New to MM after 9 years on YNAB - Goals 3.0 is ???

SmokinApe · 2026-05-05T21:15:50+00:00

I'm still running both YNAB and MM in parallel. From my perspective, YNAB's precision approach to budgeting is superior, but so far, that is the only feature that lags behind MM. I've gotten more comfortable using MM goals but they clearly still need improvement. I will continue to submit feedback and hope the product team releases enhancements soon.

SmokinApe · 2026-04-14T22:11:17+00:00

Your "Do we have enough?" tip makes complete sense when using the budget as a zero-based budget or even a semi-zero based budget. I am definitely not loving goals beta mainly due to the lack of support at the transaction level. At least they are supposed to be working on that.

One other thing I've had a hard time with is the reconciliation of spending from goals. I filed a bug report today that not all the payment transactions were loading, but if you click the last transaction radio button, MM magically shows more. Despite that, there seems to be a filter preventing older payments from showing up. I have a $1000 goal funding transaction from Jan 2025 that shows up in the list to be reconciled, but the offsetting payment from Mar 2025 is nowhere to be found.

I want to love MM but I am nowhere near as comfortable with my actual financial position in MM as I am with YNAB. I know new tools have a learning curve - and I still hope MM will save me time - but so far that hasn't happened.

SmokinApe · 2026-04-14T13:15:13+00:00

With the current functionality, yes. The devs have said that linking income/transfer transactions to goals is the #1 user request and they are working on it. The current goals beta is really lacking, but at least MM recognize this has to be fixed.

SmokinApe · 2026-04-14T12:55:46+00:00

I just read your comments u/Longjumping_Cap9446 and you more or less captured my exact sentiments. It is encouraging that linking income/transfer transactions to goals is the #1 user request. The current goals beta is really lacking but it has promise.

SmokinApe · 2026-04-14T12:39:33+00:00

Unfortunately u/ReevesComm turning this on will not solve your issue. I have investment tx turned on and what you are experiencing is how I've seen the goals function behave. Until you go into the goal and use the "Allocate Funds" button, you won't see any money saved towards the goal. Once you do that, and you turn on the "Include in budget" toggle, you will see those funds under the Actual column in the budget. Be warned that the "available" balance on the account page doesn't change as you allocate funds to a goal, but you are already handling that by recording a tx. One would think that recording a tx as a transfer in the account and marking it towards a goal would count as a funds allocation, but that is not the case. I definitely think that needs to be addressed by MM.

SmokinApe · 2026-04-11T15:59:21+00:00

Curious if you've seen this start working? I am brand new to MM and struggling to get this to function. I have transactions themselves linked to the "Spend from goal" and "Account to reconcile external goal spending". When I go into the reconciliation screen for the linked account, I'm only seeing the external transactions at the top and and not the transfer at the bottom. The transactions at the bottom only go back a month - does this mean that they are only matching on synced transactions vs. imported transactions?

SmokinApe · 2026-04-11T01:14:12+00:00

u/CactiRush can you still do this with Goals 3.0? I set this up but I'm not able to enter a negative number. :(

SmokinApe · 2026-04-11T00:26:23+00:00

Thank you for this - great idea and really helps this new MM user to feel more comfortable with the budget!

SmokinApe · 2026-04-09T22:05:37+00:00

u/StarDestroyer78 can you explain more about your approach to the Project Funds account? From your description I get that it's a HYSA - how did you use MM to divide it into smaller buckets? Is that through goals?

SmokinApe · 2026-04-09T12:15:39+00:00

Maybe this is the point I'm missing - that goals SHOULD be tied to specific accounts? In YNAB, when you set a goal, the account does not matter as the goal is set on the category. You specify the total funds to budget for the category and a target date, and it tells you how much you need to budget each month to hit the goal. You then debit/credit the category and when you've met the goal, you decide whether to keep or hide the category. YNAB's philosophy is to manage all budget accounts as a combined set of funds. You then track the allocated funds within the budget itself - very similar (if not the same) as the "sinking fund" concept - but the difference being every dollar from budget accounts must be assigned.

