Reimbursements in YNAB (Work, Roommates, Friends, + more)

A step-by-step guide to show you exactly how to handle reimbursements in YNAB. Whether you get reimbursements from work, your roommates, your friends, or your family, this video will show you how to set it up with YNAB.
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To understand reimbursements in YNAB, you need to understand the three foundational concepts.
1) Create a category group for reimbursements and a new reimbursement category for each type.
2) Learn how to do "split" transactions so that you can categorize spending to different places.
3) Remember to always budget the inflow from a reimbursement directly to the reimbursement category and not as "inflow to be budgeted."
Once you have these three steps down, you'll be able to handle just about any reimbursement situation in YNAB.
Quick Jump Sections
0:55 The three pillars that make the foundation for reimbursements
2:51 Reimbursements with friends
5:27 Reimbursements with a group of friends
7:45 Reimbursements on vacation with friends or family
11:06 Reimbursements for work
13:40 Reimbursements with your roommates
22:00 Frequently asked questions about reimbursements
22:10 Should you cover the spending for your reimbursements or just let it be overspending?
23:56 What to do if you don't get reimbursed until the next month
25:55 What to do if someone reimburses you with cash
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[@mappedoutmoney]

YNAB Getting Started Beginner's Checklist: mappedoutmoney.com/ynab-beginners-checklist/ Quick Jump Sections 0:55 The three pillars that make the foundation for reimbursements 2:51 Reimbursements with friends 5:27 Reimbursements with a group of friends 7:45 Reimbursements on vacation with friends or family 11:06 Reimbursements for work 13:40 Reimbursements with your roommates 22:00 Frequently asked questions about reimbursements 22:10 Should you cover the spending for your reimbursements or just let it be overspending? 23:56 What to do if you don't get reimbursed until the next month 25:55 What to do if someone reimburses you with cash

[@oganotluibov]

Thank you for the time stamps!!!

[@rmindek23]

I hope you’re getting paid by YNAB. Lol. Your explanations and videos are awesome! Thank you!!

[@mappedoutmoney]

haha, I do get some kick back if people use my link! Plus some folks hire me for 1:1, so the videos all help to feed the business :) I really appreciate the encouragement Rachel. I'm so glad that you've found them helpful!

[@rmindek23]

Nick True - MappedOutMoney that’s great, because you deserve it! Your videos have helped me start a budget and stick with it. I feel less stressed and in control. Thank you again for your well explained videos!

[@mappedoutmoney]

@@rmindek23 That's wonderful Rachel! I so appreciate you saying that. It means a ton to hear when folks reach out and talk about how they've helped. Good luck YNABing! I'm excited to hear that budgeting is finally working for you :)

[@aleehal.7995]

Amen!

[@PidasianHippie]

Nick the more that you explain how YNAB works, the more impressed I am with this program. These splits and reimbursements seem to be where other programs are lacking. Thank you for this explanation.

[@mappedoutmoney]

Thanks! I'm glad they've been interesting and helpful for you. YNAB is definitely powerful and one of the reasons we've stuck with it. YNAB just handles so many real-world scenarios very easily. Thanks for watching :)

[@msthlm]

A couple of details are VERY confusing. The two most confusing are: * The room mate buying stuff gets added as an inflow to the checking account. Therefore making the balance of the checking account mismatch. * Month crossings. Suddenly the other peoples debt to you disappears, and you have to move budget money back and forth to make it "work". Hence you can't really use the categories to easy se what you are owed. I'm thinking of instead using some sort of account, but haven't followed through since I need to take in other comments suggesting something similar to see if they are a solution for me.

[@sherryhendrix537]

I have watched this video several times and the first point you make is what I am having trouble with. How do you “reconcile” a “pretend” inflow that makes your roommates balance go down but in the process makes your checking balance go up???

[@koopher]

I’ve been handling my reimbursements this way since I first watched this video. My issue is if you don’t get paid by the end of the month, the reimbursement is zeroed out.

[@danjenicavankesteren4777]

That’s what’s keeping me from switching from YNAB4. I use YNAB to track what our kids owe us for purchases I pay for and credit card purchases we make for our small business. These amounts usually carry over into the following month and I think I will find it confusing if the amounts reset to zero every month instead of the negative balance being carried forward.

[@ninjajoe0513]

While it isn't really intuitive, I think I can explain why YNAB works that way and how to work around it. Overspending is zeroed out at the beginning of a new month by drawing from To Be Budgeted (TBB). The overspending from all categories in the previous month is totaled up and recorded right next to the TBB in the line "-$X.XX overspent in ____". The first paycheck you enter for the new month would have this overspending taken right off the top. It's intended as a fail-safe to keep your budget accurate, but certainly annoying in this case. One way to avoid this is to cover the reimbursement spending with your own money as Nick talks about at 22:10. When you do get paid back in the new month, that money will become available in the reimbursements category and you can move it elsewhere. If you know that you're going to be paid back and you just want that amount to roll over, one option is to budget a negative amount (sounds stupid if you've never done it, but it works). Look at the reimbursement category for the month that just ended. Say, for example, it's overspent by $50. Add $50 to the budgeted column to zero out the available column. In the current month, budget a negative amount in the reimbursement category to offset this (so in my example, I would budget -$50). This will effectively let the overspending roll over into the current month. When you get paid back, you'll direct those funds into the reimbursements category as normal, it'll zero out and all is well. This should work across multiple months if needed as well, by just changing which month that negative budget amount takes place in.

[@kiva822]

@@ninjajoe0513 holy crap, that might work. My wife gets reimbursed from work about quarterly. Does it still work if you paid for the work expense with your own CC? I would think the $ won't get put in your CC payment category...

[@skythomas7008]

YAY now I totally understand what I was doing wrong with this that was messing up my budget. I pay for all but $40 of my mom's cell phone and it was always making my budget go all wonky no matter what I did with it. So now after watching this video I know how to do it so that it makes sense in my budget. Thank you very much for making your videos they are very helpful. I've learned a great deal about YNAB since finding your videos! I love this system it works very well for someone like me who is on a tight low income such as disability. Thanks again please keep making videos teaching how to do things in a way that makes it easy to follow.

