Turn on the running balance in your account register, put your recurring bills and paychecks in as scheduled transactions, and YNAB will show a projected balance beside each upcoming row.
It’s a good trick and it’s free. It also shows only the next occurrence of each bill and paycheck, not the ones after that.
Turn on the running balance
Open an account on the web app and click View, next to the search bar. Check Show Running Balance, and a Balance column appears on the right side of the register.
You’ll do that once per account. The setting lives in your browser, so a new device means turning it on again.
YNAB sorts the register by date descending by default, newest at the top, and scheduled transactions sit above that in their own collapsible Scheduled section.
So the projection runs up the page, not down it. The furthest-out balance is at the top, and scrolling down walks you back toward today.
Schedule what you already know about
Add each recurring bill and paycheck as a scheduled transaction. YNAB asks for the date of the next occurrence and a frequency, then files it in a collapsible Scheduled section at the top of the register.
Scheduled rows show up gray, because they haven’t cleared yet. They don’t move any money: YNAB’s own guide says a scheduled transaction “will not yet affect your plan.”
Good to know
A scheduled transaction still asks to be funded. If a category doesn't hold enough to cover one due later this month, YNAB turns it yellow with a calendar icon, and Auto-Assign's Underfunded button will ask you for the money.
You can snooze a target to quiet it. You can't snooze a scheduled transaction, so an underfunded one keeps counting and stays yellow.
That’s worth knowing before you go scheduling everything you can think of.
How far the running balance gets you
Genuinely far. You end up with a dated list of what’s coming and a balance beside each row, which is most of the work.
Say it’s the 1st, you’re sitting at $2,500, and rent, the electric bill, and a grocery run all land before your paycheck. In register order, that reads bottom to top:
| Date | Payee | Outflow | Inflow | Balance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scheduled | ||||
| Jun 10 | Paycheck | $1,800 | $2,830 | |
| Jun 7 | Groceries | $150 | $1,030 | |
| Jun 5 | Electric | $120 | $1,180 | |
| Jun 3 | Rent | $1,200 | $1,300 | |
| Posted | ||||
| Jun 1 | Opening balance | $2,500 |
The number that answers “can I afford it” isn’t the $2,500 in your account today. It’s the $1,030 you bottom out at on the 7th, and the register puts it in front of you without any arithmetic on your part.
For the next week or two, that’s the question you actually asked. If your bills are mostly monthly and your paycheck is steady, this may be all you ever need.
Where the projection stops
It shows the next occurrence, not the next several
A scheduled transaction in YNAB carries a single upcoming date. The setup flow asks you for “the date of the next occurrence,” and YNAB’s own API exposes exactly one date_next field per scheduled transaction, with no list of future dates behind it.
When that occurrence posts, the date advances to the following one.
So the register shows you next Friday’s paycheck. It doesn’t show the one after that, or the three grocery runs in between, or the second time the gym bills you.
Limitation
The further out the date, the less of your real spending is drawn on the page. A balance six weeks out looks healthier than it is, because most of those six weeks hasn't been filled in.
That’s a deliberate design, and it’s consistent with how YNAB works. The method is built on the money you have right now, so the register surfaces the next thing you have to act on rather than a pile of things you can’t do anything about yet.
It’s one account at a time
You turn the running balance on inside a single account’s register, and it tracks that account.
If your paycheck lands in checking and you keep a cushion in savings, there’s no column anywhere that nets the two together. You’re still the one holding both numbers in your head.
What I built instead
Moneylight keeps its own list of bills and paychecks, separate from YNAB’s scheduled transactions. You import your bills from your YNAB categories, then set each one’s amount, cadence, and next due date.
Paychecks you enter by hand, once.
From that list it projects every occurrence out to your horizon, not just the next one. It groups them into weeks, Sunday through Saturday, and each week ends on a projected balance.
It reads your YNAB data and never writes to it. It can’t assign a dollar, move one, or edit anything in your Plan, so the budget you built stays exactly as you left it.
It also reads across every checking account you select, so the cushion in savings and the paycheck in checking land in the same number. The lowest week on the chart gets marked, and when it drops below the thresholds you set, it’s labeled your Tight Week.
If you want the longer version of why a weekly view answers a different question than a monthly plan, that’s why you’d add a cash flow forecast on top of YNAB.
Common questions
Can I see the running balance on my phone?
No. YNAB makes the running balance available on the web app on a computer, or on an iPad through Safari. The moment you'd most like to run the check, standing in a store, is the moment you don't have it.
Do I have to turn it on for every account?
Yes. You select Show Running Balance in each account register you want it in, and the preference is saved in that browser on that machine. Switch devices, clear cookies, or open an incognito window and you'll set it again.
Why did my running balance stop making sense?
Probably the sort order. YNAB ties each balance figure to the transaction preceding it in the default date sort, and deliberately doesn't recalculate the column when you re-sort, so sorting by payee or category to hunt something down leaves it meaningless until you select the Balance column again and reset it.
Does scheduling a transaction change my budget?
Not on its own. A scheduled transaction sits in the Scheduled section and doesn't move money until the date arrives, though YNAB will count an underfunded one when you use Auto-Assign's Underfunded button.
Want to see past the next occurrence?
Moneylight reads your YNAB data and projects every occurrence into weekly balances, so a tight week shows up before you get to it. The guide covers setup, and how to read a week once you have one.
Demo data, no account needed.