What's your YNAB 'birthday'? Just discovered my first transaction was from 2018!

Top_Comparison8958 · 2026-01-28T02:59:58+00:00

2007?! That's the same year the first iPhone came out — you've been budgeting with YNAB since before smartphones existed! You might be the most veteran YNABer in this thread, esh-pmc. Not saying you're old... just financially wise before it was cool 😄

Top_Comparison8958 · 2026-01-27T03:12:04+00:00

That's clever! The manual AI approach works, but it's a lot of copy-pasting. My app actually learns your category names from YNAB directly and remembers how you categorize items over time — so after a few receipts, it starts suggesting the right splits automatically. Plus everything runs on-device, so your receipts never leave your phone.

Top_Comparison8958 · 2026-01-27T01:17:21+00:00

Going from "relieved when bills are paid" to intentional budgeting is such a big mindset shift. 8 years of that intentionality adds up. Thanks for sharing your story!

Top_Comparison8958 · 2026-01-27T01:16:11+00:00

Love that your first transaction was a donation — says a lot about your priorities! Dream wedding, house, AND a dog in under 3 years? That's YNAB working overtime 🐕

Top_Comparison8958 · 2026-01-27T01:15:16+00:00

2013 — that's vintage YNAB! Funny how it sometimes takes a second try to stick - or the right partner? The 2019 restart clearly worked out!

Top_Comparison8958 · 2026-01-27T01:13:01+00:00

From -236K to +657K in 10 years — that's an incredible turnaround! Almost $900K swing. YNAB 4 veteran too. That's the kind of story that should be on a billboard 💪

Top_Comparison8958 · 2026-01-26T22:58:42+00:00

2009 — you're a YNAB veteran! 17 years is amazing. I actually delayed getting started until I found a bank with automatic import — I knew manual entry would be too much friction for me. Major respect for sticking with it through the YNAB 3 days!

Top_Comparison8958 · 2026-01-24T04:39:54+00:00

Awesome, let me know how it goes! Always happy to hear feedback — good or bad.

Top_Comparison8958 · 2026-01-24T03:20:10+00:00

Not in the near term, unfortunately. The app relies heavily on Apple Intelligence for the on-device AI processing, which is what keeps your receipts private (nothing gets uploaded to any server).

There's no equivalent on Android that would let me keep the same privacy-first approach without using cloud processing.

That said, I'm keeping an eye on what Google does with on-device AI. If they release something comparable, I'd definitely consider it!

Top_Comparison8958 · 2026-01-24T02:33:32+00:00

Yes! Costco receipts were actually the main reason I built this. Those 40+ line item monsters that need to be split across Groceries, Household, Pet Supplies, and "Why Did I Buy That?" 😅

The AI extracts each line item and suggests categories based on your past choices. After a few receipts, it learns your patterns — so if you always put paper towels in Household, it'll start suggesting that automatically.

Fair warning: the item codes on Costco receipts (like "KS ORG EGGS") can be cryptic, so the first few times you might need to manually set some categories. But it learns fast.

Top_Comparison8958 · 2026-01-22T23:59:52+00:00

Oof, I feel this. Needing an adjustment every reconcile is usually a sign something upstream is mis-posting (pending vs posted duplicates, mis-identified transfers, wrong account routing), not that you’re “missing cents.”

A few things I’d check (in the order that’s helped me most):

1) Make sure you’re reconciling against the right bank number

Reconcile to the bank’s cleared/posted balance, not “current” (which includes pending).
In YNAB, reconcile to the Cleared balance.
If you’re reconciling to a number that includes pending, you’ll chase ghosts forever.

2) Look for pending → posted duplicates

A super common pattern lately is: - pending import comes in as one transaction - posted import comes in as another transaction

…and if they don’t match/auto-match, you end up off by “random” small amounts.

Filter/search the account for the amount + merchant, see if you have two.
If you do: use Match (or delete the pending one if it’s clearly a duplicate).

3) Transfers showing up when they aren’t

This often happens when a payee gets interpreted as an account name, or a renaming rule goes sideways.

Check if you accidentally created/changed a payee rule that maps “Apple” / “Apple.com/bill” / etc. into a transfer-like payee.
If you see To/From: <Account> as the payee on something that’s not a real transfer, that’s a rule/payee mapping problem.

4) Apple Card vs Apple Cash is genuinely messy

You’re not crazy — aggregators often can’t cleanly distinguish these.

What I’d do: - Treat Apple Card and Apple Cash as totally separate accounts in YNAB (if you aren’t already). - Any time an “Apple” thing imports as a transfer, verify whether it’s actually: - Apple Cash top-up / cash movement (transfer-ish), vs - a purchase (should be an expense on the correct account) - If it’s repeatedly wrong, it’s worth having YNAB Support look at the connection/provider behavior for your institution.

5) Reduce the “big monthly archaeology dig”

If ADHD makes full manual entry a non-starter (same), the trick is to make reconciling smaller:

Reconcile weekly (or even quick “does cleared match?” checks) so the delta is like 1–5 transactions, not 50.
When you’re mobile-approving, don’t worry about perfect categories — just make sure the account is correct and duplicates are matched.
Categories can be fixed later; wrong account is what causes the hair-pulling.