[@mappedoutmoney]

Will do! So glad to hear that the videos have been helpful for you. I really appreciate the comment! It means a lot to hear when it works :)

[@kreativ1987]

@@mappedoutmoney Is there a way we can assign a category like Groceries or Utility Bills when a roommate pays on your behalf.? Instead of assigning the reimbursement category ?

[@ieatdurian]

Great video! I learned of different ways to deal with this! I wanted to add more to the conversation. I often split bills with my sister, and she usually is the one that pays first, and I reimburse her later. However, creating a budget category for "Sister Reimbursement" doesn't let me categorize my transactions properly. In order to deal with this, I have created an Unlinked Account "Credit Card" called "Sister" and I treat the bills she pays as if it was charged on a credit card. When I pay her back, it's just like a credit card payment. When I do cover her half of the bill, I split the transaction like you do, but instead of categorizing it in a "Sister Reimbursement" budget category, it's an account transfer from "Cash" or "Chequing Account" towards the "Sister Credit Card".

[@thisizzmylittlelife]

OK, I'm still struggling with this one so I'm hoping you can help me out, but if when you cover her half of the bill, it's an account transfer to the 'credit card', does that mean you're splitting up the transaction. i.e. You spent 100 at dinner which was paid to the restaurant, but when you log it, you log it as 50 to the restaurant and then 50 to your 'sister credit' card. Does that get confusing when reconciling? Or am I visualising what you're suggesting wrong?

[@simrandhaliwal7547]

I was a YNAB4 holdout until last week because of the missing red arrow right functionality for work reimbursements. Your videos have been immensely helpful in making the transition to nYNAB. Thank you!

[@mappedoutmoney]

Hey thanks Simran! Super glad to hear that the videos have been helpful for you. Thanks for taking the time to comment!

[@brendan31415]

I have a solution for red arrow that I use, because I have about 70 business reimbursements a month (across four different businesses), plus lending friends money. support.youneedabudget.com/t/x2h80av/right-red-arrow-for-reimbursements

[@simrandhaliwal7547]

@@brendan31415 Nice! I just decided to create an Expense/Reimburse category and keep a large floating amount in there to cover work expenses.

[@sherryhendrix537]

Hey Nick, thanks for all the info. My question is… if you’re adding a “pretend” inflow to make your roommates bal go down.. how do I reconcile the checking account balance that goes up?

[@saberei71]

This video is perfect timing for me. We've had a lot of emergency travel in Feb/Mar and my credit card (aka Family credit card) did the work. This will greatly help all the reimbursements. Thank you.

[@mappedoutmoney]

Awesome Stacie! So glad the video came at a good time :) I appreciate the comment!!

[@micheleweber7297]

You are an incredible teacher. I hope more people discover your channel!

[@mappedoutmoney]

Thanks Michele! I really appreciate that :) So glad that the videos have been clear and helpful!

[@karensalley7360]

Hey Nick, thanks for explaining all of this so simply. I do have a question though. How do you handle it if a payment went on your credit card that wasn't supposed to in one month and the company refunds that money in the next month? When the month rolls over, any overspending on credit cards disappears so posting the refund now makes it seem that I have extra money that is actually on my card. How do I reconcile that?

[@UncarvedBlock]

Hi Nick, thanks for all the helpful tips. This one particularly has been a huge help for making our YNAB lifestyle stick. Do you have any tips for handling how reimbursements roll over at the end of the month? i.e. When we pay for our friends in April and they pay us back in May? Thanks for the help!

[@robwiddick]

He covered this towards the end of the video, however, this assumes you left your "to be budgeted" with a balance. I think there's a flaw in this demonstration because one of the core concepts of YNAB, from my understanding, is to assign every dollar a job. "to be budgeted" should always be $0 -- essentially, when money comes in, it should be put to work. With this in mind, it causes a problem because if February had $0 to be budgeted, but you're in March with a $500 to be budgeted balance, February will deduct from March, and then cause issues elsewhere. I know this because I've been doing this for a couple of years and YNAB has told me to cut it out... but I've essentially gotten used to seeing negative "to be budgeted" balances on previous months because of how I have reimbursements rolling over to next months... It's wicked annoying. This year around, I'm trying the Asset tracking account because money owed to me is an "asset" (kind of)... and so I just log inflow/outflow as expenses or reimbursements occur. When I get reimbursed, I do a transfer from the asset account to wherever the reimbursement occurred. So if someone venmo's me and it lands in my checking, I'll just change the transaction to be a transfer from the asset account so that it deducts the balance from the reimbursement asset account and I can track that way. Anyways, not sure if this helps... but I've also struggled with rolling over reimbursements and I don't think this presentation towards the end reflects real-life scenario with how you're supposed to budget in YNAB with a $0-based budgeting.

[@cynthiacoc6400]

I am so excited to start over setting up YNAB because of your explanations. I bought the ago since over 3 years ago and just have it on my computer doing nothing.

[@notnotnever]

Wow! Very thorough without becoming confusing, fantastic teaching & great production. It really shows the preparation you must have put in to make such a clear lesson. Thank you and hats off!

[@mappedoutmoney]

Thanks Michelle! I really appreciate you commenting to let me know that it's been helpful! :) I love making these videos and it's great to know that they're really helping people. So thanks for stopping by and taking time to comment!

[@arlenedodson1914]

Loved this, thank you. Have always struggled with paying and then getting reimbursed. I NEVER liked to see yellow or red on my budget, but this helped me to be okay with it. Thanks!

[@mappedoutmoney]

No problem Arlene! So glad this helped

[@christinekonidis9739]

When you pay your roommate for groceries he/she bought and you charge it to Roommate Reimbursement, doesn't that mean you're not getting a true report of money spent you spent on groceries?

[@mappedoutmoney]

Yes. That’s exactly right. Which is why I personally like to either be the one buying it all and have them reimburse me or to just not split things and keep it separate. I personally kept everything separate when I was in college and had roommates. But that’s sort of the pros and cons. Some people don’t mind that the reports are a little off, but it’s ultimately up to you :)

[@christinekonidis9739]

Thanks. I think your posts are great although your enthusiasm does cause them to be a little fast, which may be a problem for anyone who hasn't actually used YNAB before. Look forward to more posts.@@mappedoutmoney

[@MrMajoJA]

I was gonna ask this but I guess nothing is perfect. I’ll just do what he says in his comment above

[@MichelleMidori]

I've come back to this video a few times for a refresher! So informative - thank you for putting out great YNAB videos!

