Accounts

Account Types#

When creating an account, you select a type that determines how the app interprets balances and which optional fields are shown.

Tip: The account type mainly affects how balances are displayed and which optional fields appear on the account form. You can always change the type later by editing the account.

Liability Balance Model#

Credit Card, Loan, Mortgage, and Line of Credit are all liability account types. They share a common balance model that differs from asset accounts like Checking or Savings.

How Liability Balances Work#

Liability balances are stored as negative numbers internally, but the app displays them as positive amounts with an "Owed" label so they are easy to read at a glance.

• A payment (credit transaction) decreases the amount you owe.
• A charge or withdrawal (debit transaction) increases the amount you owe.

For example, if you create a Loan account with £10,000 owed, the app stores the balance as −10,000 but displays it as £10,000 Owed. After making a £500 payment the display updates to £9,500 Owed.

Creating a Liability Account#

When you create a liability account, enter the amount you currently owe as a positive number in the Opening Balance field. The app converts it to a negative value automatically — you never need to enter negative numbers yourself.

Net Worth#

The dashboard's net worth calculation correctly subtracts liability balances from asset balances. If you have £20,000 across checking and savings accounts and £8,000 owed on a loan, your net worth shows as £12,000.

Grid and List Views#

The accounts page offers two layouts, toggled with the view switcher in the accounts header.

Your chosen view is saved automatically and restored the next time you visit the accounts page. In either view, click any card or row to open the account detail view.

Choosing What to Show#

The gear button next to the view switcher opens the display settings for the accounts page. These apply to both layouts (a couple of options only make sense on tiles) and are saved in your browser.

Show attributes — tick the details you want on each tile/row:

Hiding an attribute in the list view also removes its column, so the remaining columns take up the space.

Reordering columns — the attributes above the divider are the columns of the list view, and can be dragged into whatever order you want (or moved with Alt+↑/Alt+↓ while a row has keyboard focus). Name and Balance take part in the ordering even though they can't be hidden. Tiles use the same order for the details under the account name, so the two layouts stay consistent. The account icon stays first and the edit/delete buttons stay last. On narrow screens the list drops to name and balance regardless, keeping whichever order you chose.

Order accounts by — sort by name, balance, account type, institution, last reconciled, or date added, ascending or descending. The default is name, ascending. Assets and liabilities are still grouped into their own sections; the ordering applies within each. Accounts missing the attribute you sort by (no institution, never reconciled) go to the bottom of their section.

Reset to defaults restores every option above.

Creating an Account#

Navigate to Accounts > Add Account to create a new account.

Form Layout#

The account form lays its fields out in three columns, so everything is visible at once without scrolling:

On narrower windows the columns reflow to two, then to a single stacked column on a phone. When you edit an existing account the current balance is shown as a read-only figure, since it is calculated from the account's transactions rather than typed in — change the Opening Balance instead and the current balance updates to match.

Required Fields#

Optional Fields#

Note: The currency is set per account, so you can track accounts in different currencies. Multi-currency totals on the dashboard use exchange rates to convert to your default currency. See Exchange Rates for details.

Excluding an Account from Aggregations#

Sometimes you want to track an account in Budget without letting it affect your overall financial picture — for example an account you manage on someone else's behalf, or one that isn't really part of your own net worth. Tick Exclude from reports, dashboard & forecast in the account's edit dialog to do exactly that.

When an account is excluded:

• Its transactions and balance are left out of all reports (spending, income, cash flow, trends, tags), the dashboard (totals, charts and summary tiles), the forecast, net worth, total balance, and category budgets — everywhere "All accounts" is aggregated.
• The account still appears in your accounts list (marked with an Excluded badge) and on its own detail page, and its transactions still show in the transactions list, so you can keep using and reconciling it normally.
• If you explicitly select the account in a report or forecast, that view still works on its own — the exclusion only applies to the combined "all accounts" figures.