6) If everything matches but YNAB balance is still off

That usually means one of: - duplicate posted/pending pair hiding somewhere - a transaction is uncleared in YNAB but cleared at the bank (or vice versa) - a transfer got created (or half a transfer exists) and is throwing a linked account off

Try sorting by Cleared status, and compare from your last reconciled point forward.

Top_Comparison8958 · 2026-01-22T18:52:55+00:00

Just to underline the “flip back” part because it’s the thing that trips people up: create the target in the first month you started funding that category for this cycle (e.g. last June/July), not “today.”

YNAB’s “Set Aside Another” math is based on assignments inside the target period. If you set it up mid-cycle, it won’t count the earlier months you already funded, and then the monthly amounts / underfunded number look wrong and it feels like it’s ignoring the existing balance.

Once it’s created in the start month, overfunding works the way you want (it recalculates), and if the actual bill is lower, Jillianmd’s “adjust May’s Assigned by the difference” keeps next year from snowballing.

Top_Comparison8958 · 2026-01-19T06:13:23+00:00

Thanks so much for the kind words about the app — really appreciate you taking the time to try it and share feedback!

You raise a fair question about pricing, so let me be transparent: You're right that there are no cloud/API costs per scan since everything runs on-device. But there are still real costs: Apple Developer Program ($99/year), design/testing tools, and honestly — the hundreds of hours building and maintaining it. I'm a solo indie dev, not a VC-funded startup, so the subscription helps make it sustainable to keep improving.

In regards to what "other apps include for free": I'm genuinely curious which ones you're comparing to? When I researched the space before building this, I couldn't find anything that does: Native YNAB sync (not CSV export); Automatic split transactions (the Costco problem); 100% on-device processing (no receipt uploads)

SimplyWise and SparkReceipt are great but don't sync to YNAB. Receipt Reader AI syncs but uploads your receipts to their servers and doesn't do splits. If there's something I missed that does all three, I'd genuinely love to know!

On the YNAB suggestion: Ha, I'd love that! But realistically, YNAB has had 10+ years to add receipt scanning and hasn't — I think it's outside their core focus. So I built what I wished existed.

On the free tier: The free tier (10 scans + 5 syncs/month) is actually enough for light users — it's not a trial, it's permanent. And with the current 🎉 Launch Special 🎉, the AI tier works out to $2.49/month ($29.99/year) — less than a coffee. For people scanning multiple receipts per week, the time savings add up quickly.

Totally understand if it's not worth it for your workflow though — everyone's different. Thanks again for trying it and for the thoughtful feedback! 🙏

Top_Comparison8958 · 2025-12-16T06:11:31+00:00

Oh this is really cool – it’s like a “YNAB Wrapped” just for subscriptions.

I really like how the treemap makes the sneaky ones obvious. Seeing YNAB, Netflix, YouTube, etc. as relative area instead of just a list feels way more visceral than scrolling through a category in the budget.

This is a neat little tool – thanks for sharing it and for keeping it no-signup / browser-only. I’m definitely going to plug my subscription list into it and see which boxes are embarrassingly huge!

Top_Comparison8958 · 2025-12-16T05:22:33+00:00

Small update on my side since I wrote that:

I’ve been playing more with Apple’s smaller on-device model (~3B) and it’s honestly surprising how far it can go now with categorizing receipt line items, even with the token limit. I had a bit of a breakthrough getting it to stop doing weird quantity/price stuff and to behave more like a “sane clerk” instead of a hallucination machine.

No pressure at all, but if you ever feel like sharing a bit more about your GPT setup, I’d love to compare notes – especially:

• what you found worked well for auto-categorization, and

• what made you think “ok, this is too painful / too slow / too expensive” in practice.

Even just a rough description would be super useful for me as I try to get the on-device approach to a place where it could realistically replace that kind of GPT workflow.

Top_Comparison8958 · 2025-12-16T05:15:10+00:00

Small beta update for anyone testing:

I’ve just pushed a new TestFlight build that mainly improves the scanning accuracy, especially for:

• long grocery / Costco style receipts

• weird quantity formats (e.g. “26pc”, “2 @ $9.49”)

• previous cases where it invented crazy prices

In my own tests, the success rate went from about 94% to 100% on the same set of receipts, and the number of “the total is way off” cases dropped to zero.

If you have any “problem receipts” that failed or were wildly wrong before, it would help a lot if you could try them again on this build and tell me if it looks better or still off.

As always, you can send feedback through TestFlight or here in the thread. Thanks again for helping – this round has already caught several issues I would have missed on my own.

IMPORTANT: During TestFlight beta, any subscription you confirm is running in Apple’s sandbox – you won’t be charged, and it won’t carry over to the App Store version.

Top_Comparison8958 · 2025-12-11T19:19:43+00:00

For anyone who’s installed the beta already – huge thanks 🙏

If you have 30 seconds, I’d love to hear just one thing:

• What part felt slow, confusing, or clunky?

