Reports, and the age of your money

Reports opens on Overview. Pick the range above it: this month, three, six or twelve months, the year so far, last year, or any months you choose. The first row answers the main question: how much you kept over those months (green when you kept money, red when more went out than came in), beside what came in, what went out, and your age of money. Under it is a chart of your months: each month's spending stacked by category, or switched to what came in beside what went out. Point at a month to read its figures. Then What stood out: a card for each thing worth knowing (card debt that went up, an envelope that cost less than usual, your savings rate, the payee you paid most, or what your repeating bills cost in a year), with the figure and a link to the transactions behind it.

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1. 1Four tabs: Overview, Spending, Plan vs actual, and Income and savings.
2. 2The date range: this month, the last 3, 6 or 12 months, the year to date, last year, or any months you choose.
3. 3What stood out: each card has its figure and a link to what is behind it.

Spending groups the same money by category, by envelope, or by payee. The chart stacks each month's spending with the biggest groups at the bottom and everything else on top. The table under it lists every group with a small bar for each month, its total, its monthly average over the months it was active (so a budget that started in June is not averaged over a year with no data), its share, how its last month compared with usual, and how many transactions it took. Sort by any column, search by name, or show only what spent more or less than usual. Grouping by payee answers a question YNAB never answered well: how much went to Costco across every envelope it was filed into, on one line.

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1. 1Choose how to group spending: by category, envelope, or payee.

Plan vs actual starts with how many envelopes ran out of money. The chart puts what you assigned beside what you spent each month, with a dashed rule where your monthly targets came to; a month that spent more than was assigned shows red. Each category then gets two bars and a tick for its targets, and the table shows every envelope month by month, red where it ran out and green where its monthly target got its full amount. Filter it to the envelopes that ran out. Spending under it is neither good nor bad; it is money still in the envelope. Read this tab before changing a target: an envelope that goes over every month means the target is wrong, not that you failed.

Income and savings leads with what you kept. Its chart switches between four views: what came in beside what went out and what you kept, your savings rate, your age of money, and what was owed on cards at the end of each month. The figures behind the chart sit in a table under it. Then Bills that repeat lists every recurring bill with what it costs in a year, a number most people never add up. Net worth over time lives on Assets.

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1. 1Switch the chart between in and out, savings rate, age of money and card debt.

Think of a dollar you spent today. When did it arrive? That is the age of money: how many days, on average, a dollar sits in your accounts before it is spent. The Reyes household is at 76 days, so money they spent this week arrived in mid-August. A rising number means you are living on money that arrived a while ago, not this week's paycheque; a falling one means each paycheque is being spent faster than the last. It is the single best figure for telling whether the method is working for you.

Mintro can count a few habits: days in a row the inbox was emptied, months every envelope had what it needed, months every active account was reconciled, and months age of money held steady or rose. Streaks are off unless you turn them on. Quiet shows the counts on Reports only; On also adds a line to the budget. Nothing here is designed to make a bad month feel worse. A broken streak is just a number that starts again, not a notification. With streaks on or quiet, the Overview tab ends with a Streaks block: each streak you are on, beside your longest.