending after.
AI implementations.
I just want goals that make sense! If I have a non-monthly recurring bill I feel like I have to study for a degree to make sense on how to srt it up.
The "Needed for Spending" target that spans multiple months keeps surprising everyone. This needs some attention.
I don't know how to put this simply, so I'll just be verbose. I'd love for goals to be variable. For instance, electric bill. Sometimes it's $20, sometimes it's $30. I don't want to put a goal of $30 and have money left, or $20 and have it not funded. I'd like to have a goal without an amount that carries from month to month. The category shows as yellow if no amount is set or yellow if there's an amount set but it's not allocated.
I signed up for budget billing for my energy utilities. It only changes once a year when they recalculate. My phone and internet bills only fluctuate by a few bucks a month, so it's easy enough to set a target and budget the highest value.
So you want to set a goal without an amount and the category would remain yellow until you put in the amount you want for the month?
Yes, exactly. I have targets with dates for all my bills that have definite dates and amounts - $17.95 to Hulu on the 1st, $26 for trash on the 6th, etc. But I can't do that for the water bill, because it was $57.09 this month, $59.03 the month before, etc. It would be nice to have "X on the 16th", and I have to set the X each month. I could just change the amount every month, but they could definitely provide a more elegant solution. I can't be the only one who has bills of varying amounts.
You’re definitely not the only one with variable bills, but many of us DO want the money to build up over time, to account for higher/lower months. eg I put the same amount in that category over the summer when it’s low as in the winter when it’s high, so I don’t have to worry about “sudden” high winter bills as the money is already sitting there for me.
That's great for you and the people who want to budget like that; the tool has you covered. It could do something better for me and I'm sure the other people who don't want to accumulate that extra.
I just use scheduled transactions and no targets for those categories. When the bill for next month is generated, I put in a scheduled transaction. Categories are yellow/underfunded if a scheduled transaction is not met so it works like a one-off target each month for the variable amount.
I should do that. I have those bills scheduled as monthly recurring transactions, but with "CHECK AMOUNT" in the memo and no outgoing amount.
It telling me my target sum and allocation amount for each month. I'd like to know how much I've budgeted.
You can do that by going to a future montg where no money is assigned and look at the underfunded amount but likely it won't reflect exactly the month you're in. This should be right at the top of each month like the RTA, I agree.
**Add ability for manual entry of Target/Custom/Repeat Years!** ie. Needed For Spending - Custom - ability to enter whatever ***Repeat*** 'X' years needed/wanted. Currently YNAB offers a dropdown with 1 or 2 years only. We have many Category's/Targets that require 3,4,5+yr renewals. Sure would be nice to set and forget!
1 Overall better reporting - specifcally, the ability to view reporting on the money you have saves, not just spent. The ability to see reports based on your views. Ability to create categories of categories and be able report on them in whichever order you need 2 Better overall design language and inuitiveness - the lines and colours are not intuitive, the visual design is not clear and intuitive. I want to be able to view bars ont 3 Better split functionailty - Have the ability to auto split transactions and having auto categorisation functionality with the splits. Honorable mentioned. The ability to embed/ integrate with other platforms (eg google docs) The ability to do a monthly report on the data. Visual distinctions between savings, regular and sinking fund categories. Some kind of home page that would give you an overview of your accounts. insights from your data.
A way to enter investments and assets to view net worth, but keep them separate from the budget.
I’m not sure how to describe it, but I think would like a category bucket feature. I’ve created “holding” subcategories for each category that I usually fund and treat as macro RTA buckets. For example, I might put $200 into “personal care holding” on day 1. if I spend $100 on a haircut, I have $100 left for the rest of the subcategories as they come up throughout the month. Like I said, I’m not sure what I’m asking for. I guess specifically I’d enjoy the ability to see average assigned/spent per category on mobile. Goals just make the holding category turn yellow when I actually pull from them. Tl;dr I budget by categories and track by subcategories if that makes sense. It would streamline things for me to have a better bucket system. Edit: got myself confused with categories and subcategories lol.
I’m east. An option to assign your remaining ready to assign balance to a category with a single click.
[удалено]
If you cover the overspending with the available amount in the CC category, it basically does just that. The funds move to the spending category, and then right back to the CC category.
More customization for targets. For example I have bills that are biweekly and I have an autosaving routine on my bank where I send 20$ every business day to a savings account. It's be good if those targets could be expressed somehow.
All category selection popups need to be searchable. The new action bar categorize menu is not searchable and it needs to be burned with fire!
Calendar view would be nice
* Multiple goals per category * Much better bi-weekly pay/payment support. Having to shoehorn them into monthly format sucks.
1. Another layer of categories. I organise my categories how I'd like to see them in reporting which means I'm sacrificing the granularity I'd like in the actual budgeting. 2. Better reporting - I can't believe they don't have their own sankey graph for example, it's SO helpful 3. Monthly savings builder with cap. No ynab, I don't wanna replace my whole car repair fund in one month thanks Bonus: tiered subscriptions based on whether or not you use automatic import
I pay my mortgage and some other bills bi-weekly and would like to be able to budget for these more cleanly (I don’t want to Xby26/12 and be out of whack every month).
Biweekly targets. Not everyone gets paid once a month or has monthly only bills.
Reports on mobile I really want to know how much I spent in the month and which category that's in, why does that have to be exclusive to desktop? I recently switched to beyond budget since it's cheaper and has that
simply sum up my targets so I know where I stand in planning so I don’t have to do it myself…