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Transactions

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.

Covers individual transactions — purchases, deposits, transfers — and scheduled transactions for things that haven't happened yet.

What you can ask

  • "Show me my uncategorized transactions this month."
  • "Record a $42.17 charge at Trader Joe's from my checking account."
  • "Set up a recurring $1,200 rent payment on the 1st of every month."
  • "Reconcile my checking account against my bank statement."

Recording something that already happened vs. something upcoming

If it already happened, ask Claude to record a transaction. If it's something that will happen in the future — a recurring bill, a planned purchase — ask Claude to schedule it instead (scheduled transactions can be set up to 5 years out). Don't use a scheduled transaction to backdate something that's already occurred; use a regular transaction for that.

Deleting a transaction is permanent

There's no undo. If you ask Claude to delete a transaction or a scheduled transaction, expect Claude to confirm with you first unless you've been explicit that you want it deleted — but once it's gone, it's gone.

Finding uncategorized or unapproved transactions

If you ask specifically for uncategorized or unapproved transactions, Claude can filter for exactly that rather than pulling your whole transaction history and sorting through it.

Transfers between your own accounts

There's no separate "transfer" feature — moving money between two of your own accounts (say, from checking to savings) is recorded as a linked transaction on both accounts, and Claude sets it up automatically when you ask for a transfer between accounts you hold.

Reconciling an account

When you ask Claude to reconcile an account against your bank or card statement, it marks the matching transactions as reconciled in one batch, rather than one at a time — reconciling several transactions at once is faster and less error-prone than doing them individually.

Updating a scheduled transaction replaces the whole thing

This is a real caveat worth knowing: updating a regular transaction only changes the fields you mention (a partial update). Updating a scheduled transaction is different — it replaces the entire record. If you ask Claude to change just the amount on a recurring bill, Claude needs to know (or look up) all of the other details too — payee, category, account, frequency, and so on — because anything not included in the update gets cleared, not left alone. In practice this just means: when asking Claude to tweak a scheduled transaction, it's fine to say "just change the amount," but Claude will need to pull the rest of the details first rather than sending a partial change.

Splitting a transaction across categories

You can ask Claude to split a single transaction across more than one category or payee — for example, a $150 Target run that's $100 household and $50 groceries. Each part of the split needs its own amount, and the parts have to add up exactly to the transaction's total, or YNAB will reject it. When a transaction is split, don't also ask for a single category on the transaction itself — YNAB figures out the overall category from the splits, not the other way around.