Skip to content

Planning

This is one of six groups these docs use purely to make Claude's capabilities easier to browse — every Planner deployment gives Claude all of them together. There's no setting to turn a group on or off individually.

This covers the categories you budget into, how much is assigned to each one for a given month, and moving money between categories — the "where is my money going, and where should it go" side of YNAB.

What you can ask

  • "What's my remaining balance in Groceries this month?"
  • "Set my Dining Out budget for this month to $150."
  • "Move $50 from Entertainment to Groceries."
  • "Create a new category called 'Pet Care' under Everyday Expenses."

How category groups work

Every category lives inside a category group (for example, "Everyday Expenses" or "Savings Goals"). If you ask Claude to create a brand-new category, it needs to know which group it belongs in — Claude will look up your existing groups first, and may ask you to pick one if it's not obvious from your request.

Setting a budgeted amount replaces it, not adds to it

When you ask Claude to set how much is budgeted in a category for a month, that's a replacement, not an addition. If Groceries already has $300 assigned and you ask Claude to "set Groceries to $350," the category ends up at $350 total — not $650. If what you actually want is to add to what's already there, say so explicitly (e.g. "add $50 to my Groceries budget this month").

Moving money vs. spending money

Asking Claude to move money between categories (reallocating your budget) is different from asking about your spending or transactions. If you ask "what did I spend on groceries," that's a transaction question; if you ask "move $50 into groceries," that's a budget-planning question. They use different information under the hood, so it helps to be specific about which one you mean.