Just figured out how to deal with credit cards, and when going through my checking transactions realized that I hadn't added my husband's credit cards. Just added them now and assigned money to each one to cover the initial balance on those cards. But here's where I'm stuck... The payments for each of his credits cards were made out of the checking account before I brought those cards into ynab so I don't know how to categorize them

you can either ignore back transactions and start with the current balance, only categorize going forward, or pick some arbitrary date (eg., first of the month) and figure out what the balance was then, and add the transactions backwards

Meaning, even though I categorized everything since February in my bank acct and cc, just leave those 4 transactions with the yellow "this needs a category"? I get that we have to start somewhere, and that's fine, just would this mess anything else up? Or ynab is just treating it as money out without knowing why so doesn't matter? Technically the same thing should happen with the first credit card payment as well? Bc right now the new cc opens with a certain balance, and when I need to pay it, ynab has no idea what those purchases were for - I just need to allocate money in my April balance to pay them.

if you added the transactions already, then you can categories them (but don't add transactions from before you started using YNAB)

Technically the same thing should happen with the first credit card payment as well?

correct, a CC is no different than your bank account to YNAB. You have a balance in your bank account (the money you have) prior to YNAB, and you have a balance on your CC account (the money your owe) prior to YNAB

A. No I didn't add them, I just meant transactions from bank account and another cc that I had added in Feb/March. The new cc that was brought in yesterday has no transactions. I'm only asking about the four transactions in my bank account from Feb and March that are payments to the credit cards that I did not have in ynab till yesterday B. Ok thanks for clarifying!

A. Ok...you mean payments to CC cards from your bank. So those should be set as transfers to the account, which will automatically set the category to the special category for your card. When you add the CCs, with the current balance, it should be the same as amount coming out of your account (unless you're not paying it off fully)

Yes, so I already learned how to record the payments from back to CC bc of my cc that I had put in earlier. The issue was now, since I added a new cc AFTER I added my bank, the bank is showing payments to my cc, but my cc doesn't have any transactions from those dates. So that's what was confusing to me. Do I still set it up as a transfer to that cc account even though the opening balance for that new cc exists already taking into account those payments?

yes, set the payment from the bank as a transfer to the CC account

In this situation I would not mark it as a payment and instead just categorize it as a transaction and split it into the related categories as best you can, since the receiving account doesn't have a transaction to be offset by the transfer.

it does though? that's the initial balance on the CC

It was paid before it was linked, no? So the initial balance is already after the account was paid.

Yes, I was questioning how to categorize credit card payments in the bank account in ynab that have payment dates BEFORE the cc was linked into ynab.

i'm still not understanding? let's say on you started using YNAB on April 1st, and you paid your card on April 10th you owed $1000, so you paid $1000 now you add in your credit card on April 11th when you add in your card, you put in the initial balance of $1000 and set the date to April 9th now for the bank payment on the 10th, set it as a transfer to the CC. I believe you'll also have to put $1000 in the special CC category now your CC balance in YNAB will show 0 + whatever you've spent since then

1. I don't think I knew you could "set the date" when you add a card to a previous date. So I didn't do that. I added the card, in your example, on April 11. After the payment was made. 2. Do you mind sharing what you mean by "special CC category?"

when you add a CC account, if you specified the type of account as a CC, it creates a special category think about this way you have an envelope that says groceries on it, and you put in $100 you go to the store, but forget your envelope, but your good friend CC is there, and pays for you now he hands you an envelope, and says "when you get back home, just put the $100 in there, and then hand me the envelope next month"

Ok conceptually good. But in ynab do you just mean making sure I labeled the new account as a cc? Yes

not just label, but when you add an account you specify the specific type of account (bank account, CC, cash, loan, etc.)

Yup I did that. I added it as a cc account

do you see the CC category?

When I go to accounts there's a section called cash, with my checking accounts, and a section called credit, which has the credit cards so I think we're good!

in your budget, you should also see a special category for the card and when you select the payee, you choose the card, and it automatically sets that as the category