[@VictorMartinez-zf6dt]

I use this approach with my partner, whom I share some of my credit cards with. Tho I tweak it sometimes to account for them paying the card directly. The way to handle this is to categorize their cc payment to their reimbursement category, but this will create an excess payment in the credit card payment available, just take that excess and move it over to ready to assign or whatever category you need it in.

[@eleanort2149]

Thanks for the info Nick. Much easier way to track using YNAB than how I was trying to do it, makes way more sense too ! Thanks again for all your great videos!

[@mappedoutmoney]

haha, glad this is going to be helpful for you Eleanor :) I think it's more helpful too.

[@donnievick6770]

Very helpful. Reimbursements have been frustrating for me, but this should help. Thanks!

[@mappedoutmoney]

Thanks Donnie! So glad that the vide helped.

[@jslee102]

I liked this better in YNAB 4 when I could just carry a category over in negative month to month. Obviously wouldn't work with the way they handle those credit card payments

[@mappedoutmoney]

haha, I totally understand that. Reimbursements are definitely tricky on the web-based version of YNAB for sure.

[@debbieh1501]

Just started with YNAB and have been obsessively watching your videos! Thanks!

[@josephbaumann292]

Another great YNAB video. What a wealth of information you provide.

[@mappedoutmoney]

Awesome buddy! So glad you’re finding the videos valuable. I really appreciate you watching :)

[@paulclayvideos]

Thank you so much for these tutorials. I think your clever solutions to the reimbursements reveal just how much they are missing core features here. I'm in my trial month, and I like they way it makes me think about finance in/outs, but a lack of first-class reimbursement tracking (especially across months) is making me hesitate from signing up. I'm going to give your workarounds a go and see if it works out.

[@mappedoutmoney]

Totally understand the hesitation Paul, especially if you have a lot of reimbursements. Reach out if there's ever anything I can do to help! nick

[@spork1125]

Very much agree.

[@jmercede]

Dude. Did you make this after my questions??!! Exactly what I was asking you!!

[@mappedoutmoney]

haha just a fun coincidence! :) I did base some of the video on our conversation a few weeks back, so it all helps and I appreciate being able to chat about your reimbursements. It helped this video a lot :)

[@littlejewel97]

Hey Nick. Love the videos, but I have a question. Around minute 17:00 you are talking about 'pretending" to create a transaction and receiving $50 from the roommate to reduce what they owe since they bought something, but you are showing the example in a checking account. Isn't that going to mess you up when you reconcile with your bank if the actual transaction does not exist? Or am I just over analyzing and maybe the example should have been done in the cash category. What am I missing?

[@thejimmyzhu93]

Keep up the good work - your videos are clear and super helpful! Thanks!

[@mappedoutmoney]

Thanks James! So glad to hear that the videos are helpful for you man! Thanks for taking the time to comment and let me know.

[@juliestone2789]

Thank-you so much for this!! I often have to buy supplies for work and use my debit but get reimbursed in cash. I always just transferred money from my checking to cash account but there was no real record of it. I also split bills with friends quite often and never know what to do about that. I never thought to do a reimbursement category....that's fantastic! Great video!

[@theo-avl]

Thanks for this video. I mostly figured out how to do this on my own, but it's great to see this video to know that I did it right!

[@shannonhughes3006]

Thank you so much again Nick!! This is so great. I have kids who pay me back with their birthday cash for something they ask me to order online. I really appreciate the detailed examples, and the point that YNAB doesn't care about the physical location of the money. Great point about creating a cash account. I will do that. Additionally, I'm impressed with the organization of your videos. I like how at the beginning you gave a quick rundown of how to do it before launching into all of the examples. Thanks again

[@mappedoutmoney]

Thanks Shannon! I super appreciate it. So glad that you found it helpful :) Glad to know the specific examples really helped out. I always appreciate the comments :)

[@kiva822]

I appreciate the video. However, the reality is that, for those of us "buffered", the red arrow works soooooo much better. This is particularly true for situations where one is being reimbursed, say, quarterly for work travel, etc. With the nYNAB, it looks like I have to 'budget' for the overspending which then impacts my available to budget each month; Please let me know if i'm misunderstanding this...thanks.

[@brendan31415]

I have a solution for "red arrow" that I use, as I have about 70 reimbursements per month across 4 businesses, plus lending to friends. See support.youneedabudget.com/t/x2h80av/right-red-arrow-for-reimbursements Hopefully that helps.

[@nyappykabukirock]

Hi Nick! Great tutorial. Just one question: if a roommate pays something for me in order to decrease his debt and I enter this as an income transaction in my checking account, then the balance of the checking account increases, but that's not really what happens in real life, because the balance stays the same. How can I handle this once I have to reconcile the balance of the account at the end of the month? Should I just move the money from a budgeting category (i.e groceries if he pays for groceries) to the reimbursements one? In that way though I cannot track what he spent for me so that I can justify the lowering of his debt. What is the best option in your opinion?

[@katemaso]

Same question :)

[@trriss]

Was also very much wondering that!

[@ninjajoe0513]

I know this is an old comment, but I'd like to share my method of handling this using a recent example in my own budget. First step is to add a new account. I recommend making it a cash account just for the convenience of the transactions automatically clearing. I named mine "IOUs/Simulated". The idea here is we're going to re-frame the transaction from "person X bought me Z" to "person X paid me back $Y and I used it to buy Z". So I had bought something for my brother, and he now owed me $100. I had this tracked like Nick showed with a reimbursements category and all. My brother later bought me lunch, which I rounded to $10 and wanted to put toward the money he owed. So we go into our simulated account and add a transaction, payee = brother, category = reimbursements, inflow $10. This balances out the reimbursement category. Good! Now we need to log that lunch. Back into the simulated account, add transaction, payee = restaurant, category = eating out, outflow $10. Final step is to make sure the extra $10 on the budget is in the right place. If you budgeted money in the reimbursements category for whatever it was that you paid for on behalf of your roommate (whatever it was that generated his debt to you) like Nick talks about at 22:10, then it should be available from the reimbursements category. If you didn't, -that simulated $10 should be sitting in To Be Budgeted- you'll need to pull the funds from some other category that has excess (since you essentially allocated funds earlier that you didn't have). Either way, you'll need to move that $10 over to keep your budget on track. In my case, my brother then paid me $90 in cash a few days later, thus balancing out the original $100. Edit: Thinking on this some more, I'd say that if you want to use this method, you really should budget money to the initial expenditure and not let it sit as overspending. You'll avoid earmarking funds for something only to find later that you aren't being paid back entirely in money, and you can't pay rent with a sandwich! I made a mistake in my explanation, which I've edited.

