Learning centre · Start here · 7 min · screens from October 2026

Coming from YNAB

You already know the method. Mintro is the same zero-based envelope budgeting, except that your agent does the sorting for you. This guide lists what each YNAB term is called in Mintro, explains how to bring your budget across, and is honest about what Mintro does not have yet.

What you'll do

Read Mintro's screens using the YNAB words you already know
Export your YNAB budget and have your agent rebuild it, or import your transactions yourself
See how credit cards are handled, which is the same as in YNAB
Know what Mintro does not have yet, so nothing surprises you

Step 1

What YNAB's words are called in Mintro

Most things have the same name in both apps. The rest differ by one word, and the table below lists them.

YNAB says	Mintro says	and means
Budget	Budget	The container for everything else. You can have several: this year, last year, the side business.
Category group	Category	A group of envelopes. It is only for display; Mintro never acts on it.
Category	Envelope	The place the money for one purpose is kept.
Ready to Assign	Ready to assign	The same headline, the same meaning.
Assigned / Activity / Available	Assigned / Activity / Available	The same three columns, plus what carried in from last month.
Target	Target	Monthly, weekly on the day you pick, by a date, a balance to keep, or a debt to pay off.
Cover overspending	Cover	Move money from another envelope, or from Ready to assign, to an overspent one.
Categorize	File	Putting a transaction into an envelope. A split puts it in several.
Credit Card Payments	Credit Card Payments	One payment envelope for each card, created when you add the card.
Scheduled transactions	Bills	Payments and income you tell Mintro will repeat. Upcoming shows what is due.
Reconcile	Reconcile	Cleared and reconciled, with a check against your statement first.
Age of Money	Age of money	The same idea, shown at the top of the budget and on Reports.

Mintro's budget screen: ready to assign at the top, the envelope check across the page under it, the cashflow chart for all cash, then categories, envelopes, assigned, activity, available — The budget screen. If you have used YNAB, you can read it without the table.

The budget screen. If you have used YNAB, you can read it without the table.

Step 2

Bring your budget across

Export from YNAB (the budget as one spreadsheet and the register of transactions as another) and give both to ChatGPT, Claude, or Kimi with the sentence above. It turns your category groups into categories and your categories into envelopes, sets the targets, creates the accounts, imports your transaction history, and files every transaction into its envelope. What comes across is the shape of your budget and its history. What does not come across is what you assigned in past months in YNAB: you start the current month with your money in Ready to assign and give it jobs once, the way you did on your first day in YNAB.

Not using a chat? You can bring the transactions across yourself. On Accounts, choose Import and drop in YNAB's register export as it is. Mintro reads its accounts, payees, memos, outflows and inflows, shows you every transaction before anything is saved, and can file each one into the envelope with the same name. A Transfer : Savings row is recorded as a transfer between the two accounts, not as spending, and a split comes across as one transaction filed into each of its envelopes. Importing the same file twice is safe.

The Accounts screen showing everything: filed rows with their envelopes, bank state per row — Every transaction in one register. Each one shows whether it has been filed into an envelope, and separately whether the bank has it as pending, cleared, or reconciled.

Every transaction in one register. Each one shows whether it has been filed into an envelope, and separately whether the bank has it as pending, cleared, or reconciled.

here's my YNAB export. Rebuild my budget in Mintro: the categories as categories, the categories as envelopes with their targets, and import the register into the matching accounts. Then file everything.

Step 3

Credit cards work the same way as in YNAB

When you buy groceries on the Visa, the money moves from Groceries to the Visa's payment envelope. When you pay the card from chequing, the payment envelope goes down by that amount. The purchase was budgeted once, at the store, and paying the card is a transfer, not new spending. It is exactly the system you know: each card gets its own payment envelope, created automatically in a category called Credit Card Payments.

The Credit Card Payments category with a payment envelope per card and the money reserved for each — Credit Card Payments. The Visa's envelope holds $2,394.15: $2,132.34 that this month's purchases moved into it, and $261.81 carried in from last month.

Credit Card Payments. The Visa's envelope holds $2,394.15: $2,132.34 that this month's purchases moved into it, and $261.81 carried in from last month.

Step 4

Your agent does the sorting

The difference is who files each transaction into its envelope. In YNAB, you do, often on a Sunday. In Mintro, you add Mintro to claude.ai or ChatGPT as a connector and sign in, or create a key in Settings and add the connection settings to any other agent app. Then you say “file this week”. Every entry records which key made it, so in a household two people can each use their own chat.

Settings, the Agents tab: connection settings for your agent as an MCP settings file, one command, or the web API, with example prompts to copy — Settings → Agents. The connection settings an agent app needs, with a placeholder where your key goes, and example prompts to copy.

Settings → Agents. The connection settings an agent app needs, with a placeholder where your key goes, and example prompts to copy.

every Sunday: file the week, compare each envelope to its target, and message me the three that need attention