You Need a Budget

Sync transactions to a You Need a Budget plan

You Need a Budget syncs bank transactions directly into your plan, keeping your ledger up to date.

Setup

1. Connect your You Need a Budget account

   Click Add Destination, select You Need a Budget, and sign in. Redbark Sync uses OAuth to connect to your You Need a Budget account.

2. Select a plan

   Choose the You Need a Budget plan where transactions should be synced.

3. Acknowledge the disclosure and save

   Tick the CDR disclosure checkbox confirming you understand data sent to You Need a Budget leaves Redbark’s control and is governed by YNAB’s own terms. Account selection happens later when you create a sync, via account mapping.

Creating a sync

When you create a sync with a You Need a Budget destination, two extra steps are available beyond the standard sync setup:

Account mapping

You can map each bank account to a different You Need a Budget account within the same plan. For example:

• CommBank transaction account → “Everyday Checking” in You Need a Budget
• CommBank credit card → “Visa Credit Card” in You Need a Budget
• ING savings → “Savings” in You Need a Budget

This lets you sync multiple bank accounts in a single sync, with each one writing to the correct You Need a Budget account.

Category mapping

You can optionally map bank transaction categories to You Need a Budget categories. If you set up mappings, those transactions will arrive in You Need a Budget with the matching category already applied. Any unmapped categories come through without a category, so you can categorise them in You Need a Budget manually or let You Need a Budget’s auto-categorisation handle it.

The bank categories available for mapping are: Bank Fees, Entertainment, Food & Drink, Government & Non-Profit, Home Improvement, Income, Loan Payments, Medical, Merchandise, Personal Care, Rent & Utilities, Services, Transfer In, Transfer Out, Transportation, and Travel.

Not all transactions have a category. See the transactions API reference for details.

How it works

On each sync, Redbark Sync:

1. Fetches posted transactions: pulls recent settled transactions from your connected bank accounts. Pending transactions are excluded to avoid duplicates.
2. Transforms to You Need a Budget format: maps fields to the You Need a Budget transaction schema (payee, amount in milliunits, memo, and optionally a mapped category).
3. Routes to accounts: sends each transaction to the correct You Need a Budget account based on your account mapping. The destination supports both per-account mode (multiple bank accounts mapped to distinct YNAB accounts) and bulk mode (all transactions to a single YNAB accountId set on the destination config).
4. Creates transactions: sends new transactions to You Need a Budget in batches of up to 500. Duplicates are automatically skipped using a unique import ID. All transactions are marked as cleared.

5-year history limit. You Need a Budget rejects any transaction dated more than 5 years before today. If your sync start date goes back further, Redbark Sync will fetch the full history from your bank but only forward transactions from the last 5 years to You Need a Budget. Older transactions are skipped silently.

Field mapping

Redbark transaction fields are mapped to You Need a Budget as follows:

Redbark field	You Need a Budget field	Notes
Merchant name	Payee name	Truncated to 50 characters. Left blank if no merchant name is available.
Amount + Direction	Amount	Converted to milliunits (amount x 1000). Debits are negative, credits are positive.
Category + Description + Extended	Memo	Joined with |, truncated to 200 characters. Includes the humanized category (if present), the description, and the extended description — or, if the extended description matches the description, the reference instead. Parts that are blank or duplicates are dropped.
Category	Category	Only set when a category mapping exists for the bank’s category code
Status	Cleared	Always set to cleared. Pending transactions are dropped upstream rather than represented as uncleared.
Date	Date	YYYY-MM-DD format. Uses the source account’s timezone when available (e.g. Pacific/Auckland for NZ accounts), otherwise falls back to the destination’s configured timezone (default Australia/Sydney).
Transaction ID	Import ID	SHA-256 hash for deduplication

You Need a Budget uses milliunits for amounts: multiply the dollar amount by 1000. For example, a $100.50 debit becomes -100500.

Deduplication

Each transaction is assigned a unique import_id derived from the Redbark transaction ID. You Need a Budget uses this to detect and skip duplicate transactions, so you can sync as often as you want without creating duplicates.

Authentication

You Need a Budget uses OAuth 2.0. Access tokens expire after 2 hours (a YNAB-side constant, not a Redbark guarantee) and are refreshed automatically before each sync. If your You Need a Budget session is revoked, re-authenticate from the destinations page.

Rate limits

YNAB enforces a limit of 200 requests per hour per access token. If a sync hits the limit, Redbark surfaces a clear 429 error and the sync fails — try again after the window resets.

Category mapping

The account-mapping UI hides categories that are flagged as hidden or deleted in YNAB, along with YNAB’s internal Credit Card Payments and Internal Master Category groups. Only user-visible categories appear in the picker.

Account remapping

If you change an account mapping to a different YNAB account, Redbark resets the sync’s lastDataAt and backfills the new resource so it doesn’t sit empty.

Tips

• New transactions are unapproved: synced transactions arrive as unapproved in You Need a Budget, so you can review and categorise them as part of your normal workflow.
• Memo for context: the memo field includes the category and description from your bank for extra context when categorising.
• Plan views: your synced transactions show up in all You Need a Budget views including your plan, accounts, reports, and age of money.