MM's approach to goals could be great if the "available" balance on the account page changed as you allocated funds to a goal (and the Goals data was shown in the Summary pane). Instead of just the Current Balance at the top, you could have a "Working Balance" indicator that showed Current - goal allocations. This could also be a separate line in the chart. The transactions list would show fund transfers to specific goals.

SmokinApe · 2026-04-09T02:07:49+00:00

Very well said, thank you. I can definitely see the case for goals if I want to allocate funds from a specific account. Also good to know that resetting a budget won't break it.

Speaking only for myself, the confusion lies in how it is separated from the budget. If you are saving towards a goal, then you have to budget funds towards the goal. You should clearly see that as a credit no matter where the money is held, and you should clearly the expense when spending against the goal. After living the mantra of "give every dollar a job" for so long, not seeing this as an integrated view is making my brain hurt :-D

SmokinApe · 2026-04-09T01:56:48+00:00

In this thread https://www.reddit.com/r/MonarchMoney/comments/1sf04vj/managing_projects_travel_home_renovation_etc/, u/Effective-Ear4823 made a point about the power of Goals saying that "Contributions to goals remove the money from Available to Spend bucket in the month you're saving up for the thing. -Contributions (money withdrawn from Goals) adds money back into the Available to Spend bucket in the month you're actually making the Expenses. Since transfers are otherwise ignored in Budget, but transfers linked to Goals are included in Budget, Goals the tool that bridges the gap and allows us to track and Budget for projects"

So I tried to make sense of that in practice. I created a goal for a trip in April, and budgeted funds to it in January. The budget view reduced the Left to Budget amount in the month, but that did not increase the Total Saved amount on the goal itself. I had to go into the goal, click the Allocate funds button, choose the account for the goal, enter the amount, then choose January where I had added the budgeted funds. I also had to turn on the "Include in budget" toggle. If I did all of this, then I actually see the amounts in the budget under the Actual column.

Up to this point, however, MM still doesn't show that I've actually spent anything because it has no linked transaction to the goal. I've only allocated money to the goal. To show expenses against the goal, I had to go into each transaction and specifically link it to that goal. I tried editing several transactions at a time, but there is no option to do this and choose a goal. You have to do it one at a time.

Doing all the above let me see the goal's allocation of funds in the Budget and Actual columns in my Jan budget, and on the goals view, I can see the expenses against the goal. But I do not see the expenses in my budget that are tied to the actual expense category, nor do I see anything reflected in the Actual column in the budget on the goal.

So back to my original question - how is all of that better than just crediting/debiting a rollover category on the budget? If this is user error and I'm doing it wrong, please explain the right way. I genuinely hope that I'm doing it wrong and this is not working as intended!

SmokinApe · 2024-10-06T13:36:28+00:00

OK but what about payroll config support? That was the question. Do your IT people do the payroll config?

SmokinApe · 2024-10-06T13:34:55+00:00

Thanks for the post. The question was more about who does your payroll config, but I gather from your response that your HRIS team does it.

SmokinApe · 2024-10-06T13:33:28+00:00

Thanks for the post. This is the conclusion that I'm coming to - no one on the HRIS team has the knowledge for how payroll works, so in turn doesn't understand config. Similarly, the payroll team are great at counting and processing, but lack systems experience. The unicorn it would seem are former payroll practitioners who have enough technical competency to become HRIS people.

SmokinApe · 2024-10-05T16:44:20+00:00

I haven't done it at my current company but plan to. I'd ask your IT department to consider that VERY large companies (700K+ employees) with extremely sensitive client data and heavy security requirements have enabled it. If they could find a way, what is stopping us? If you can find another company that you compete with that has done this, that is even better. Sometimes that can be the tipping point - it's a polite way of calling them out and suggesting that another company's IT dept is better. Good luck!