[@presston]

Have you found the solution? I was thinking of a zero sum transaction to ynab. For example, if the roommate paid for me, I will put a transaction where 50 goes out of my groceries category, and 50 goes into the roommate reimbursement category. As a result, the groceries spending is properly categorised, the amount my roommate owes me is reduced, yet my ynab bank balance is true to actual.

[@madhats13]

I would create a transaction for whatever the roommate paid for. If you don't want it messing with your checking account, you could create a cash account solely to track this. You would create a transaction of $50 of cash coming in from the roommate as a reimbursement, note in the memo 'roommate bought groceries', and then a 2nd transaction for $50 of cash going out as a grocery expense. It balances your reimbursement category, doesn't throw off your total budget, and still accounts for the grocery expense (since you'll be eating that food too!)

[@FerryOlthuis]

Hi, quick question. In case you and your roommate both pay some of the bills and you approach it your way, I think your actual part in the bill doesn't show op in the actual category the money was spend. For example, if your roommate handles all the groceries for like 200 dollars, you would pay him back and never put 1 dollar budget on groceries, but on reimbursements. You're not really tracking where your money is going to. So you lose some of the purpose of YNAB. It simply says that half your money is going to your roommate, which isn't really the case. I would put it in like in real life. So if you pay a bill, just put your part on the right category and the other part on reimbursements. If he pays something, you don't do anything (just like in real-life). At the end of the month, when either one of you pays up, you make one massive splitted transaction in which you put all of your parts in his payments on the right categories as debit and you put his parts of all your payments on the repayment category. This should check out and put the reimbursements check on 0 and correctly put all payments in the right categories. This should also match real-life flawlessly (like YNAB usually does), since you don't add transactions that don't exist.

[@Krutch11]

Is there an alternative method for when a shared expensive is paid by a friend/roommate? Having a "fake" transaction that shows money inflowing into my chequing account to balance the budget account for this specific scenario, does not tell the entire truth. No money is actually flowing through my chequing account (in or out) in this case and gives the wrong balance amount for that account...What if instead I create an account called "insert friends name here" IN PLACE OF the "reimbursement category". The shared expense process would be the same as you showed, except the friend's portion is a "transfer" instead of a budget category. This makes it MUCH easier to see how much cash they owe/you owe at any given point in time (ie. works great for friends who take long times to reimburse you). The only negative is if the account has a positive balance, you need to know you cannot budget that amount until you are actually reimbursed. Thoughts?

[@laurenswedenborg2022]

This was a HUGE help. Thank you so very much for your clear & thorough explanations.

[@dancorwin9232]

Here's my one little problem with this (but there is a solution!): If my roommate pays for something for the both of us once, by your method I would just have him "pay" me, putting money into an inflow. But that makes no sense when it comes time to reconcile. So if my roommate just pays for something once I will never be reconciled again?? Moreover, this means I can't categorize the spending that came along with that, so my transactions aren't correctly categorized either! So I racked my brain about this, and after all this thinking I came across someone else's suggestion that is PERFECT for both of these problems: Do a "zero sum" transaction!! Example, if my roommate currently owes me $80, but then buys $30 total of groceries for us, Transaction entered, split 2 categories, NO TOTAL AMOUNT (that's important): category 1: OUTFLOW $15 of groceries category 2: INFLOW of $15 of Roommate reimbursements. clear transaction I have tried this several times and it totally works! Surprisingly YNAB is totally okay with you splitting individual transactions with both outflows and inflows and having them add up to zero. This essentially is just a way of "moving money" in a way that keeps everything documented properly. This solves both issues! Not only does it still decrease how much he owes me, but it also shows that I spent $15 bucks on groceries even though it was all theoretical money, AND my account is truly reconciled!!

[@catherinenoble5788]

I have a similar challenge, but for medical expenses that I still need to claim, but expenses were paid before I set up my new ynab budget...after getting a better understanding of credit cards, and other aspects of the current ynab platform. I look forward to hearing from Nick about our questions.

[@chrisallmand1805]

You are awesome, love all the content. Thanks!

[@mappedoutmoney]

You're awesome Chris! Thanks for watching.

[@SameeraKhurana]

This is great! Thank you so much for this video. Quick question - when your roommate pays for you, and you deduct it from the money they owe you, do you not reduce it from your own groceries / bills budget?

[@sonnythemonny]

This is the exact question I had. Did you figure it out? Right now, if my roommate buys $100 of groceries, I add $50 as inflow to roommate reimbursement category and added an outflow of $50 from my groceries category. If I only add the inflow, my checkings account balance is incorrect.

[@robertkelleher1850]

@@sonnythemonny That's the solution. You can also do a split transaction with a zero balance. $50 inflow to the reimbursement category, and $50 outflow to groceries.

[@victorgyulnazaryan2265]

@@robertkelleher1850 that’s the solution. Just to make it complete I will just say that I do these split transactions on my Wallet (cash) account. First it simulates the reality = in essence the friend “gave you money” to spend. Secondly if I put it on cash account it doesn’t create mess with my bank account when I check the individual transactions from my bank statement against YNAB

[@JohnMelki]

Hey Nick, thanks a lot for the amazing videos. one question, at around 16:00min you gave the example of a roommate buying all groceries and internet then in order to reduce their debt, you added two transactions in your checking account with the amount of your half. how can you reconcile the checking account when the statement comes? these two transactions did not happen in real life, right?

[@AllenEllis]

Came here looking to ask the same question. It also seems like I'd want to show it impacting my budget for groceries too.

[@katemaso]

Also looking for the answer to reconciling at the end of the month.

[@lizhartzler3252]

splitwise in incredible for this

[@lizhartzler3252]

What we do is add all transactions from every party/person/transaction into splitwise and then (since i pay for rent/utilities/groceries/etc. in full) my roommate pays me his share in full at the end of the month. In YNAB, I log all transactions as if they were my own personal expenses and then log his money as inflow: TBB.

