YNAB Accounts

Just thought I'd update on my progress with 'You Need A Budget' (YNAB) which is a good home account and budgeting program.

When I first came across this program it was on ver. 3.00. Now, it has reached ver. 4.1.20.

The new version (4.00+) adds extra reporting and budgeting facilities. These are welcome and are supposed to assist you on planning your future spending so you can offset this against your actual income on a per-month basis. This part of the system works well, but I have found that the only way to include incoming amounts such as benefits, is to set them as a deduction from the budget. The ability to automatically import this from the accounts book would have been a welcome addition.

Talking of the accounts side, YNAB has changed the way it now handles loans, credit cards and inter-account/Bank transfers. These can no longer have a category attached to them, but instead, show up as a transfer in/out. This may sound logical (and it is), but this means they do not show-up on any part of the monthly budget plan. So when you are setting-out your monthly budgets, you need to do a bit of 'creative accounting' in order to find the nearest suitable category and then add the total you transfer to that.

The reports section gives you an overview of all income and outgoings in various formats, all of which can be filtered to in/exclude various categories. This can come in useful if, for instance, you want to find-out how much all your utilities are costing you per month as a % of your income.
One useful feature is the 'bar chart' which shows total outgoings v. income for the month. This way you get to see in an instant which months you managed to keep your spending below your wages.

A bonus for YNAB users is the online tutorials that are available on the website, although I would advise against the live webinars if you live outside the USA, otherwise you might find yourself staring at a PC screen at some ungodly hour.

This budgeting and accounts program is very much better than the now-defunct MS Money that I used to use for many years. MS Money is very much a business-grade piece of software along with the likes of GNUCash and Quickbooks. Whereas YNAB is certainly not a tool suitable for business use (unless you are a sole trader). It was designed from the ground up as a home accounts program and that is exactly what it does best.

YNAB website