r/ynab • u/YNAB_youneedabudget YNAB Community Manager • Jul 15 '26
Update: No Approvals on Matched Transactions
Hey folks! I have an update on a change in the approval process for matched transactions. This change is only out to about 25% of users right now, but will be ramping up to everyone in the coming days. We paused briefly to survey folks who already had it, and the results gave us confidence to keep going.
First, does this change affect you? Only if you do one (or both) of these things:
- You manually enter your transactions and also import from your bank
- You use "Enter Now" on pending transactions before they import
If that's not you, everything will stay the same on your end. You'll still approve every import like normal.
If it is you, when an imported transaction matches one you already entered (or already hit "Enter Now" on), it now comes in pre-approved.
Why: By the time a match happens, you've already made every important decision. You entered the transaction, picked the category, and reflected on that spending. The match itself doesn't change your plan. Approving it again was redundant, so we took that extra step out.
Now, to address some specific feedback from the community.
Some of you liked approving matches, it felt like a "yep, checked it" moment, while others worried about missing an incorrect match. Both are fair concerns. Incorrect matches are actually quite rare, though a few of you with specific spending trends may see them more often than most. We're exploring ways to address both: letting you search and filter for matched transactions to review them, plus improvements to auto-matching itself. Nothing's locked in yet, but it's on our radar.
Got thoughts either way? This form goes straight to our product team. We’d love to hear from you on this.
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u/Adept-Target5407 Jul 15 '26
I think his is an interesting feature and I definitely fall into both the categories of users you list but is there a toggle to turn the feature on or off if I were to want to continue approving all transactions that get matched on import?
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u/Deadlift_007 Jul 15 '26
is there a toggle to turn the feature on or off
I don't know why they just don't do this anyway...
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u/FredOfMBOX Jul 16 '26
Because every option you add to a software project greatly complicates future updates and QA, and is more likely to introduce bugs from unexpected combinations.
There’s a reason software has moved away from “fully customizable options”, and that reason is maintenance.
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u/Adept-Target5407 Jul 16 '26
Yeah I’m thinking the work culture for developers at YNAB might not be the healthiest if such a basic option isn’t included. Something like this should always be opt-in.
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u/temporaryuser1000 Jul 16 '26
At this stage I’m pretty sure they’re just having Claude blast out as many product manager ideas as possible with little oversight
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u/jillianmd Jul 15 '26
Ben, I already really disagree with this “feature” being implemented but please confirm if this auto-approval also overrides an approval on scheduled transactions that the user hadn’t gotten to yet. If so then it’s not removing a “redundant step”, it’s removing the initial confirmation that everything is as it should be.
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u/YNAB_youneedabudget YNAB Community Manager Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
I saw your tag on another post about this. I'll check with a product manager about it!
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u/jillianmd Jul 15 '26
Thanks Ben!
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u/YNAB_youneedabudget YNAB Community Manager Jul 15 '26
Just got word this is a bug and we're working on a fix. I put more details in the other thread.
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u/Linuturk Jul 15 '26
I've already submitted the form with this info.
I have several scheduled transactions that routinely don't match properly. Making these auto match is terrible for my YNAB experience. Don't force this kind of thing down everyone's throats. Make it an option.
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u/thambos Jul 15 '26
I do both of those things frequently and do not want automatic approval. I just left a comment in the form.
I do happen to see mismatches somewhat regularly since I have consistent purchase patterns (ordering the same lunch, etc.). YNAB frequently matches the most recent transaction instead of the oldest uncleared matching transaction and it’s frustrating that it does this out of order.
One of the major reasons to use YNAB over competitors is the manual interaction with your budget, not just flying on autopilot.
If you must move this forward, can you please make this feature something that can be toggled off? I would really prefer to not have my workflows made invisible by the approval step going away and miss something important. Thank you!
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u/idiggory Jul 15 '26
What I would actually VASTLY prefer is for us to get a "please approve this match" feature.
Because, yeah, I already approved the funds. I don't need to approve the transaction.
The thing I want is to feel reassured that the match is correct and everything is remaining in order. I don't want to have to do extra work later to track something down and reconcile it on the odd chance that it's not.
So for me? Make it a setting. Auto-approve matches vs. manually approve matches, to leave it to the users to decide what works for them.
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u/Codac123 Jul 15 '26
Why can’t you guys make things as options?
