YNAB - Does anyone know why if I have an inflow transaction and want to assign it to a specific category, YNAB allocates the money to the category but doesn't treat it as "assigned" to the category? E.g. if I have a budget item for clothing, say $100/month, and someone were to give me $50 to put towards clothing, YNAB says I now have $150 budgeted for clothing. However, if I move $50 out of the category (bc I only need $100 budgeted for it) then YNAB gives the yellow bar asking me to assign the remaining $50. In other words, it says I have $100 in the category (which was the original budgeted amount) but it also says that I need to assign another $50. I assume if I left the bar yellow with only $100 budgeted ($50 from me, $50 from the gift) and spent $100 it wouldn't put me in the red but the yellow bar bothers me. I would prefer it recognize that the $50 gift is money "budgeted" to clothing, in the same way that if I marked the gift as "Ready to assign" it wouldn't complain.

Following. Similar problem

Not sure why its doing that (it might depend on the type of target, i.e. if its a Monthly Savings goal vs for Spending), but they just released a feature that you can snooze a target for the remainder of the month, so that can be one way of getting rid of the annoyance.

Yes to what @acceptable-angle-23240 said. What’s your goal for clothing?

Sorry for the belated reply. @thousands-sunset-8939 when you say "goal" do you mean a savings goal? I just budget a certain amount per month to spend, I don't treat it as savings. @acceptable-angle-23240 It's a spending budget item. I'm not sure if the snooze will help here since the inflow is not the same amount as the amount I budget for it so I still have to allocate a certain amount of money for it. At the end of the day, as long as I can spend the full $100 and YNAB won't say I went overbudget, I can deal with the budget item being yellow for a month. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't doing anything incorrectly (as well as to avoid the annoyance of it being yellow).

How YNAB works is there are goals are targets. You tell YNAB what those are. Let’s say you’re is set to $200. When you put only $100 in it, it will stay yellow because you didn’t fulfill your goal. Red means overspent. Yellow means keep going. Green means spend it if you want, you did it! Makes sense? @broad-australia-98095

Right but I don't understand why assigning an inflow transaction doesn't count. It's the same thing - now I have $100 assigned to the budget item. Why would it matter whether it came from the "Ready to assign" bucket or another inflow transaction?

Because it technically wasn’t assigned. It was moved into there. It’s subtle…

From what I read in the docs, they look at the inflow to a category as a refund or reimbursement. Whereas the purpose of targets is to help you assign your income towards your goals. So I guess even though the money is available, it doesn't count. 🤷‍♂️

Ok what you're saying makes sense technically, I guess I don't see why it wouldn't be looked at as marking the inflow transaction as "Ready to assign" and then assigning it the budget item. I guess they don't hold of שיבודה דר' נתן. Thank you both for clarifying.

Can someone now summarize the question and answer for others? Thanks.

Certainly! The original question was about how YNAB (You Need A Budget), a budgeting software, handles inflow transactions when they are directly assigned to a specific budget category, rather than being marked as "Ready to Assign" and then distributed to categories. In YNAB, you can set up budget categories with specific funding goals or targets, such as allocating $100 per month for clothing. If you receive money specifically for that category, like a $50 gift for clothing, you might directly assign that inflow to the clothing category. However, YNAB doesn't treat this direct inflow as money that has been "assigned" to meet your budgeting goal. Instead, it sees it as a refund or reimbursement, which means your category balance increases, but your goal progress does not. So, if you then move $50 out of the clothing category because you only need $100 there, YNAB will show a yellow warning, indicating that you haven't met your assigned funding goal for the month, even though there's enough money in the category to cover your planned spending. The confusion arises because users expect that any inflow to a category should count towards meeting the funding goal, but YNAB differentiates between assigned funds (from your "Ready to Assign" pool) and direct inflows (like refunds or gifts), which do not count towards goal progress. A workaround mentioned in the thread is to use a new feature that allows you to snooze a target for the rest of the month, which can help avoid the annoyance of seeing the yellow warning. In summary, for YNAB, the source of funds matters when it comes to meeting budgeting goals. Money assigned from your general pool counts towards goals, while direct inflows to a category do not. This distinction is important for new users to understand to effectively manage their budget within YNAB's system.