Automatically Enable Running Balance

YNAB’s developers have added the ability to turn on and off the running balance in accounts but, by default, that setting is off.

If you’d prefer the reverse to be true — that running balances are always the default and you turn them off rarely, if ever — the Toolkit has the right setting for you. The Automatically Enable Running Balance setting does just that — automatically turns on running balances in all accounts. Turn them off the same way you’d normally have to turn them on — by clicking on the View menu and unchecking the box.

I’m with YNAB on this one — I see very little value in displaying the running balance on account, ever. The way that YNAB orders transactions by date and then in descending value amounts — an order that cannot be changed other than through a very temporary act of sorting by inflow or outflow value — makes it impossible to match YNAB’s transaction display order with that of a bank’s transaction order. That’s because banks order transactions by the date and time that a transaction clears. Replicating that order in YNAB isn’t possible.

Therefore, matching an account’s running balance at any one time to the bank’s running balance is a fool’s errand. An exercise in futility. If you’re not using the running balance to match to your bank, what are you using it for? Especially on a permanent or on-going basis?

Are there occasions where the running balance is useful? Yes. Would I ever want to have them turned on by default? Absolutely not. They’re a distraction. And worse, yet, a waste of valuable screen space.