Setup
Connect your YNAB account
Click Add Destination, select YNAB, and sign in. Redbark Sync uses OAuth to connect to your YNAB account.
Creating a sync
When you create a sync with a YNAB destination, two extra steps are available beyond the standard sync setup:Account mapping
You can map each bank account to a different YNAB account within the same plan. For example:- CommBank transaction account → “Everyday Checking” in YNAB
- CommBank credit card → “Visa Credit Card” in YNAB
- ING savings → “Savings” in YNAB
Category mapping
You can optionally map bank transaction categories to YNAB categories. If you set up mappings, those transactions will arrive in YNAB with the matching category already applied. Any unmapped categories come through without a category, so you can categorise them in YNAB manually or let YNAB’s auto-categorisation handle it. The bank categories available for mapping are: Bank Fees, Entertainment, Food & Drink, Government & Non-Profit, Home Improvement, Income, Loan Payments, Medical, Merchandise, Personal Care, Rent & Utilities, Services, Transfer In, Transfer Out, Transportation, and Travel. Not all transactions have a category. See the transactions API reference for details.How it works
On each sync, Redbark Sync:- Fetches posted transactions: pulls recent settled transactions from your connected bank accounts. Pending transactions are excluded to avoid duplicates.
- Transforms to YNAB format: maps fields to YNAB’s transaction schema (payee, amount in milliunits, memo, and optionally a mapped category).
- Routes to accounts: sends each transaction to the correct YNAB account based on your account mapping.
- Creates transactions: sends new transactions to YNAB in batches of up to 500. Duplicates are automatically skipped using a unique import ID. All transactions are marked as cleared.
Field mapping
Redbark transaction fields are mapped to YNAB as follows:| Redbark field | YNAB field | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Merchant name | Payee name | Truncated to 50 characters. Left blank if no merchant name is available. |
| Amount + Direction | Amount | Converted to milliunits (amount x 1000). Debits are negative, credits are positive. |
| Category + Description | Memo | Combined as “Category | Description”, truncated to 200 characters |
| Category | Category | Only set when a category mapping exists for the bank’s category code |
| Status | Cleared | All synced transactions are cleared (pending transactions are not synced) |
| Date | Date | YYYY-MM-DD format, converted to Australian Eastern time |
| Transaction ID | Import ID | SHA-256 hash for deduplication |
YNAB uses milliunits for amounts: multiply the dollar amount by 1000. For example, a $100.50 debit becomes -100500.
Deduplication
Each transaction is assigned a uniqueimport_id derived from the Redbark transaction ID. YNAB uses this to detect and skip duplicate transactions, so you can sync as often as you want without creating duplicates.
Authentication
YNAB uses OAuth 2.0. Access tokens expire after 2 hours and are refreshed automatically before each sync. If your YNAB session is revoked, re-authenticate from the destinations page.Tips
- New transactions are unapproved: synced transactions arrive as unapproved in YNAB, so you can review and categorise them as part of your normal workflow.
- Memo for context: the memo field includes the category and description from your bank for extra context when categorising.
- Plan views: your synced transactions show up in all YNAB views including your plan, accounts, reports, and age of money.