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Balanced

Transactions and postings

Concepts

A transaction is a date, a note and two or more lines, one per account. From those lines, Balanced works out whether it was an expense, income or a transfer.

You never pick a transaction type in Balanced. There’s one kind of transaction, and it covers everything: a purchase, your salary, a transfer to savings, a card payment. Here’s what it’s made of.

What’s in a transaction

Section titled “What’s in a transaction”
  1. The Date and time it happened, and a Note that says what it was. A date after today makes it a planned transaction.
  2. Under Accounts, two or more lines, each with an account and an amount. These lines are called postings.
  3. Cleared: whether it has shown up on your bank statement yet. See Cleared and uncleared.
  4. Repeat, for rent, salary and other transactions that come back regularly.

A plus on a posting means money arrives in that account, a minus means it leaves. The postings of a transaction always add up to zero, and Balanced only lets you save once they do. Leave one amount empty and Balanced fills it in.

One receipt, several categories

Section titled “One receipt, several categories”

A transaction can have more than two postings. Say your supermarket receipt has €30 of food and €12.80 of cleaning things. Tap ＋ Account to add a third line, and split the purchase between two categories:

Supermarket · Oct 5
Expenses:Groceries
+30.00
Expenses:Household
+12.80
Assets:Checking
−42.80
Balanced
0.00 ✓

Each category’s budget only counts its own part. The same works the other way round, for example a salary that goes partly to checking and partly to savings.

Expense, income or transfer

Section titled “Expense, income or transfer”

To tell what kind of transaction it is, Balanced looks only at the postings on Assets and Liabilities: your money and your debts. It adds them up.

  • Less than zero: you have less money than before. It’s an expense, and lists show the amount in red.
  • More than zero: you have more money. It’s income, shown in green.
  • Exactly zero: money only moved between your own accounts. It’s a transfer, shown in the normal text color.
Transaction Change on assets and liabilities Kind
Groceries paid from Checking −42.80 Expense
Groceries paid by credit card −130.00 on the card Expense
Salary into Checking +2,500.00 Income
Opening balance into Checking +1,200.00 Income
Checking to Savings −500.00 + 500.00 = 0 Transfer
Paying the credit card from Checking +100.00 − 100.00 = 0 Transfer

Try it yourself: pick where the €50 comes from and where it goes.

Try it · Move €50 and watch the type

Expenses:Groceries+50.00
Assets:Checking−50.00
Change on assets and liabilitiesExpense

Paying off your credit card is a transfer, not an expense. The spending already happened when you used the card; the payment only moves money from Checking to the card. Credit cards and debt has the details.

In transaction lists, each row shows the account money left, an arrow, and the account it went to, with the amount in the color of its kind.

Under the hood · for the curious

Take the card payment: both postings are on assets and liabilities, and they cancel out.

Card payment
Liabilities:Credit Card
+100.00
Assets:Checking
−100.00
Balanced
0.00 ✓

The rule in one formula:

change =
  sum of the postings on
  Assets and Liabilities


change < 0  →  expense
change > 0  →  income
change = 0  →  transfer

Lists show the change as the amount. For a transfer, they show the amount that moved.

Postings on Expenses, Income and Equity don’t count. That’s why the card purchase is an expense (the card’s balance drops), while paying the card is a transfer (Checking drops, the card rises by the same amount).

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