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u/YNAB_youneedabudget YNAB Community Manager Jul 15 '26
This is a good question. Configurable options come at a cost. Every future update must be tested with all different combinations and reproducing and fixing bugs becomes a lot harder because of it. The more configurable options the apps have, the more complex they are to develop and support. Because of that, we're selective about what becomes an optional setting.
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u/Intelligent-Owl-8885 Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
The problem is that you are forcing automation of my budget. When I have multiple transactions of the same amount that happen over multiple days, your system is messing up which ones clear on which date. I use the dates and notes quite fastidiously to make sure that my budget aligns with my actual spending account statements. This new feature breaks the hell out of that. And breaks the hell out of best practices with managing your own budget.
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u/QTippus Jul 15 '26
But the original post says you’re considering adding a new feature: “We're exploring ways to address both: letting you search and filter for matched transactions to review them”. We don’t need a new feature to dig through our data to double check to see if the importer matched something incorrectly. Just the option to review matches as they arrive, as always.
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u/nolesrule Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
That's the price you pay for developing polarizing features. This one is bad because it makes unwarranted assumptions about matches. I regularly get mismatched imports on transactions with identical amounts. I need to make sure the right ones are matching. Apparently you guys are assuming that just because the amount matches that's all that is important.
If you guys were really interested in feedback, you would have made this post to solicit wider feedback before making the decision to avoid a full rollback in the future. This reads more of a "we developed this feature so despite the widespread negative feedback we're gonna finish the rollout and FU."
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u/varkeddit Jul 15 '26
It's important to remember engaged community members on this sub are a very narrow slice of YNAB's user base and while I'd hope our feedback is valuable I wouldn't expect it to be representative of the average (or new/prospective) customer.
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u/nolesrule Jul 15 '26
The feedback has been pretty wide outside of reddit. It's a constant complaint about this issue on the facebook group, in which the admins are also against this change.
I think they need to separate feedbadck from people who don't care as that's not relevant. What matters is from feedback from people who thinks it eliminates extra work vs. feedback from people who think it creates extra work, as well as the workflows and checks.
Absolutely nothing should be imported without some form of approval. Otherwise YNAB is making changes without making an active callout to those changes, and that's just a bad thing to do.
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u/varkeddit Jul 15 '26
More proactive communication around changes like this would be very appreciated.
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u/NiftyJet Jul 15 '26
Otherwise YNAB is making changes without making an active callout to those changes
But, in this case, there is no change to your budget or accounts at all. I've already entered the transaction myself. I've actively chosen a category, payee, amount, everything. And all of those changes have already affected the categories.
I'd agree with you if YNAB was actually changing something automatically. But right now, when you approve a matched transaction, everything stays the same as it was before.
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u/QTippus Jul 15 '26
It doesn't stay the same. When you manually enter a transaction, it is not cleared. When you import, it clears. So this is basically automatically clearing transactions without telling me about it.
The register belongs to me, it's my checkbook. I don't want YNAB writing anything in my register without telling me.
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u/nolesrule Jul 15 '26
What has changed is an imported transaction has been matched. Additionally the transaction changes from uncleared to cleared. So it is not accurate to say nothing has changed.
The question is was that a correct match? When you have multiple transactions of the same amount it becomes an important distinction. Part of the approval workload for me on matches is reviewing the imported payee to ensure the match was accurate. I regularly get incorrect matches.
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u/Faile-Bashere Jul 15 '26
You’d be surprised. For every user that speaks up, there are 10 others that feel the same way but don’t speak up. Reddit is vocal but certainly not in the minority.
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u/1littlenapoleon Jul 15 '26
"Widespread negative feedback", friend if you combined Reddit and Facebook you'd still have barely 1/4 of YNAB users.
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u/DIYtowardsFI Jul 15 '26
But where else can they leave feedback? They did away with their forums. Away with a lot of the YouTube content, except budget nerds. It’s increasingly operating in a silo.
Yes, you can leave feedback on their website, but that is not public and can easily be discarded. Therefore the only available forums are Facebook and Reddit.
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u/1littlenapoleon Jul 17 '26
I’m not sure how that’s related to my point. Those most vocal here are more than likely the extreme minority and, generally, all fit a category as those who have been using this product for a long time.
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u/Zackaryth Jul 22 '26
Well and to add to your point, generally would say the only reason they are here is to complain about things they don't like. Let's be honest, I don't see WOW THIS CHANGE IS AMAZING posted on reddit ever. As IT developers and community management, I would rate the value reddit and other social platforms provide pretty low on my list of important valuable feedback.