[@katemaso]

​@@lizhartzler3252 But what account do you use to log the transactions as your expenses, if your roommate is really the person making the tranactions (ie. buying groceries)?

[@vcasquinha]

Very helpful this video! Well explained and simple. Thank you so much for your help.

[@mappedoutmoney]

Boom! Love it Vera! Super glad to know that it was helpful for you :)

[@Pacmac85]

I have not been dealing with reimbursements since I started a year ago with YNAB. This video was so helpfull so now I am looking forward to adjust my budget for this! One question though.. In your room mate example when they buy groceries and I am paying back money. Shouldn’t that reduce my budgeted amount for groceries?

[@angiecaliva]

Hey Nick, I'm in my free trial period and have been watching and learning from all of your videos. I didn't know about linking through you so you get compensated. Since I'm still in free trial is there a way to do that or is it too late. I wish I would have known to use your link!

[@mappedoutmoney]

Hey thanks Angie! Unfortunately, I don't think so :( Although I've heard sometimes if you email support and ask them, they can credit me :) But Don't feel like you need to, I'm just glad the videos have helped :)

[@karadavies-hobbs3448]

Hi Nick, thank you so much for these brilliant tips. (I can see these videos are quite old now, but I have a suggestion to make your video look cleaner by increasing the proportion of the screen space showing the YNAB app... you could untick the "Always Show Toolbar in Full Screen" option in Chrome's view menu so it hides the bookmark and tab sections at top of screen.)

[@alaingallet1]

Hi Nick, love the videos, they've been a huge help! I am just a little confused on something, when you put in $50 dollars towards inflow in the Roommate Reimbursement category to 'pay off something you owe', you now have $50 extra in your checking account which you don't actually have. How do you go about handling that error in number?

[@tet3]

Yeah, that part is weird to me. And how do you track the category your half came from? You could move money for your half from the category you budgeted for to the Roommate Reimbursements category, but that doesn't represent an expense from that category, it means you won't hit your goal, of you have one.

[@karenshaffer1511]

Excellent tutorial - love your videos!

[@mappedoutmoney]

Awesome Karen! Glad it was helpful for you :) Thanks so much for watching!

[@Sara-uy2nr]

Thanks for another helpful video! I purchase the snacks for my husband's office at Costco on a personal credit card of ours that is dedicated to business related expenses and then his boss pays us back. I made my first run today since using YNAB and wasn't sure if I should pull the money out of our own grocery budget and then put it back once we got the reimbursement check (which is usually within a week so we don't often have to wait too long) but this way makes a lot of sense! I hate seeing that "overspent" category but I know it won't be there for long. Thanks again!

[@nicolebabcock1977]

This is great! Thank you!!

[@mappedoutmoney]

Glad it helped!

[@tesslanger9069]

You're amazing! Thanks for the help!!!

[@mappedoutmoney]

Hahah no problem Tess! So glad the videos have been helpful :)

[@demodrift1]

Great tutorial, Nick! I learned another way to handle reimbursements now! Thanks! The only big problem I figure out using "they bought $100 of groceries" (in MEMO) when a Roommate bought groceries to split with you is that you will lose the main function of YNAB: to track your spendings. Could I create a checking account to my Roommate and handle that by putting half the expenses to his checking account instead of a category inside my account? Than I should keep track of how much I am expending on groceries...

[@ieatdurian]

It can be done. I found it's more intuitive to treat the Roomate as a Credit Card instead of a Chequing Account though.

[@demodrift1]

@@ieatdurian Great point of view! Is it works even when your Roommate paid for something and you will need to make a balance of all that spendings? One more thing, do you split the amount of your spendings as Nick told in this video, but use a credit card in the place of roommate checking account or category?

[@politcallycorrect5816]

For the roommate example, you didn't show how to budget to pay off your credit card when they reimburse you by buying something else for you. You still have to payoff the credit card but instead of having $62 to pay your credit card, you just have groceries... So do you just move money from the grocery budget to the credit card budget? Thanks for this video, makes things so much easier. Especially the work reimbursement for me.

[@iempower53]

Outstanding video.

[@mappedoutmoney]

No problem, so glad it helped!

[@HeyEveryoneHi]

I just don't get why would you include the other person/person's payment in the budget? if you gonna pay 5$, then this is your expense? and also here it's like you are assuming they gonna get reimburse you the total amount money spent?? Are you assuming you paid the bill, and everyone own you money?

[@user-wp1sf9ip3k]

Hi Nick. Love your YNAB Videos!!! I was wondering if you can give me a tip to mass changing the outflow transactions to inflow. When I migrated from Mint, the files put all of the inflow into the outflow category. It would be very time consuming to enter each manually. Thank you in advance.

[@kieranmcintosh4826]

Great video, thanks!

[@mappedoutmoney]

No problem Kieran! so glad it was helpful for you :) Good luck YNABing!

[@CornflowerBlues5]

Very helpful! Thank you

[@CoBoL09]

Thanks for the video. Q: is there a way to record roommate's transactions on your behalf e.g. internet, where the amount I pay them for internet goes into the internet budget category? Helps to look back on what I've paid for in a month

[@petersjj]

GREAT video but I couldn't figure out how to reconcile simulated splits where my roommate paid for something and I added the transaction in my account. I went back to just using my regular categories, setting my own part, paying the bill, then seeing where my roommate owed me in each category. Loved the idea but the reconciliation isn't possible from what I could figure out on my end.

[@peterlandovskis1592]

I am just starting in YNAB so I have spent today watching many of your videos and they are super helpful. But I do have a question for you on this topic. Normally we would have a category for groceries but when we are splitting costs with a friend where each of us pays for certain items, the video showed that if the friend paid for groceries, we would just show our amount against the friend reimbursement category - we would not have tracking of what we spent on groceries. Is there some way to track what we pay our friend using our own categories. Thank you

[@JeppeEbbesen]

I have the exact same problem. Hope there is some smart way to fix this

[@katiemoe3687]

Work reimbursement question: This method works fine unless you have an expense in May and don't get paid til June. When a new month starts YNAB automatically covers the overspending, which makes it tricky. You can't really go back and cover it that I know of, unless you put an earlier date on your incoming paycheck transaction. How would you get around this?

[@mappedoutmoney]

Check our the pinned comment with the time stamps. I answer this around 23:56 Hope that helps!

