A couple questions for the YNAB experts: 1. Is there a way to link a transaction to a cash withdrawal? 2. Is there a way to start fresh from the current month without wiping out all the assignments for the current month? I.e. I'd like to remove the January budget.

Good questions! Personally, for cash, I mark the ‘payee’ as an ATM Withdrawel and then I have a few categories that are cash reliant. I.e., quarters for laundry or cash for massar sometimes. Then I assign it the appropriate category but I don’t track the whole amount of spending. Meaning, if I take out $20 for massar or Tzedakah and I don’t spend the whole $20, I still mark it as $20 in YNAB and not micro manage that. Make sense? In terms of the fresh start without wiping out the categories, I don’t think you can do that. January could have been a learning month but I believe a fresh start literally does just that.

For the fresh start, that makes sense. I guess if I really want to I can delete the January transactions. For the cash, I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying you just don't enter in a separate cash transaction and just categorize the withdrawal as whatever you spend the cash on?

Yes that’s exactly. Another example is my cleaning lady. I pay her in cash. So I take out a chunk of cash, categorise it as cleaning lady, and then pay her as needed. I don’t know if YNAB ‘cares’ about tracking cash.

OK that makes sense, thanks.

1. I'm not sure what you mean by "link". I personally have a cash account on my budget in ynab. An ATM withdrawal becomes a transfer to the cash account. When you create a transfer you automatcailly have a transaction show up in both accounts. If you have a new transaction that was imported which matches an existing transaction ant the system didn't automatically match them, select the two transaction, and select Link from the Edit menu (IIRC). 2. There is a fresh start feature that I never used so I'm not familiar with it. I think that would give you a clean slate, including the current month. When deleting transactions, you would want to make your account balance reconciles. You can either edit your starting balance or create a fake transaction in the "Ready to Apply" category name "Reconciliation Adjustment" (The Reconcile feature does this automatically if you give up on finding a missing amount during reconciliation)

I was asking for something like what Mint does - if you withdraw, say, $100 and then enter a $20 cash transaction, Mint can detect that and it keeps your outflow at $100 rather than $120

@broad-australia-98095 If you want to track the $20 you would need to set up a "Cash" account. the withdrawal transaction would be entered as a transfer to the cash account

Ok I see that makes sense, thanks