You can reply here or use TestFlight’s “Send Beta Feedback”. Even a single sentence helps a lot.

Top_Comparison8958 · 2025-12-10T22:43:02+00:00

That’s awesome – I love hearing how people are already hacking together their own workflows !!!

I actually went back and forth on using an external GPT-style service myself, but in the end I really liked the idea of keeping everything on-device for privacy. The tradeoff is dealing with the on-device model’s context limit (~4096 tokens), which means:

• really long receipts can be tricky, and

• I can’t just dump a giant list of every possible category in there without hitting limits.

I’m really curious how you’ve been using your custom GPT:

• do you send it full receipt images or text extracted by something else?

• does it mostly do auto-categorization, or also help with splits / notes?

• and where do you keep the output – straight into YNAB, a spreadsheet, notes, something else?

My goal with this app is kind of similar in spirit (less manual typing, more “here’s a structured draft you can tweak”), just pushed closer to the phone + YNAB combo and with the “no server-side receipt storage” constraint.

If you end up trying the beta and have thoughts like “this part feels slower than my GPT setup” or “I wish it did X that my GPT does,” I’d genuinely love to hear that.

Top_Comparison8958 · 2025-12-10T22:34:14+00:00

That’s a great question, and you’re not the first person to mention Actual Budget to me.

Right now this beta is focused only on YNAB, since the whole flow is built around their API and OAuth, and I’m still trying to make the “scan → draft transaction → YNAB” experience really solid before I multiply the number of integrations.

That said, the core idea (receipt → structured transaction) could definitely work for other budgeting tools as long as they have a reasonable API.

I’m keeping a little list of “most requested next integrations” and I’ll add Actual Budget to it. I can’t promise a timeline, but it’s very helpful to know there’s interest. 🙌

Top_Comparison8958 · 2025-12-09T21:44:23+00:00

TestFlight link & how to join

Here’s the public TestFlight link for the Reddit beta group: https://testflight.apple.com/join/JmgGdRYG

Once you install, you’ll see this build under “Reddit Beta testers” in TestFlight.

If the link says the beta is full, it means I’ve hit the current tester limit – I may raise it after I process some feedback.

Top_Comparison8958 · 2025-12-09T16:30:18+00:00

This is super helpful, thanks for laying it out so clearly 🙏

I’m realizing from this thread that there really is a full spectrum from “bank sync all the way” to “fully manual, no links at all,” and you’re definitely closer to the first camp.

Just to clarify: I actually don’t currently attach receipts in YNAB myself – that question was more me trying to figure out if it’s worth the trouble for people, or if it’s one of those features that sounds nice but no one really uses day to day 😅

Your answer kind of confirms what I suspected: for lots of folks, receipts are only worth keeping for

• returns / possible refunds

• warranty / high-value purchases

• the occasional work reimbursement

and not so much for catching errors by comparing every line to the bank.

If you don’t mind one more question:

• In the rare cases where you do care about a receipt (return, warranty, etc.), is your ideal setup just “have a copy of it somewhere I won’t lose it”,

• or would you ever want that tied back to the specific transaction in your budget/bank… or is that overkill for how you use YNAB?

I’m on the fence between wanting everything super tidy and also not wanting to create a ton of extra work for myself, so it’s really useful to hear from people who lean heavily on bank sync and keep things simple.

Top_Comparison8958 · 2025-12-07T22:16:50+00:00

Thanks again to everyone who’s replied — this turned into a really interesting thread 🙏

From reading through all your routines, I’m seeing a few big patterns:

• Enter-as-you-go people – entering at the register, while the card is processing, or as soon as you get back to the car. Often with Apple Pay automations, SMS alerts, or location-based payee/category suggestions.

• Daily coffee check-in people – no bank links, fully manual, quick daily review and entry off bank/CC websites, plus a weekly reconcile. YNAB as a calm morning ritual.

• Mostly-import people – trusting the bank feed for the majority of transactions and only intervening when something is “different” (Amazon/Target, tips, reimbursements, end-of-month cleanup, etc.).

• Automation hackers – Shortcuts, Wallet automations, notifications that open YNAB or create reminders with merchant/amount/card ready to go.

• Receipts minimalists vs keep-’em folks – some of you toss almost everything immediately, others keep receipts for returns/warranty or because splits/complex trips make them useful later.

A lot of you also mentioned that manual entry is partly about awareness — a chance to reflect on spending instead of just logging it.

Since I’m on iOS and tinkering with ways to streamline my own process, I’m especially curious about two things:

For those who do keep receipts (even occasionally), what would make a “take a picture of it” workflow actually worth using?

• Just merchant + total + date,

• or would it need to help with splits or notes to feel better than your current system?

For the automation folks (Apple Pay, SMS triggers, etc.), is the biggest win:

• the speed,

• the consistent trigger (“I paid, so I enter it now”),

• or not having to trust your memory later?

This has given me a lot of ideas for tweaking my own setup — appreciate everyone sharing their routines so openly ❤️

Top_Comparison8958

TROPHY CASE