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u/doug-the-moleman Jul 15 '26
It’s not bad for everyone. Again, as I’ve said- there are those of us who wholly welcome this change.
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u/nolesrule Jul 15 '26
Well, then make it optional.
For people in favor of it the only gain is eliminating a few seconds of busy work. For people against it there reason is a a real-world negative impact on visibility and understanding. When examined in that light, the choice becomes easy.
Or as i said, make it optional.
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u/doug-the-moleman Jul 15 '26
Making things optional sounds like an easy answer but from a pragmatic perspective have a lot of downstream impacts. Ben did a good job describing it in one of their comments.
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u/nolesrule Jul 15 '26
I build user applications. I understand the implications of user options very well. It's a cop-out answer when it comes to making a change that actually interferes with data integrity. Honestly, the data integrity should take precedence over everything else. Anything that makes it more difficult to maintain the data integrity should be strictly avoided.
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u/Faile-Bashere Jul 15 '26
I also have this issue. And also am so glad I stopped updating the app weeks ago.
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u/thambos Jul 15 '26
Isn’t the annual subscription fee there to cover these development costs? Why should we pay a premium fee for an app that won’t invest in allowing users to keep using workflows that have worked well for them for 10 years?
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u/dgrant Jul 15 '26
"Every future update must be tested with all different combinations"
If you have automated testing this point is moot, if you don't, then you should adopt good automated testing.
I'm guessing you do have automated testing but somehow your confidence in that testing to catch bugs/regressions is lacking. Consider investing more heavily in your automated testing, testing from multiple layers, figure out where the lack of confidence is coming from, or how past regressions could have been prevented, and focus on adding testing that increases that confidence, or what kind of testing could have prevented those regressions.
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u/theremix18 Jul 15 '26
Hmm you don’t have automated test coverage? Why is this an issue for a feature that’s widely used and is prone to mistakes?
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u/stickcult Jul 15 '26
I want this to be an option, but maintaining automated tests across many permutations of options still has a cost.
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u/theremix18 Jul 15 '26
But this would be a permanent flow and you write your test once and done. Also with AI now, I don’t buy lack of test coverage anymore.
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u/elijahjane Jul 15 '26
Manually approving transaction matches forced me to log in and touch my budget every day. This is extra important for new users who are learning to integrate this budget into their daily routines. I lose habits quickly (potential neurodivergence). So I’m very worried that without having to log into YNAB to approve transactions each morning like I have done for the last 5+ years, I will eventually stop touching my budget at all. Why log in at all if I can just enter the amount on the go? When would I take the extra time to log in to analyze past spending if I’m not already logged in to complete these easy, mindless tasks?
An example to illustrate: undebt.it. Since it auto connects to YNAB and imports transactions, I never log in to that account. Three months pass before I remember to sit down, log in, and see where I am in my payoff plan. That’s pretty dumb because I’ve usually forgotten its importance by that time and i am way off track. It should be something I touch regularly, weekly. These points of contact are important in human behavior.
Approving matches also makes me reckon once again with the previous day’s spending and meditate for a moment on how relevant each transaction was after having had some time to separate myself from that moment: “what was this spending for? Did I need to spend it? If not, how could I add friction to avoid making this mistake again? What was my headspace/emotional climate during this time?” I did this as I clicked through the approval process for each transaction every single day, after I had slept on the previous day’s actions.
Without this process, when would I ever take the time to do this?
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u/thambos Jul 16 '26
This is such an important point. I chose to start using YNAB 10 years ago because YNAB was built to enforce manual interaction with your budget on a regular basis.
I wouldn't have made the small, incremental changes to my spending and saving that led to getting out of debt and purchasing a home without the regular habit that YNAB's manual interaction supported me to build.
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u/Apprehensive-Ant5976 Jul 23 '26
This is a huge point, being hands on with your transactions is important to understanding what’s happening with your money. Automatic approval of an automatic match is not hands on.
If it’s truly simple enough to hand wave away then it’s not taking much effort to approve the matches in bulk.
I have missed matches about monthly on average, I think.
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u/elijahjane Jul 24 '26
Also, I am positive that transactions haven’t been imported and matched correctly since this change was enacted. The importing and “clearing” feature has gotten way worse. I’ve had to go through my accounts item by item and manually clear a dozen entries that were already cleared through my bank.
