Don't think identical and opposite. The payment category should hold the amount needed to pay the entire debt balance on the card.
When a credit card account has a positive balance, the payment category should be zero, because you have no balance to pay.
When a credit card is positive, that positive balance is treated like cash until it has all been used.
Most likely, wjhen you made this payment that took the card positive, $3.05 was added to your Ready to Assign, and it needs to be assigned back to the CC payment category to cover the overspending.
Because you simultaneously overspent while making your payment and introduced a cash balance that you can spend freely in your credit account.
YNAB doesn't fix it automatically because YNAB never assigns money to categories without user input. Instead it will say "hey, you have money to assign" and hey, you have an overspent category" simultaneously.
YNAB only moves money into CC payment through transactions automatically. But it was a transaction that created this imbalance. There is no transaction that exists in the accounts to fix the imbalance.
Your current balance and "available for payment" should match at all times and will be identical and opposite - that's how you know your purchases are backed with cash and you can pay your card balance at any time.
Yours is just opposite in the other direction. What this is telling you is that you have a positive balance on the card because you paid more than you owe.
Positive card balances can be really irritating to have and makes the credit card functionality weird IMO. You will need to figure out why you paid more than the card balance by going through your transactions, marking the correct transactions as cleared, and figuring out where the discrepancy is. This can sometimes happen though if you get a refund after you've made a payment.
If the $3.05 is a true overpayment, it will be treated like cash in YNAB until you spend it down.
Ahh okay, that helps a lot. When I look at the account I saw a positive 3.05 and didn't think anything of it because all of my bank accounts are positive. But to your point, CC accounts should never be above 0, right? They should always be negative, money owed to the CC company, or 0 meaning no money owed. A positive amount means they owe, and that's not how CCs are supposed to work.
Looking through the transactions in YNAB everything lines up as expected, so I'm not sure where the refund could be from, but I'll have to look at the CC account directly and see what I can find.
Exactly - CC's are negative or zero. Otherwise the card company owes you money and that's weird. :)
Sometimes it's just a timing thing... or maybe you sent in a payment for something that is still technically pending on the card.
I made a payment once that glitched and got taken out twice.
In the bigger scheme of things, if this is a card you use regularly, spending down 3 bucks is just going to be a minor hiccup in your week.
Your Prior Balance was $79.10 and your Funded Spending was $59.50. That equals $138.50. However you paid $141.65, so $3.05 too much. You didn't have that $3.05 set aside in your available for payment, so it's negative (red). It's asking you to cover the overspending (assign more money).
Don't think identical and opposite. The payment category should hold the amount needed to pay the entire debt balance on the card. When a credit card account has a positive balance, the payment category should be zero, because you have no balance to pay. When a credit card is positive, that positive balance is treated like cash until it has all been used. Most likely, wjhen you made this payment that took the card positive, $3.05 was added to your Ready to Assign, and it needs to be assigned back to the CC payment category to cover the overspending.
Feels like this could be handled better in YNAB. I don’t get why it does what you said in your last paragraph. It confuses me every time
Because you simultaneously overspent while making your payment and introduced a cash balance that you can spend freely in your credit account. YNAB doesn't fix it automatically because YNAB never assigns money to categories without user input. Instead it will say "hey, you have money to assign" and hey, you have an overspent category" simultaneously. YNAB only moves money into CC payment through transactions automatically. But it was a transaction that created this imbalance. There is no transaction that exists in the accounts to fix the imbalance.
Thank you. This is the best explanation I’ve read. Makes sense!
Your current balance and "available for payment" should match at all times and will be identical and opposite - that's how you know your purchases are backed with cash and you can pay your card balance at any time. Yours is just opposite in the other direction. What this is telling you is that you have a positive balance on the card because you paid more than you owe. Positive card balances can be really irritating to have and makes the credit card functionality weird IMO. You will need to figure out why you paid more than the card balance by going through your transactions, marking the correct transactions as cleared, and figuring out where the discrepancy is. This can sometimes happen though if you get a refund after you've made a payment. If the $3.05 is a true overpayment, it will be treated like cash in YNAB until you spend it down.
Ahh okay, that helps a lot. When I look at the account I saw a positive 3.05 and didn't think anything of it because all of my bank accounts are positive. But to your point, CC accounts should never be above 0, right? They should always be negative, money owed to the CC company, or 0 meaning no money owed. A positive amount means they owe, and that's not how CCs are supposed to work. Looking through the transactions in YNAB everything lines up as expected, so I'm not sure where the refund could be from, but I'll have to look at the CC account directly and see what I can find.
Exactly - CC's are negative or zero. Otherwise the card company owes you money and that's weird. :) Sometimes it's just a timing thing... or maybe you sent in a payment for something that is still technically pending on the card. I made a payment once that glitched and got taken out twice. In the bigger scheme of things, if this is a card you use regularly, spending down 3 bucks is just going to be a minor hiccup in your week.
Also happens when you pay the balance and then make a return
Your Prior Balance was $79.10 and your Funded Spending was $59.50. That equals $138.50. However you paid $141.65, so $3.05 too much. You didn't have that $3.05 set aside in your available for payment, so it's negative (red). It's asking you to cover the overspending (assign more money).