[@ryanhester9321]

Hey Nick - first off, you're a stud. Keep fighting the good fight, and you're really making a positive impact on folk's lives by providing such thoughtful financial guidance. Work Reimbursements ? for you: I have a work reimbursements line item in my budget. I don't budget any money for this each month b/c the amount varies. However, when I add a transaction to this category which I paid out of my checking account, my budget states I overspent in this category and it's flagging as "red" and even more annoying in the mobile app. Do I need to allocate money from my To Be Budgeted or another category until I get reimbursed to avoid this? Should I always pay for work expenses on a credit card? Thanks!

[@mappedoutmoney]

Hey Ryan! If you're spending money for work on a debit card, yes, I would allocate money from TBB to that category and budget for the spending. Maybe consider having a "floor" where you always budget $500 to it or $100 or whatever you need... but a floor that is your new $0. And when you have $100 available you know that your work has paid you and you're good, and in the meantime that floor money helps you not overspend. OR, like you said, just use a CC. When used to have a lot of work reimbursements at my old company, they would add up with lots of $$$ for flying etc... I didn't want to use that much of my checking account money, so I always used a CC and it helped encourage me to submit my reimbursement request on time so that I would get paid soon and could pay off the card. Definitely don't go into debt for it, so as long as your employer will get you the money before the CC is due, then I would just use a CC personally. But if you want to use debit, yes, I would budget for it so that you can trust all the other numbers in your budget.

[@ryanhester9321]

@@mappedoutmoney thank you kind sir. I'll move to CC for all work expenses moving forward. Have a GREAT! day 😊

[@hrodriguez620]

What if you don’t get the work reimbursement until the next month? How can you reassign that reimbursement check to the previous month so that it zeros out the balance from the previous month, instead of that reimbursement category being a negative amount?

[@davemahoney6725]

Appreciate the good videos bro... also side note: sweet beard

[@mappedoutmoney]

Haha thanks dude 👊

[@DanaDancing1]

Hi there, I like the idea of leaving the reimbursement category overspent, but the notification on my phone won't go away until I bring it back to positive and that is very annoying. Do you know if there's a way to remove that notification or any work around for this?

[@taryn2736]

Hi Nick and anyone else reading! How do you all handle reimbursements that don't hit your account until the month following the month the actual transaction was made in? YNAB automagically 'corrects' overspending in the previous month (when the new month rolls around) by subtracting from your to-be-budgeted amount. I worry that essentially caring over a negative available amount for reimbursement categories may somehow throw off my data/reports. Is this an unfounded worry? Any input would be greatly appreciated!

[@3Katey]

I have the same question!

[@3Katey]

Got to the point in the video where you talk about this! Should have waited to finish the video before asking my questions haha

[@taryn2736]

@@3Katey Hmm apparently I missed that, I'll have to rewatch the video. :)

[@3Katey]

Taryn Hill starts around 24:00

[@taryn2736]

@@3Katey Thank you! 😊

[@Haven_games]

Thanks for putting up this GREAT series! I have a question of how you handle categorizing and putting away money that you need to eventually pay out. Specifically, I'm self employed and want to earmark a portion of my fees to tax (I charge tax, and will need to remit that to the government) and another portion set aside for incometax. Would appreciate seeing how you handle those items. thanks!

[@mappedoutmoney]

Hey Tony! Good question. All I do for these is create categories for those expenses underneath a category group called "long term expenses." And I set a monthly funding goal to add a certain amount every month to them. Then at the end of each month I just let it roll over to the next month and allow the category to build up over time. And when the time comes to pay the bill, I have the money already sitting in the category ready to go. Let me know if that makes sense!

[@tamarafink5628]

Question: in the friend example, if a friend is paying you back, why do you record them as the payee? Aren’t they the payor and you are the payee? I’m confused. Wouldn’t the memo line indicate who the payment is from?

[@iwaddo]

Nick, I find that with this category method it is not possible to accurately track what you spent your money on. For example, if a roommate pays for groceries and I categorise it as 'roommate' I have no way knowing it was groceries except in the memo. I've found that creating dummy cash accounts and transferring into and out of these dummy accounts presents a more reportable solution. For example, if a roommate pays for groceries I add a transaction to the roommate dummy account but categorised as groceries. It accurately shows in my budget as groceries spent. Then when I pay them back it is just an on budget none categorised transaction. Have you considered this approach and is there a reason why you would not use it?

[@blinger44]

this still isn't clicking for me.. you spent $500 on a TV but it shows up no where in your categories that you spent that 500 on electronics. In your year end reports, how do you view how much you've spent on electronics this year?

[@blinger44]

it would show up in your friend reimbursements but that probably doesn't sort well when u want to see spend by category.

[@marijkesutter4832]

What do I do if I have a credit card that is sometimes paid off by me, but sometimes is paid by an external account that I am not tracking in my budget? The credit card shows an influx of, say, $100, but I don't have a way to say where that money came from.

[@yasmaniaguiar5103]

I use splitwise and on the official YNAB video on that topic, they split the payment coming in from roomate or the payment one makes into different categories, can I do the same in this scenario so my budget categories accurately represent true spending? Otherwise I'm filling out the roomate reimbursement category, but I would have to manually add up my groceries to truly know how much I spent on it for the month versus ynab automatically calculating it...I hope i'm making sense, I have a headache over all this lol

[@gregcookcaa43]

New to YNAB and a question on reimbursements. We are taking a trip in February with friends. They paid us for their half of the condo in January, however, our debit card is not going to get charged for the condo until February. How does that work? Thank you for the great videos. We signing up for YNAB because of your videos and your explanations. Thanks

[@JM.5387]

This is another way in which YNAB is superior to Mint. AFAIK, there's no way to credit a reimbursement to the same category as the original transaction in Mint -- it just gets grouped with income, which is OK except that it distorts your total spending in that category. (If anyone knows how to do this in Mint, please correct me.)

[@WubLyfe]

Any chance we could get an update for roommates/couples now that YNAB Together is out? I'm having a hard time deciding how to show reimbursements in both our budgets.

[@filippnesterov7157]

Hi, Nick, thank you very much for the great video! I have a question, regarding roommates reimbursement, F.e. my friend owes me $50. Then he bought something for $25 for me. Thus, he owes me $25 less. I didn't get how should I make a transaction? Which account should I use, if I neither received, nor sent money at any account? Nick, I look forward to hearing from you soon. Thanks in advance.