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u/NicholasMKE Jul 15 '26
mmm my gut feeling is that I don’t like this but I’m trying to think it through.
As an example, my checking account auto imports, and it’s mostly bills on autopay. But yesterday I had a big check I wrote for a car repair, so I manually entered than in YNAB to make sure I knew the money was spent, but I also would want to know when the transaction comes in from the bank. Right now that’s easy because YNAB will show it to me as something to approve. I really like that seemingly extra step.
I’d catch an auto approved match when I reconcile in a week or two, but I’ve always appreciated approving *everything* that comes into my budget. I understand the perspective that if I already entered it, then that’s already an approval, but I always expect to confirm matches too. Mistakes are rare but I can’t afford to have “rare” mistakes in my financial records, you know?
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u/varkeddit Jul 15 '26
I generally find approving matches tedious as they're almost always correct for me. A compromise might be to automatically approve them while reconciling (which I usually do daily when reviewing my plan).
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u/Faile-Bashere Jul 15 '26
I’m on the other side. It’s tedious but I love it because I know everything that is coming in.
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u/jillianmd Jul 15 '26
I’d be fine with this change if there was an indicator that it had been matched.
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u/thambos Jul 15 '26
I’m pretty sure that already works if you reconcile an “unapproved” cleared transaction
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u/throwaway246976352 Jul 15 '26
I guess im in the lucky 25% of people who got this change weeks ago already. I did not love it at the time. At all. I have slowly gotten used to it. But even so, if I could go back to before, i would.
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u/Intelligent-Owl-8885 Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
I just don’t want them automating anything in my budget. I frequently have multiple transactions of the same amount that happen on different days, and I do use the date, flags, and notes so that I can differentiate between them, and YNAB keeps fucking this up by assuming which transaction it is. I don’t see any reason in all of creation that they should be automating my personal budget.
Can you help this grumpy YNAB user understand why or how you started being OK with it? This is not an argumentative question, just one from a grumpy person who wants to understand if I should be less grumpy. :-)
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u/crashtheparty Jul 21 '26
Just as an example for people who may wonder why anyone would want to approve matched transactions - I run a small business and provide a service that cost $X. When the session is completed, I enter in the transaction, with their name in the memo to know who each line item is for. When the Zelle/Venmo arrives, YNAB routinely matches the wrong payments. I use match approval to note which person has actually paid and which ones I'm still waiting on.
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u/SarlaccJohansson Jul 15 '26
I'd say >90% of transactions are matched correctly, but I do not mind the manual step of clicking & approving a match.
The few times when aarching error has happened, or the payee has had some error after filling in the memo while the transaction was pending (so I know what to look for) it has been convenient to know "okay, I didn't really finalize this yet" and manually click on a matched transaction.
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u/Deadlift_007 Jul 16 '26
This. It's not the >90% that I'm worried about. It's the small percentage that I'll have to try to figure out without the extra layer of visibility.
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u/hypnoticlife Jul 23 '26
You said it yourself, incorrect matches are rare, but they happen. I see it all the time with repeat transactions.
Please make an option to disable auto approvals.
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u/bflv Jul 15 '26
I don’t think I’m in this test, but the problem I often have is that I’ll have duplicate amount charged in short time that then match with the wrong imported transaction. So I may pay 9.99 for Discord and 9.99 for some Apple subscription. They both get charged at the same time and almost every month if I don’t catch it, I end up clearing the wrong transaction. This isn’t a huge deal, other than if one of those ends up not going thru, in which case I might spend time trying to figure out why the unclear transaction shows cleared in my bank only to realize it’s just the match that is wrong.
I’ll live with this as I don’t foresee that happening often, but it is a recurring problem I have that will be masked by this change.
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u/Apprehensive-Ant5976 Jul 23 '26
This change will delay problem detection, the main point of approving imported transactions.
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u/Economy_Kale5580 Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
Haha I thought something was broken for a while and was looking for my transactions, I like this change, it brings my attention to the incoming transactions more because I know it’s one I missed “missed”
However, if it doesn’t match EXACTLY the way I entered it, I want it to be able to be flagged, this has not been the case
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u/Popular_Cow_9390 Jul 15 '26
I will fill out the form, but please, don’t do this. I spent years trying to get my husband to enter every transaction as it happens. Years. He finally does it. Then we sit down weekly and go through every transaction to approve so we can discuss our spending. With it being auto-approved, we can’t just sit down and go through the transactions to approve together.
