Migrating from YNAB
Lunch Money makes it easy to migrate your existing data from YNAB (or any other app/bank providing CSV exports) and continue tracking your personal finance.
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Before you start
Thinking about switching from You Need A Budget (YNAB) to Lunch Money? We’re here to help make the transition as smooth as possible!
In this guide, we’ll walk through the biggest differences between the two apps and show you how to add budget categories and historical transactions, set up budget rollovers, and make the most of Lunch Money’s features to continue budgeting with confidence.
Tip: One of the best things about Lunch Money is flexibility. We don’t lock you into a specific budgeting philosophy, so whether you want to stick with zero-based budgeting or try a different approach, we provide the tools you need to budget your way! Check out the budgeting guide to learn more.
Key differences between YNAB and Lunch Money
Budgeting
One of the biggest differences to understand when moving to Lunch Money is that budgeting is based on transaction activity, not account balances. This means that your available budget for each period is calculated based on your income transactions for that budget period, rather than on the total available cash in your accounts.
Because budgeting is transaction-based, all expenses reduce your "Left to budget" amount, regardless of whether the purchase was made from a cash account or on a credit card.
If you prefer budgeting based on your total available cash (similar to YNAB), you can absolutely set that up in Lunch Money with a bit of manual configuration. This typically involves enabling rollovers and setting starting balances for both individual budget categories and the General Pool.
Transfers
In Lunch Money, transfers between your own accounts (such as credit card payments or moving money into savings) appear as two separate transactions: one debit from the originating account and a credit to the destination account.
These transactions are treated as transfers when categorized under a transfer category. By default, you may already have a 'Payment, Transfer' category set up. This category includes two helpful properties — ‘exclude from totals’ and ‘exclude from budget’ — so transfers won’t impact your income, expenses, or your budget totals.
If you prefer to see transfers as a single entry in the Transactions table, you can also group debit and credit transactions together.
How to import your transactions (and categories) from YNAB into Lunch Money
Importing your historical transactions into Lunch Money is made easy with our CSV import feature! During the import process, you’ll be able to map your columns, categories, and accounts, then review everything.
We recommend setting up your accounts first on the Accounts page, while categories can either be created ahead of time or added during the import process.
Tip: If you have a complex category system (with groups and subcategories), you may find it easier to set up the categories on the Categories page first. You can learn more here.
Follow these steps to import your transactions:
Go to the Transactions page in Lunch Money and click "Import"
Click "Upload a new file (CSV or PDF)"
Choose the account you wish to import the transactions into and upload the file
Proceed through the import process to map your columns, categories, and accounts and review the date and amount type notations
Review your transactions and complete the import
Note: Category group hierarchies can’t currently be imported through CSV. If you haven’t already created your category groups before importing, your categories will be imported individually. You can reorganize and group them later on the Categories page.
For a complete walkthrough of the CSV import feature, click here.
How to set up your zero-based budget in Lunch Money
1️⃣ Step 1: Set your budgeting period
Before you start budgeting, choose your budgeting cycle. Do you budget monthly, bi-weekly, or quarterly? Do you want your budget to start on a specific day of the month, like the 10th or the 15th? You can learn more about setting your budgeting period here.
2️⃣ Step 2: Enable rollovers
To work with a zero-based budgeting system, you’ll want to enable rollovers for both the General Pool and your individual categories. This ensures that all unused money is carried over to the next period.
Step-by-step guides:
If you already have accumulated balances in certain categories or in the General Pool, you can enter those amounts as starting balances when enabling rollovers.
Note: If you're starting mid-month and already have income transactions recorded, subtract that income from your copied “total available cash” amount before you enter starting balances. Otherwise, you may accidentally count the same income twice for the current period.
3️⃣ Step 3: Allocate funds to categories
You’re ready to budget! To assign money to a category, click the cell under the ‘Budgeted’ column for that category. Learn how.
As you budget money into categories, funds will move from your General Pool into individual category pools until your Budget Status Card shows "Balanced for this period", meaning every dollar has been given a job:
To move funds between categories, you can use the ‘Move’ feature. Learn more here.
For a full overview of Lunch Money’s budgeting tools and features, check out the complete budgeting guide.
Additional Feature Highlights & Differences
🧩 Budgeting Style
YNAB follows a rigid zero-based envelope budgeting method.
⚡Lunch Money gives you the flexibility to build a budgeting system that works for you! Learn more.
📆 Custom Budgeting Periods
YNAB only supports monthly budget cycles.
⚡Lunch Money lets you set custom budgeting periods — weekly, bi-weekly, twice a month, and/or custom start dates — perfect for irregular pay cycles, or anyone wanting more control. Learn more.
🤝 Collaboration
YNAB only allows membership in one group, and the group manager has full visibility into all your budget accounts.
⚡Lunch Money lets you invite and collaborate across unlimited budget accounts, while giving you full control over which budget accounts remain private or shared. Learn more.
📎 File attachments
YNAB doesn’t natively support adding attachments.
⚡Attach receipts and documents directly to Lunch Money using formats like PDF, PNG, JPG, HEIF, and more. Learn more.
🏷️ Color-coded tags
YNAB only supports up to 6 “flags”.
⚡Lunch Money supports unlimited custom color-coded tags for more detailed tracking and organization. Learn more.
🌍 Native multi-currency
YNAB relies on third-party plugins to mimic multi-currency support.
⚡Lunch Money includes native multi-currency support across the platform, making it easy to budget and track finances across different currencies. Learn more.
🪙 Track your crypto portfolio
YNAB doesn't support crypto portfolio tracking.
⚡Connect your crypto wallet or manually track coins to see your balances in real-time, in your preferred currency. Learn more.
FAQs
I've created new categories. What should I do to ensure compatibility within Lunch Money?
Set category properties
In Lunch Money, new categories will generally be created as expense categories by default. To define a category as an income category, you will need to enable the "Treat as income" property for that category via the Categories page. You may also set other category properties, such as "Exclude from totals" and "Exclude from budget".
To learn more about category properties, click here.
Set-up autocategorization
If you plan to sync transactions automatically from your bank, you'll want to ensure your auto-categorizations are set up properly. This involves mapping your existing categories to Plaid's taxonomy.
Imported transactions include metadata from Plaid including their best-guess as to the category of the transaction. Within Lunch Money, we also have a rules engine where you can create more complex rules to categorize or otherwise modify these transactions. However, auto-categorization is an easy first step to avoid a slew of uncategorized transactions when you start syncing.
To set up auto-categorization, click here or follow the link from the Categories page. Note that the button link only appears if you have actively-syncing accounts.
I'm having trouble, where can I get support?
If you need any assistance or have any questions, feel free to email us at support@lunchmoney.app or open an support ticket from the 'HELP' menu at the top right within the Lunch Money app! 😊
You can also join our community Discord to ask questions, share feedback, and interact with other Lunch Money users!
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