[@kristinkeegan774]

Hi Nick, I love your videos! I signed up for YNAB months ago and was about to give up until I watched your video! Thank you! My question is, I've loaned our boys some money to buy cars, how do I track that in YNAB?

[@mappedoutmoney]

Hey Kristin! So glad that the videos have been helpful for you :) As for a loan for your boys, I would set it up the same way I do the reimbursements in this video. Create a category called "Loan - Son #1 Car" and then create an transaction that represents the amount you loaned him. And then overtime, as he pays you back, those payments will go in and be categorized directly to that loan category. But you'd handle it the exact same way I show in this video. Hope that makes sense!

[@elenazachary]

Hi Nick! Thanks so much for your super helpful and informative videos on YNAB - I just started using it and already can tell it will work much better for me than other budgeting programs I've tried. One thing I'm having trouble working out how to account for is a "Keep the change" program I have at my bank. At the end of every day my bank transfers the change from my transactions into my savings, but it's a bit confusing how to categorize these transfers. Ideally I could have them transfer directly into a "Keep the Change" category so that money is separate and can be treated like bonus funds whenever needed. If you have any advice, it would be greatly appreciated! I'm sure many other viewers have this setup also.

[@someangryguy]

Hi Nick, for the roommate reimbursements involving pretend payments (because the goal is just to decrease the amount they owe you by offsetting their spending for you with your spending for them), how do you handle the Account for the pretend payment? Say I spent $100 using my credit card, with a 50/50 split for me and my roommate. There's now a -50 in the Reimbursement category, and in my Credit Cart Payment category. Then he spends $100 with a 50/50 split between us. So now we're even. Following your instructions, I should make a pretend inflow payment, with an inflow of 50 to zero out the Reimbursement category. But since this is just an offset, I don't know which Account to put this in. Should I put it in the same credit card category? Or should I put it in some checking account? If I put it in a checking account, wouldn't it make the numbers inaccurate, since there wasn't any +50 that actually went to my account.

[@marciobttb]

But how would you reflect those 50$ for Groceries in the groceries category if you are putting in 'roomate reimbursements'?

[@nanetteblank6311]

Why do you set up a sperate category for reimbursements, rather than recording them as income into the category that they were spent?

[@danbrackmann8733]

Hi Nick! Your videos are super helpful, but I have a question on this one; sorry it's so late after the posting date. Also, apologies if someone already asked, but I don't want to check 146 comments to see if they did. It regards the part where you were explaining how to offset what your roommate owes you when they buy something for the both of you. You dealt with this by entering a faux transaction as if the roommate just paid you an amount equal to your half of their transaction. In your example, the roommate bought groceries. What I don't understand is why you had to make a faux transaction - why not just move that amount from what you budgeted for groceries (since this was for groceries) to the Roommate reimbursement category? That would decrease the amount your roommate owes you. It would do it by essentially allocating more of your money to the share of your purchase that you are paying and takes it out of the appropriate category - after all this is less groceries that you have to buy yourself. What am I missing? Thanks.

[@CarissaCrittenden]

Suggestions for work reimbursements with a mid-month set up? I started my trial a few days ago and was just reimbursed for a work trip in November. I've put the inflow in as a work reimbursement, but since I don't have the actual expenses, I am unsure if I just live with December being wonky since I'll be immediately putting those funds towards the card I used for last month's trip. UPDATE: I added a transaction on my card as the outflow for the reimbursement, so hopefully that helps even things up, though I think December is still going to be off, but that's okay. Better to start now than later.

[@arwoods]

Nick, this tutorial helped me a lot with a reimbursement situation we have with my wife's father, thanks. It has been working great for a couple of months but I think the recent goals update might have messed things up. Now it wants to start over from scratch each month at zero. Any ideas?

[@parker3138]

Hey Nick! Sorry for the long scenario question. @16:42 I’m still struggling with the situation where I mostly pay for split bills with a roommate, but I also want to decrease their bill to me if they buy groceries for us. Say they owe me $500 at the end of the month for misc bills, but I owe them $100 for groceries. I see the value in adding a transaction to the Roommate Reimbursement category as Inflow for $100 to decrease their bill to me from $500 to $400. That makes it super easy to see exactly how much they owe me minus what I owe them. The problem is with that Inflow transaction there’s not an actual transaction that will clear from my checking account. AND it’s not accounting for where that money is coming from in my budget. Writing an Inflow transaction to the Roommate Reimbursements category is essentially replacing me having to send them money from my checking account. But I spent that money at some point earlier in the month and this method isn’t accounting for the dollars that were actually spent - and where in my budget they’re getting covered since my roommate is paying me less. It’s actually pretending that that money was never spent (because I’m not pulling it from another category). It doesn’t account for what other category the money is coming from had I actually sent them money. So in essence my budget will show I have $100 more than my bank account. My only alternate solution is instead of creating an Inflow transaction to decrease the amount my roommate owes me, I can simply move money from my Groceries category to the Roommate Reimbursement category for the amount I owe him (if I owe him money for groceries). That reduces how much he owes me while also substituting me actually sending him money (from the correct category). The only problem this doesn’t solve that your way does is simply moving money from one category to another doesn’t allow me to add a note about why the money was moved - whereas a transaction would. Sorry this was a novel, but does it make sense? Or did I completely miss something in your method for this situation? Any thoughts? Thanks!

[@lonczak12]

Thanks for making this video! It was very helpful for understanding how to handle roommate expenses. Quick question - You mention that if your roommate buys shared groceries and you want to use that to reduce their debt to you, say for rent, then you can pretend that groceries value is a payment from your roommate toward their Roommate Reimbursements debt and it looks like you did that by creating a transaction in your Checking account for that amount. I see how that would adjust your budget numbers as you'd like, but then how do you deal with that new Checking account transaction, which will never actually match up with a real transaction in your linked checking account. Do you just mark it as "cleared" even though it doesn't show up in your actual checking account transactions?

[@hn9382]

Great video! I got.a little confused at 20:14 when the room mates pays for the TV and now we owe them $69. Dont we need to budget that money somewhere from our to be budgeted? Because I know the $500 was an inflow from the TV to pay off their rent tab but it's not like we had $69 in that category of the budget to pay them back.