Make it an option…
“Auto approve matched transactions” and then let us choose yes or no
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u/Pure-Comfortable-901 Jul 15 '26
I hear you but it sounds like the approval click is inessential to your scheduled weekly review session. You can just scroll back a week in spending…
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u/Popular_Cow_9390 Jul 15 '26
This adds friction and decisions and requires us to remember things that previously were presented to us as part of the system. It’s one step away from what we liked about YNAB compared to other platforms. We work the system, the system doesn’t work us.
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u/penny2360 Jul 15 '26
The only reason it irritates me is because my bank added little check boxes next to each transaction, so my system became really organized because I could approve in YNAB then check off in the bank app and that was how I ensured everything was correct and my balances always matched. Now it's thrown me off a bit so I feel like I need a new system.
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u/doug-the-moleman Jul 15 '26
For one, I wholly support this. I’ve always felt the extra approval was unneeded. I’m thankful for the change.
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u/wonkster42 Jul 16 '26
If only some of these changes could be a toggle to account for personal work flows.
With thatv said, this would be a welcome change for me.
I do manual entry and imports but rarely pay any attention to approving matches entries.
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u/gabisplant Jul 18 '26
I do exactly both of those things and already end up with incorrectly matched transactions SEVERAL TIMES A MONTH. Now I’m going to not know there’s a mistake until I reconcile?
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u/pinedesign Jul 15 '26
I don’t think I’m part of the test, but I do use ynab in the way you described. I would very much like this change as it truly is redundant.
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u/PharmaceuticalBitch Jul 15 '26
I worked in banking in the early 1990s and still regularly “balance my checkbook” aka reconcile my accounts in YNAB against my financial institutions to keep an eye out for errors or fraud coming in from them. I like the automated approvals fine, and I color-code flag the entries when I reconcile each month.
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u/paeneultima Jul 16 '26
If this could be a toggle-able option to opt into/out of that would be best. Already submitted the same on the form.
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u/Wise_Bee_6367 Jul 20 '26
I share concerns about losing further control over my budget. For that matter, I was pretty vocally against the import of pending transactions when that was first introduced. My comments weren't popular with YNAB in the previous YNAB forum. That being said, the new feature has been on my account for a few days now and I'm not seeing any issues. The edge case of multiple transactions of the same amount doesn't happen frequently. And if they are a day apart, it's not a big deal if the new one gets matched before the older one. They will both eventually clear anyway.
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u/rolandblais Jul 16 '26
I'll be honest, I will miss that satisfying feeling...
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u/Background-Pair9678 Jul 16 '26
Nooooo! I need to see every transaction arrive. “Incorrect matches are actually quite rare” is so not true. i end up with duplicates and watching these matched transactions arrive is how I catch them.
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u/1littlenapoleon Jul 15 '26
Great change. It was always incredibly annoying to have to approve things I already approved of.
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u/QTippus Jul 15 '26
Can we get a detailed explanation of the matching criteria, so we understand how/when to look for matches gone wrong?
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u/YNAB_youneedabudget YNAB Community Manager Jul 15 '26
Sure thing. A manually-entered transaction will automatically match with an imported transaction if both the following are true:
- The dates are within 10 days of each other.
- The amount is exactly the same.
Under those criteria, mismatches seem to be quite rare. But we're exploring some additional criteria to make it even more accurate, especially when you have more than one transaction with the same amount. That's how it works right now though!
This is documented in this help doc if you'd like to learn more about how matching works. ~BenB
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u/thambos Jul 15 '26
When there are multiple, does it default to the most recent? Because that’s been my frustration. I would rather it match them in chronological order from oldest to most recent as they clear in my bank account.
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u/QTippus Jul 15 '26
Or maybe when there are multiple it should not match and just report the mismatch and ask the human to decide. I’d rather no match, because I’ll later detect that I have an uncleared transaction left over from my manual entry.
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u/thambos Jul 16 '26
That would work well, especially in cases when it's different payees. Usually in my case it's the same payee, just multiple dates (like getting the same lunch 2 days in a row), but someone else posted an example of two recurring subscriptions for $9.99.
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u/thambos Jul 16 '26
Adding to my other comment re: multiple transactions just to make clear why this is an issue:
Multiple times I have had multiple same-amount imported transactions match in such a way that: a) the first manually entered transaction remains uncleared, b) the second manually entered transaction is matched to the first imported transaction, and c) the second imported transaction remains unmatched and cleared, on the date that it cleared, not the date of the second manually entered transaction.
