When Ready to Assign is Negative in YNAB: An Overview

When Ready to Assign is Negative: An Overview

May 28 2025 7:22pm • Est. Read Time: 6 MIN

Manage Ready to Assign when it's negative and you have more money assigned to your spending categories than is actually available in your accounts. Review the common causes of a negative Ready to Assign, and learn how to address them.

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How to Check for a Negative Ready to Assign in YNAB: Explains how to know if Ready to Assign is negative in your plan, based on your platform
What's the Solution?: Explains how to resolve a negative Ready to Assign and what can cause this behavior in the first place
Basic Overassigning: Explains how overassigning can be a key culprit for negative Ready to Assign amounts
Past Overspending: Explains how past month overspending affects your current month's Ready to Assign amount
Reconciliation Balance Adjustments: Explains how balance adjustments interact with the Ready to Assign amount
Categorizing Outflows to Inflow: Ready to Assign: Explains why outflows should not be categorized to Inflow: Ready to Assign and how it affects your plan numbers
Overassigned in a Future Month: Explains how assigning and adjusting funds in future months can affect the current month's Ready to Assign amount

How to Check for a Negative Ready to Assign in YNAB

Web
iOS
Android

If you only assign money in the current month, your most current Ready to Assign amount is available in the current month. If Ready to Assign is negative, you'll notice a red bar at the top of your plan with a warning saying "You assigned more than you have".

If you are getting a month ahead ↗️, Ready to Assign is current in the future-most month. This means you may not see a negative Ready to Assign in the current month due to overassigning in the future. It can appear as if Ready to Assign is at $0.00, even if it isn't. Check the Assigned in Future Months section of the right sidebar for a red alert if you're getting a month ahead.

If you only assign money in the current month, your most current Ready to Assign amount is available in the current month. You'll notice a red banner displaying you've "Assigned Too Much."

If you are getting a month ahead ↗️, Ready to Assign is current in the future-most month. This means you may not see a negative Ready to Assign in the current month if you've reassigned from the future. It can appear as if Ready to Assign is at $0.00, even if it isn't. To check for a negative Ready to Assign while getting a month ahead, follow these steps:

Tap the Plan tab at the bottom of the app, then toggle on Spotlight at the top.
Check for a red alert in the Assigned in Future Months section.

If you only assign money in the current month, your most current Ready to Assign amount is available in the current month. You'll notice a red banner displaying you've "Assigned Too Much."

Tap the Plan tab at the bottom of the app, then toggle on Categories at the top.
Tap the month at the top.
Review the future-most month for a red banner displaying you've "Assigned Too Much".

What's the Solution?

In most cases, the solution is to move money ↗️ from your spending categories back to Ready to Assign until it’s a nice, happy $0.00 again. The exception is if your bank account has a negative balance (i.e. it's overdrawn), in which case you don’t have money to move back to Ready to Assign—check out this article for step-by-step help getting out of overdraft ↗️.

How do I know what caused it in order to prevent this in the future?

If none of your accounts are overdrawn, there are several other scenarios that can cause Ready to Assign to be negative.

Basic Overassigning
Past Overspending
Reconciliation Balance Adjustments
Categorizing Outflows to Inflow: Ready to Assign
Reassigning from the Future

Let's review each of them!

Basic Overassigning

You’ve got $500 in the bank, but you plan $600 for that swanky new luxury bird feeder with built-in squirrel-ejector. Except you’ve only got $500. Because you can only assign money that you have available, when you assigned the $600—BOOM! Ready to Assign = -$100. Gotta move $100 back to Ready to Assign and bring it back to $0.00.

Why isn't my income showing up in Ready to Assign?

If you add income ↗️ while Ready to Assign is negative in the current month or in any future month, YNAB will automatically apply that income to cover the overassigned amount. So if you add income and some or all of it is missing from this month’s Ready to Assign, consider these overassigned scenarios in the present and future months to figure out where that money has gone.

Past Overspending

When the month rolls over ↗️, cash overspending (red) in the previous month reduces Ready to Assign. Not sure how you ended up with that amount? Click Ready to Assign on the plan header ↗️ (in the web app only). You'll have a line total for "Cash overspending in [past month]" on the Ready to Assign Breakdown window.

Those overspent funds have left your bank account, so they’re no longer available in your plan. You don’t need to go back to last month’s plan!

Move money back to Ready to Assign in the current month until it is $0.00.

Reconciliation Balance Adjustments

We all have those moments when life gets particularly busy and we don’t reconcile our accounts ↗️ as often as we know we should. Next thing you know, it’s three weeks later and YNAB says you have $2000 available in your checking account—but you’re checking your banking app on your phone and you know you only have $1500. So you reconcile the account and make a Reconciliation Balance Adjustment ↗️ to get things back on track quickly. This pulls the non-existent $500 from your account balance—and from Ready to Assign. You’ll need to move money from your spending categories back to Ready to Assign until it’s no longer negative.

Categorizing Outflows to Inflow: Ready to Assign

Aside from Reconciliation Balance Adjustments (which are automatically created by YNAB), outflows should not be assigned to Inflow: Ready to Assign. Assigning an outflow to Inflow: Ready to Assign will reduce the amount available in Ready to Assign by the amount of the outflow, which could cause it to go negative.

If you have an outflow transaction from an account, be sure to categorize it to a spending category (and assign money to cover it in that category). If no category fits the transaction, you can always create a new one.

Overassigned in a Future Month

When assigning money into future months, the most current Ready to Assign amount is in the future-most month.

How does overassigning in the future occur? Overassigning in a future month can occur in a few ways, but most commonly occurs when you have enough money for all the assigning you've done in the current month, but not enough for all the assigning you've done in future months.

When Ready to Assign reaches $0.00 and you assign more money in an earlier month, less money rolls forward and is available to be assigned to your categories in future months. When this happens, the future month's Ready to Assign turns negative.

To determine whether you are overrassigned in a future month:

Check for uncategorized transactions ↗️.
Cover any cash overspending ↗️ in the current month.
Check for a negative Ready to Assign in the future-most month.

The solution to being overassigned in a future month? Move money from spending categories back to Ready to Assign until it reaches $0.00 in the future-most month, and make sure that no assigned value becomes negative in a future month ↗️.

Related Resources

Didn't find the information you needed? Check out these related options!

Want to verify Ready to Assign is correct and confirm the amount of money in YNAB matches your balances at the bank? How to Perform a YNAB Checkup ↗️

Past overspending leading to overassigned amounts in the current month? Handling Overspending in YNAB ↗️

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