You can toggle this off again at any time; the account immediately rejoins all totals (everything is derived live, nothing is cached).

Account Detail View#

Click any account card to open the account detail view, which shows:

Current Balance vs. Projected Balance#

• Current Balance is the sum of all cleared (non-scheduled) transactions plus the opening balance. This reflects what your actual bank balance should be.
• Projected Balance includes scheduled (future-dated) transactions in addition to cleared ones. This tells you what your balance will be once upcoming transactions clear.

The projected balance is shown alongside the current balance when they differ, giving you visibility into expected future cash flow.

Balance History Chart#

The detail view includes a balance history chart that plots your account balance over time. This helps you spot trends, identify spending patterns, and see how your balance has changed historically.

Recent Transactions#

The detail view shows the most recent transactions for the account with quick access to add new transactions or navigate to the full Transactions view filtered to this account.

Account Information#

Each account has optional banking detail fields for your reference. These fields are all encrypted at rest and are never shared or transmitted.

Tip: These fields are purely for your own reference -- the app does not connect to any bank. They are stored with encryption so you can keep all your account details in one place without security concerns.

The account form dynamically shows and hides these fields based on the account type you select. For example, selecting Checking shows routing number and IBAN fields, while selecting Cryptocurrency shows the wallet address field instead.

How Balances Are Calculated#

An account's current balance is always derived from its ledger:

current balance = opening balance + net of all non-scheduled transactions

The opening balance represents what the account held before the first transaction you track in the app. It is set when you create the account and can be edited later — useful when you start tracking mid-life of a real account, or to true-up after reconciling.

Because the balance is recomputed from your transactions on every change, it can never drift out of step with the ledger: editing, moving, or deleting a transaction always leaves the balance exactly consistent with what the transaction list shows.

Note: Scheduled (future-dated) transactions don't count toward the current balance — they appear in the projected balance instead. See Transaction Status.

Reconciling Accounts#

Reconciliation verifies that your tracked balance matches your actual bank statement. This helps catch missing or incorrect transactions.

How to Reconcile#

1. Open the account detail view and click Reconcile Account, or navigate to Transactions and click the Reconcile button.
2. Select the account to reconcile (pre-selected if you started from the account detail view).
3. Enter the statement balance from your bank statement and the statement date.
4. The reconciliation panel shows the difference between your tracked balance and the statement balance.
5. Review your transactions and mark them as reconciled by checking them off.
6. If there is a remaining difference, the app offers to create an adjustment transaction to bring your balance in line with the statement.

The adjustment transaction is created with the description "Reconciliation Adjustment" and a note recording the target statement balance, so you can identify it later.

Tip: Reconcile regularly -- monthly when you receive your bank statement is a good cadence. This catches data entry errors and missing transactions early.

Deleting an Account#

To delete an account, open the account detail view and choose the delete option.

If the account still has transactions, the app tells you how many and asks whether to delete them along with the account. Confirm to remove both in one step -- useful when an import went wrong and you want to start over. Decline, and nothing is deleted; you can then clean up the transactions yourself from the Transactions page (filter by the account, select all, and use Delete Selected).

Deleting an account's transactions also unlinks any transfers that pointed at them. The counterpart transaction in the other account is kept -- it simply stops being marked as a transfer.

Warning: Deleting an account permanently removes the account and all of its transactions. This action cannot be undone. If you want to keep historical data, consider archiving the account by renaming it (e.g., "Old Checking - Closed") rather than deleting it.

Related Features#

• Transactions -- View, add, and manage transactions within your accounts
• Transfers -- Move money between your accounts with linked transfer transactions
• Importing Bank Statements -- Import transactions from CSV, OFX, or QIF files into an account
• Dashboard -- See balances and health indicators for all your accounts at a glance
• Exchange Rates -- Configure exchange rates for multi-currency account totals

Settings#

• Default currency -- Sets the default currency for new accounts and the base currency for dashboard totals. Change this in Settings > General.