Setup
Connect your You Need a Budget account
Click Add Destination, select You Need a Budget, and sign in. Redbark Sync uses OAuth to connect to your You Need a Budget account.
Creating a sync
When you create a sync with a You Need a Budget destination, two extra steps are available beyond the standard sync setup:Account mapping
You can map each bank account to a different You Need a Budget account within the same plan. For example:- CommBank transaction account → “Everyday Checking” in You Need a Budget
- CommBank credit card → “Visa Credit Card” in You Need a Budget
- ING savings → “Savings” in You Need a Budget
Category mapping
You can optionally map bank transaction categories to You Need a Budget categories. If you set up mappings, those transactions will arrive in You Need a Budget with the matching category already applied. Any unmapped categories come through without a category, so you can categorise them in You Need a Budget manually or let You Need a Budget’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 You Need a Budget format: maps fields to the You Need a Budget transaction schema (payee, amount in milliunits, memo, and optionally a mapped category).
- Routes to accounts: sends each transaction to the correct You Need a Budget account based on your account mapping.
- Creates transactions: sends new transactions to You Need a Budget 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 You Need a Budget as follows:| Redbark field | You Need a Budget 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 | Transactions are cleared by default (pending transactions are excluded unless the experimental toggle is enabled) |
| Date | Date | YYYY-MM-DD format, converted to Australian Eastern time |
| Transaction ID | Import ID | SHA-256 hash for deduplication |
You Need a Budget 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. You Need a Budget uses this to detect and skip duplicate transactions, so you can sync as often as you want without creating duplicates.
Authentication
You Need a Budget uses OAuth 2.0. Access tokens expire after 2 hours and are refreshed automatically before each sync. If your You Need a Budget session is revoked, re-authenticate from the destinations page.Tips
- New transactions are unapproved: synced transactions arrive as unapproved in You Need a Budget, 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 You Need a Budget views including your plan, accounts, reports, and age of money.