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I look at this from the opposite perspective. Seven years of YNAB4 trained me to include manual entry of every transaction, assigning categories, splitting it
by scotttopic 4y ago
I look at this from the opposite perspective. Seven years of YNAB4 trained me to include manual entry of every transaction, assigning categories, splitting it as necessary, etc right there at the moment I make the purchase. It's baked into my process, as that was one of the core components that the old YNAB taught. At this point I could never trust an automated system for everyday purchases, where it couldn't accurately know how to split transactions, or where to assign things (although scheduled bills I do input as recurring transactions so to an extent I do have some automation).
For example, take a trip to Walmart where you purchased things that cross like 3 or 4 categories. With a system relying on importing data from your bank, a couple days after the transaction posts you'll have this generic assignment to Walmart, and you must then try and remember how to split it (eg between Groceries, Clothes, Technology etc). Instead, I have my transaction manually sorted in my YNAB app before I've even left the store.
- equinoxmist 4y agoI thought this would be a problem for me and resisted using imports in YNAB... I changed to using it and I found I was more likely to actually keep on top of my budget knowing I didn't have to login to 2/3 different systems to start entering every transaction.
- rco8786 4y ago> For example, take a trip to Walmart where you purchased things that cross like 3 or 4 categories. I'm still waiting for the next step in these apps, where I connect my account to Walmart/Amazon/Target/etc and it can do item/category breakdowns automatically based on the actual line items in the order. Otherwise, I am with you. I use a much simpler system without categories but I manually enter every dollar I spend right when I spend it.
- yencabulator 4y agoIt seems the companies are actively trying to avoid that. Amazon order confirmation emails used to list the products. Now they don't. Some other company might use that information, so the user can't have it.
- rco8786 4y agoYea I think that's the big challenge. Plaid has somehow cracked this code for banking data, is it possible for someone to do it with retail data? edit Amazon does provide an Orders API that at a glance seems like it would work for this case, but there's probably some underlying restrictions I am unaware of. https://docs.developer.amazonservices.com/en_US/orders-2013-09-01/Orders_Overview.html https://docs.developer.amazonservices.com/en_US/orders-2013-...