[@BrentARJ]

Not sure what I should do... I just started with YNAB, and I'm stuck with how to categorize a $1000 work reimbursement that hit my checking acct today. It's for expenses from before I signed up for YNAB. Do i categorize just this first one as TBB?

[@applicationdevelopment1351]

Love your videos!! You're the reason I'm using YNAB, and used your link for my first month trial. I have a son who gets government funding for his medical supplies. It comes into my chequing account quarterly from which I buy the supplies. Any thoughts on how to 'earmark' money beyond a single month so I know if I've used more of my own money or if I still have funds left? Because I've just started, I'm not sure how things roll over into my second month and so forth. I'd like to know the balance (+ or -) at any point. Thoughts?? Thanks in advance.

[@katekjones]

If you update this video ever I’d love to see how to cover FSA reimbursements or reimbursements for work that’s split. Example - I pay $120 for starlink monthly, but work reimburses me $50 for each payment. How do I make this work in YNAB?

[@melissamcmahon3621]

I think this is kind of like my insurance reimbursements on my vet bills. I get 90% of what i pay for a vet visit back, excluding tax. So I do a split transaction. I log the payment as a split and I enter into the veterinary category for what I owe (and budget for), so in your case it would be $120-50 ($70) and then the remainder which they cover($50) goes into the reimbursement category you have set up.

[@chriswalker12]

Would it make sense when roomate buys groceries, to transfer amount of from budgeted groceries, to their running tab?

[@Shely-eb1fq]

Hey Nick, thanks for the great info. I am watched this and the refunds video to try and work out my issue with no luck. Hoping you can help: Spent $12.59 on amazon via credit card. Returned item but opted for amazon credit instead of refund. So the refunded amount should go back into the orig category. Do I just inflow the credit? And then once the credit on amazon is used.. do I just “short” the amount spent when I record it? Thanks so much.

[@carolkassel7447]

What happens if you pay for the bill with credit but get paid back in cash.

[@borodean]

Thank you, Nick! Your guides are just brilliant! I do have a couple of questions :) I rent an apartment and sometimes stuff breaks there. To fix things quickly, I ofter pay for repairs myself. However, when the time to pay for the rent comes, I tell my landlord that I paid for this and that and deduce those repair expenses from the rent payment. What would be the best way to track such things? Also, I've already paid for some repairs this month, but that was before I started using YNAB. What would be the best way to handle my next rent payment, since those repairs are not in the system?

[@CAProductionsHD]

@4:09: I keep seeing you have a graphic for you goals. It displays a circle that fills in as you fund the accounts. Is this from an older version of YNAB? Or can we still get this feature via the toolkit?

[@ajw5743]

Any recommendations on what to do when someone over-reimburses you? For example, my mother in law asked me to pick up some beer on the way up to visit. The beer cost me 10.81 out of my checking account. I charted this on YNAB using this reimbursement method so that YNAB showed an overspending balance of -10.81. She repaid me 11 dollars in cash. When I chart this, it shows I have an available balance in the "Mother-In-Law-Reimbursement" category of 0.19. When I go to repurpose the 19 cents it shows that this account has a negative amount to be budgeted of 19 cents, an inflow activity of 19 cents, and availability of zero. That all adds up to me based on the transaction I did, but I want to know if it's recommended to have each column end with zero and how I would log that so that it happens that way. Sorry if this is too confusing and I know it's only 19 cents! Perhaps in the future, it will not feel so arbitrary...

[@mappedoutmoney]

Hey Adam! Really good question man. In this case, I would move the $0.19 in the available column back to "To Be Budgeted" Yes, this puts a negative -$0.19 in your budgeted column, but that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. It means that you've taken the $0.19 out of the envelope. No problem with that at all. Big thing here, is don't overthink this :)

[@neilsimpson6118]

@@mappedoutmoney * work over-reimbursement equivalent ? * Hi Nick. Great Video - as they all are. I just started to use YNAB up here in Canada, and your videos make setting up and using the app very comfortable. Here's my work scenario question: - work reimburses me for travel expenses (monthly, usually the month after the expense was paid for by me) - hotel and meals are easy; dollar to dollar reimbursement against the expense - mileage is paid at a "per mile" type arrangement (let's say 25 cents per mile) - my jeep uses way less gas expense than I am getting back in mileage payments (500 miles might cost me $80 in gas, but I'll get reimbursed $125 for the mileage) - when I get my reimbursement payment, then negate the hotel and meals through using a Work Reimbursement category, I am not sure what to do with the mileage payment amount - since I would have paid for gas and basic maintenance as needed, and budgeted and tracked those expenses outside the Work Reimbursement category (just using a "Gas for Jeep" category), what's the best way to "split" the reimbursed amount that exceeds the actual amount I paid ? - allot some against the gas expense, and move the rest to "To Be Budgeted" ? It's sort-of extra income (at least the portion over and above the actual gas expense would be) Thoughts ???

[@jeffkennedy9099]

@@neilsimpson6118 My recommendation would be to move the remaining into "To be Budgeted" then budget towards car maintenance/repair and/or auto insurance. The "per mile" type arrangement is not just for fuel but to reimburse you for other costs associated with using your personal vehicle for work.

[@kathygalvin8845]

When I return merchandise which I bought on a credit card, how do I record this? Thank you.

[@mappedoutmoney]

Hey there, all you need to do is add it to the credit card account as an inflow and use the category that you used to originally buy it. So if you bought something in clothing, then you should put the inflow into your credit card and categorize it as clothing. You can also check out this video which will help you as well: kzbin.info/www/bejne/fny7aqqEmN2hoLc

[@nicholaswilliams3298]

Hi Nick, Thanks for all the info. How would you handle gifted money to our kids but it is given in cash then we transfer money from checking account into their savings account?

[@joshuale1891]

When splitting bills with roommates, do you budget the total cost of the bill or just your share? So for the Netflix example in the video, would you budget $12 or just $6?

[@StuartStirling10]

Hey great video. Question about reimbursement from friends in the following month. In your example, (kzbin.info/www/bejne/mmKqgpWvqc-dadU) they still owed you $25 in February however, when moving to March there was nothing indicating that there was still money outstanding in that category. Is the only way to see how much is still outstanding in that category to go back through previous months and add it up?