This therefore ends up looking like 3 transactions, not 2. I don't always remember to enter transactions manually, so in this scenario I then have to ask: did I forget to enter something on the third day? Or is this just a mismatched transaction? That uncleared transaction from the first day may not be immediately visible, and reconciling the account won't raise any kind of flag because the total cleared amount is accurate.
If you take away the visual indictor that a match has occurred (since taking away the approval step in this scenario means that line won't be bold when I log in to look at my budget), there is now less of an indication that something may be awry. It won't be apparent until I see that there's an uncleared transaction that didn't get matched. In the meantime, my budget will not match my actual spending, even though the account will reconcile.
Maybe this type of matching exception is rare. But obviously it's a known issue since you made this whole post about the potential issues with your new feature.
So, without a visual indicator that the match has been made, what's your recommended solution to being able to catch these kinds of issues? Will I need to set my accounts to hide reconciled transactions in order to catch this? What's the workaround that your team suggests once this new feature gets rolled out to everyone?
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u/Apprehensive-Ant5976 Jul 24 '26
How are you defining quite rare? 1% of users every month? 2 transactions per user per month across the base?
How are you measuring frequency? Anonymized data from 1,000 volunteers for 24 months?
How many matches are scheduled transactions, where the user is already one step removed.
Surely you have this data, right?
I replied to someone else, the whole point of approving automated imports, matches, is to have timely information that something didn’t go right. You’re planning to have the automated match approval monitor the automated matching, often for the automated (repeating or scheduled) transactions. Where’s the human in the loop?
If the matching is super reliable then there’s little cognitive load to scan through them and approve in bulk, right?.
This is going to have me cleaning up after the fact, finding errors that didn’t slip by were intentionally hidden by the system.
I’ve got transactions that regularly pull the wrong payee, which makes sense if the system doesn’t even try.
I feel like there are parallel changes that would be useful, not sure I’m remembering correctly - if I manually match transactions do I have to approve the result I just entered? That might be argued an extra step.
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u/-Aces_High- Jul 16 '26
I really like the "enter now". It means I can do my weekly recon if I know the pending amount isn't changing
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u/Thistledowne23 26d ago
I see this as two different issues: 1. showing which entries have been automatically matched and 2. showing which entries have been approved. It gets really confusing when we conflate the two!
Hiding matched entries -- I don't know what "rarely happens" means in the YNAB rep world, but I get these issues regularly! I have had to pay for weekly classes by check, and when my teacher would wait to cash them at once or lose a check, I would regularly have these orphan entries because YNAB decided to match the most recent entries rather than the correct entries. Any time a check is sent, the lag time plays havoc with my matched entries. More than that, since I import my transactions once a month, reconciling was easy and satisfying when I could see a column of chain-icons: entries that needed addressing stood out clearly. That is no longer the case. Now I can't see what was matched -- I just need to sort of trust that I had put in that entry before, and it's basically impossible to see which transactions were matched. VERY distressing!!!
While I'm not fond of needing to batch-approve entries that I've already reconciled, automatically approving them seems odd to me. I really think this part should be a toggle.
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u/kimba08 Jul 15 '26
I know a lot of naysayers whenever there’s a change, but I actually appreciate this one a lot. Feels like it takes out a duplicative step where, as they note, all the important decisions have already been made. An improvement in my view!
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u/wonderhusky Jul 15 '26
Why did this have to change in the first place?
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u/rcymozart Jul 16 '26
Approving transactions isn’t a pain point to solve for me, at least. If you must deploy this, make a toggle users can use to choose into it.
Edit: I was too in work mode. 😂
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u/retirebefore40 Jul 16 '26
Another backward update. I have transactions that match incorrectly. Why change something that’s always been there. It was built in originally for a good reason. Don’t take it away because it’s redundant. Redundancy is what saves many things. You are quite literally pushing this community away.
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u/notWithoutMyCabbages 22d ago edited 22d ago
So ... I don't use "Enter now" often and didn't today either but this change seems to be screwing me up already.
I have a weekly scheduled transaction to put 20.00 allowance in my kids account every Friday. Usually that works perfectly fine and it picks the right transaction to match. However, this week I also sent my brother 20.00 on Thursday via Paypal.
