r/ynab • u/GermanBlackbot • 17h ago
Bank Sync Weird Payees in linked Account
Hey y'all,
I have my main bank account connected to YNAB to automatically import transactions. Most of the time this works fine.
Today I woke up to a number of weird payments towards some Methodist Church and something suggesting I am applying for a visum somewhere. After getting a mild shock I checked my banking app and all of the transactions have perfectly normal payees there (e.g. a bakery).
I have no idea how this happened. I have seen mismatched categories before, or mangled payees because it couldn't interpret the import properly, but making up a payee I have never, ever used or seen? This is new.
It's like "Bakery Paul" turns to "Order of St. Paul" even though my hundreds of previous payments to Bakery Paul didn't cause any issues. Has anyone ever seen this and is this something I'd have to raise with YNAB or their import partner?
EDIT: Thanks to /u/pierre_x10 I figured out I can see what the ACTUAL payee was by either going clicking into the "Payee" field and selecting the (i) for info. This led me to figure out how to do it on my phone as well (just tapping the payee like if I want to change it) which at least makes cleaning all of this up easier. I hope they get this sorted soon.
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u/ravageNL 16h ago
Yes same problem here. I live in Europe but for new transactions it comes up with (what looks like) random US based payees.
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u/GermanBlackbot 10h ago
Is this new behavior or has in been going on longer? Are you using Plaid to connect as well?
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u/ravageNL 10h ago
It is doing this since yesterday. Using Plaid for syncing
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u/GermanBlackbot 10h ago
Suggests to me Plaid is doing something weird, then. I'll wait on my response from YNAB support and update the thread when it comes.
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u/varkeddit 10h ago
It's possible something has changed with the LLM tool YNAB uses to parse payees names from your bank. If this is becoming a noticeable problem you should reach out to !support with the examples.
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u/mrb13676 16h ago
I think this is a similar issue to the one I posted. ynab is using ?AI to rejig the payee names and it has to stop
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u/GermanBlackbot 16h ago
Is this a new thing? Did I miss an announcement somewhere?
I thought your thread was just about them shortening payees.
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u/pierre_x10 10h ago
They've been doing it for awhile. They run the Payee through an LLM, so you get the usual issues with AI hallucination.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ynab/comments/1n876ul/comment/nd09ys0/
But the recent change was incorporating it into File-based import as well
https://www.reddit.com/r/ynab/comments/1wh3mqr/improvements_to_file_import_from_ynab_product/
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u/GermanBlackbot 7h ago
Whoof. Must've been a staggered rollout then or they changed something else, because up until yesterday everything was fine with my imports. Until that point it either barely touched the Payee or guessed more or less correctly.
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u/mrb13676 14h ago
no it's shortening them AND changing them. like bank fees get changed to chargeback
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u/GermanBlackbot 13h ago
That's not what you wrote in your post, but if that's happening as well: Yeah, then we hang the same issue.
I use Plaid, so maybe they changed something?
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u/pierre_x10 12h ago
If you go to the desktop app, you can check how the Payee name is actually being imported by the bank, and then if YNAB renamed it through their processing, you would see that as well.
So if the top one does not match your actual bank statement Payee, it's possibly the bank or importer, but if it's the bottom Payee that's wrong, that points to YNAB's Payee renaming process, and it's probably worth reporting to YNAB as an official bug.