We’ve launched the YNAB integration with just one metric – money added to an account – but we know there are better YNAB metrics to beemind. Let us know what we should add next! (And comment here if you have ideas of Beemindery things to add to the list). Also if you have been using YNAB longer than me and can comment on how (or if) the “Age of money” idea would work, that would be awesome!
Reconcile your accounts on the regular (get a +1 for each reconciliation)
Number of transactions in a specific category DO MORE
Number of transactions in a specific category DO LESS
Whittle down for number of uncategorized transactions
If it’s useful, here’s why I’d like a “number of transactions in category - less” option:
Fewer transactions at the supermarket, the more groceries planning & fewer opportunities to be tricked into buying things.
It’d also be nice to limit number of money assignments to category per period. Though I’m not sure if this is trivial with their API. The reason here is:
Making a budget is nice, sticking to it is nicer I’d like to be able to commit to “being able to assign money to category 2 times a month.” which would constrain me to be more planned.
Just tried to use the new integration and I’m a bit confused I expected to be able to select budget categories, rather than accounts.
The reason I’m using YNAB is decoupling “bank account” from “budget category.” My budgeting performance isn’t captured by the x Euros in my savings account. I’ll call it a successfully budgeted month if in the same month:
I had an emergency and spent x/2 Euros from my emergency fund. Reducing my savings by half.
I managed to add y Euros towards next year’s vacation budget.
I’d really like to be able to get help from Beeminder for (2).
In my opinion, Age of Money is more of a lag measure than a lead measure because it is the effect of having more money available to budget (i.e. more money coming in, less going out). And it goes up very slowly. I could see a use case for someone looking to slowly get to 30 days for the first time though. Mine is currently around 100 days, but I’ve been using YNAB for 4 years now.
I agree with @aad, this will mostly be useful to me if I can track the amount in a specific category, e.g. the savings to buy a house, or the savings for my next gadget. I’d love it if I could have a goal for saving for my next ereader – eventual guilt-free buying of the latest pretty from Onyx Boox!
A reconciliation goal is my second best; I already have a manual goal for it.
is YNAB good for tracking accounting in a small business ?
struggling to track expenses…
Also any ideas for how to beeminder my small business expense tracking - open to hearing suggestions, but im months behind so maybe ill need to get on top of it first
I’m not sure about whether YNAB can be used for business.
But as for how to beemind your business expense tracking, I just go for a dirt simple method for tracking my own finances and for making sure I do my self-employment related paperwork and filing: I have a Do More goal with a rate set to about how often I want to check on it, and when it’s due I go and get caught up. Once I’m caught up, I can add a +1.
With a backlog, I’d probably set up a Whittle Down goal, like 100 items left to file, or a time-based goal for spending X amount of time on it per day/week.
@napkin I use YNAB in combination with Keeper to track my business expenses, and it’s worked quite well for me so far. I have separate YNAB budgets for personal and business finances, as well as separate personal and business checking accounts.
I’m still learning YNAB by going through a budgeting course… which is now making me think of beeminding finishing it
How about beeminding a target to budget for?
For ex., I want to budget for next year’s 1 year annual membership renewal. Is there a way to integrate Beeminder to beemind reaching the 1 year annual membership renewal?
Would beeminding weekly goal of assigning, let’s say, at least $1 on payday or however much YNAB says to assign, work?
I’m in the naming my Categories phase and haven’t even touched on reconciling.
When I emailed YNAB Support that my YNAB budget amount didn’t reflect my bank balance, they said I would need to complete the Onboarding process by assigning all the money in my bank account so they could diagnose.
I’ve created a Category Group called “Monthly Fixed Expenses” for bills that have a rough amount and due date written on each Category.
I’m working on creating another Category Group called “Monthly Living Expenses” for expenses that have no due dates such as Groceries.
I’m thinking once every Category is created, then I can start approving or categorizing all “160 new transactions to approve or categorize” by assigning a category where it says “This needs a category” which I’m guessing would make YNAB learn future transactions.
I would beemind “approve or categorize” next after “create or check Category Group and or Category”.
Also, I just thought that I should also budget for my derails in the “Monthly Living Expenses”.
@napkin I use my business YNAB budget to track all my business expenses and ensure I understand where every transaction has gone and why. I beemind reconciling accounts and assigning money in that budget with a rate of once per week.
I have Keeper set up to automatically pull in all my transactions via my bank accounts, and it automatically tries to determine if a transaction is a write-off or not. Ideally maybe I’d also go through the transactions in Keeper on a regular basis and correct them as they happen. But as it stands I only review my Keeper transactions when I’m doing my taxes, cross-referencing with my business YNAB account and/or the spending accounts where the transactions occurred.
Eek, that sounds weird! I’ve just tested it and didn’t have a problem; it let me authenticate right away. Maybe it was a temporary issue? Can you give it another shot?
If you do and it still doesn’t work, can you send a screenshot of the error message to us at support@beeminder.com, along with any other info you have about it? We’d love to dig in!
For those watching along from home, we worked out what the problem is – right now we’re using a restricted access to their API, which only has a limited number of “slots”. We should’ve applied for full access before launching the integration, but it slipped through the cracks. Definitely major egg on our faces.
Two of us were only authenticated to test, so we’ve deleted the authentication so right now it should be possible for a couple of people to authenticate with YNAB again. That said, based on the auto-reply we got from YNAB, it might take up to a week to get a response from them, so that’s only a very temporary band-aid.
If you gave the YNAB integration a try and decided not to keep the goal running, it’d be super handy in the meantime if you could revoke the permissions. You’ll need to do that both on Beeminder’s side (from your Beeminder account settings) and on YNAB’s side (from your YNAB account settings).
Of course if you’re using it, then don’t do that – it’d break your goal, and we don’t want to break things for you just 'cause we messed up. It’s just if you’re not using it.
When can we expect “Reconcile your accounts on the regular (get a +1 for each reconciliation)” to be added ? Seems everyone wants it… and I want to beemind my ynab use because ngl without beeminding it there is 0 chance I’ll do it haha. And automated solution is always better than manual data entry
I’d like to be able to commit to “being able to assign money to category 2 times a month.” which would constrain me to be more planned.
I expected to be able to select budget categories, rather than accounts.
It’s just if you’re not using it.