Beginning-of-the-month challenges

Even when you’re paying close attention to your budget, the beginning of the month can cause problems if you’re using Direct Import to automatically import your transactions into YNAB. There is often a delay of a day or two between when you spend money and when it shows up in YNAB. The result is that for the first few days of the month, you may be approving transactions that are dated in the previous month. You might not necessarily be looking at your August budget in September (though it’s not a bad idea to take a look), so I urge you to take note of the dates of transactions that arrive at the beginning of the month.

If you find that there isn’t sufficient money to cover the transactions in their categories, you can cover the overspending in last month’s budget by moving money around or even change the date of the transaction to the new month, if that’s easier. (Though it’s always best for YNAB to reflect reality.) Consider this a heads up to pay especially close attention to transaction dates at the beginning of the month!