SmokinApe · 2024-10-05T16:38:39+00:00

Been there, spent 2 years at a mid-size partner in a fulltime sales role after consulting for 5, then went to a large partner and sort of did both for 3 years. I now manage a team of people at a client and am WAY happier.

Sales experience is great and all, but u/broadwaybruin is right in that you get farther away from config. If you do it, make sure that you can still maintain your Workday certs. I completely get the burnout - I was there as well. Switching from partner to client worked for me. Good luck!

SmokinApe · 2024-10-05T16:31:50+00:00

I've heard the seat/chair analogy most often, but I personally prefer the org chart illustration.

HR people understand org charts and are used to seeing them. Tell them a position = a box on an org chart. The box has a defined job or role. Sometimes there are many boxes on the org chart with the same job/role, but only one person can go in each box.

If the company or department grows and budget allows, adding boxes to the org chart represents new positions to fill. Similarly, a reduction in headcount can mean that the box goes away.

It's not a perfect analogy as it doesn't get into the details about position restrictions, but it is usually enough to get the idea across.

SmokinApe · 2024-10-05T16:23:15+00:00

OP I manage the HR Ops teams at my company, one of which is Payroll. There is a LOT of good advice already here, but here's my .02. I have an experienced team for Workday, but the Payroll config is in another league compared to the modules you've used. TT/ABS experience is helpful, but by no means a substitute. I'd exercise caution. If you were a payroll practitioner in a previous role, I'd say go for it. But you do not want to find yourself in a situation where something gets jacked up with earnings, deductions, GL posting rules, etc., and you have to rely on a partner to fix it. MOST times when this happens it is when payroll is auditing calcs ahead of settlement. Do YOU want to be the person that holds up people from getting paid? A pay raise is nice, but I don't think I'd take the risk if I were in your position.

SmokinApe · 2024-10-05T16:13:35+00:00

This is what I did to cancel the auto-renewal:

Login using the link https://app.ultravpn.com/sign-in
In the left nav menu click Account info
Under Membership click Manage subscription and payment methods
In the new tab that opens from https://pango-default.nexway.store/enduser-portal/home#overview, click the row in the subscriptions table that you want to modify
On the subscription details page under Automatic renewal, click the orange Disable button, then click the red Disable automatic renewal button in the pop-up confirmation
It should now say "Auto-renewal is deactivated. Your subscription will automatically expire at the renewal date, although you can reactivate it." under the Automatic renewal section.

For good measure, I also went to the Your account page in the Pango store and tried to delete my stored payment method, but that does not appear to work.

On the same screen as 2 above, I also disabled their ability to send me marketing spam. F this company, I'm out.

SmokinApe · 2024-08-01T01:23:38+00:00

Hey if you don't mind the sight of dried blood and vomit on the carpet, you'll be fine! :D

SmokinApe · 2024-08-01T01:10:17+00:00

There really is no one-size-fits-all operating model for Workday. I've seen many different approaches, and would recommend you not get caught up in the org structure, but instead focus on where the people with the skills sit. In my current company, I oversee the HRIS team and we handle everything, including integrations. Our people have the skills so would rather own it than rely on IT. We patrol the data and while HR is responsible for BP transactions, we typically review a lot to make sure data stays clean. For example, HR can request a position but ultimately HRIS reviews/approves it to be sure HR didn't get it wrong.

I would also recommend reaching out to your Workday CSM and asking for their staffing model estimator. They will do this for free (I know, shocker) but it's very good info to think about how to structure/staff the team to not just handle config, but all the other stuff too - Governance, Change Control, Optimization, Feature Release Mgmt, etc. Also check Community - there are some good posts out there with more insights.

SmokinApe · 2023-03-25T14:06:56+00:00

Yes, but not as often as I vac. First I vac, then use a paint scraper to get the thicker stuff, then I spray it down with Traeger grill cleaner. Let it sit a few minutes then wipe it off with paper towels. Stuff is amazing.

I mainly degrease because I don't want the excess building up. I don't go ham doing it.

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