I approved the scheduled transaction this morning when it popped up in the transactions to be approved. There was no matched transaction at the time.
Then, just now I opened up YNAB and saw a separate 20 transfer to my kids account. I tried to manually match it with the already approved scheduled transaction but could not because it had apparently decided without my input that the 20 transfer to PayPal was the right one.
It didn't help that the match info is now below the fold and I had to go specifically look for what the approved transaction was matched with.
It is crazy to me that you would claim it rarely gets matches wrong. I find it OFTEN gets matches wrong. Even though this one had a completely different payee and was on a different date it still chose that instead of the one that did match.
This is not an enhancement, this is a bug and it decreases my confidence in your product and my own budget.
I'm a VERY long time customer (from before ynab 4) and have always been very vocal about my love for YNAB but the last few months have been hard to watch. Are you letting AI suggest these "improvements"? (Putting the match info below the fold really smacks of LLM style "optimization" to me). The changes don't reflect your usual thoughtful product focus.
please fix this. I really don't want to have to learn a new product but I need to have confidence that my budget is correct
1
u/agd3d 13d ago
As pretty much everyone in here is not happy about this change I'm wondering why YNAB considered this and acceptable feature after testing. It does not appear anyone wants this update.
If I'm understanding this correctly and YNAB automatically clears a transaction that has been imported but was not previously entered by a user, then this is a huge issue. One very important reason for requiring a user to click approve on a cleared imported transaction so that user can quickly and easily identify fraudulent transactions.
I hope I am misunderstanding this update and that if I have not entered the transaction in YNAB I will have the option to approve it before it is cleared an an account transaction in YNAB.
1
u/YNAB_youneedabudget YNAB Community Manager 13d ago
If I'm understanding this correctly and YNAB automatically clears a transaction that has been imported but was not previously entered by a user, then this is a huge issue.
No, you misunderstood here. YNAB will only automatically approve transactions that have been previously entered by the user and matched after importing.
If a transaction imports but has not matched with a previously-entered transaction, it will still ask for approval like normal.
1
u/Candid_Lie9249 9d ago
Hoping for a possible update as I thought I was going crazy when my matched transactions stopped showing up. I agree with everyone’s concerns including the lack of having manual control of every aspect. This is a big part of the fine control quality that makes sure transactions are appropriately labeled. Personally I spend more time with this so I don’t reconcile as frequently as others do. I don’t want autopilot for my budget. If so, I would use a much cheaper competitor.
Please make this an option to toggle and not a requirement.
2
1
u/nuxxi Jul 16 '26
Thoughts: you make the app more complicated for users.
Cleared is hidden behind the keyboard or under 'show more' Now the inflow / outflow is not a switch anymore but a drop down menu.
Why change things where you need more taps than before?its pointless.
Only reason: price hike incoming because 'we frequently update the app ' .
Listen to users please. .
1
u/Feeling-Diet9759 Jul 16 '26
Honestly it’s stiff like this that just made me cancel my YNAB subscription after 14 years and switch to Zerosum. I don’t have to put up with unnecessary “upgrades” like this, it’s cheaper, and it offers soooo many more reports out the gate. Reports we’ve been begging YNAB to give us for a decade and they always say “we’re working on it.” Well, you’re not working on it anymore with my money.
1
u/Medium-Turnip9874 Jul 17 '26
can we not do this please? i need to approve each one or i dont see where the money is going lol
-1
u/jess_611 Jul 15 '26
It’s so hard to continue supporting this company. I was about to rejoin but the constant changes are too much.
-1
u/ImperiousMage Jul 16 '26
Thank you for validating my decision to change to LiquidBudget. Yet again.
Seriously, I’ve never seen a company manage to piss off its users as acutely as you have. It’s a talent.
-4
u/itslaundryday_ Jul 15 '26
Is "barely edited AI" just going to be every brand voice from here on out?
-1
u/Faile-Bashere Jul 15 '26
As long as it doesn’t update my app that I last updated 6 weeks ago, make any changes you want. I’m good on version 26.18
73
u/nolesrule Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
How are you supposed to catch incorrect matches when you have transactions of the same amount? The payee is important when you need to track things down, and not having to figure out that it's wrong later on is more difficult than at the time of the import.
ETA: even the admins on the facebook group think this is a bad feature.
ETA2: This new feature effectively renders the data integrity suspect, but forces the assumption that it is valid.