Accounts and reconciliation

Accounts are where the money lives

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Create an account for each place you keep or owe money, such as a current account, savings account, cash wallet, credit card, or loan. Give each account a clear name and select its currency before recording activity.

An account’s opening balance is the starting point for its running balance. Set it to the balance you want Budgie to track from, then record transactions from that point onward.

Record transfers between accounts

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Use a transfer when money moves between two accounts you own. A transfer changes the balances of the two accounts without counting as ordinary spending or income. In an import, provide both ACCOUNT_FROM and ACCOUNT_TO so Budgie can create and link both sides.

Do not record a transfer as an expense in the source account and a second income in the destination account; that would distort spending and income Insights.

Reconcile against a statement

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At a regular interval:

1. Choose one account and note the statement’s closing date and balance.
2. Check that the account currency and opening balance are correct.
3. Compare the statement’s transactions with Budgie’s ledger.
4. Add missing transactions and correct dates, amounts, categories, or payees.
5. Check transfers on both sides and investigate duplicate entries.
6. Compare the resulting Budgie balance with the statement balance.

If the balances differ, narrow the difference by checking the opening balance, uncleared activity, duplicate transactions, pending items, and transfers first. Avoid changing an opening balance just to hide an unexplained difference.

Cleared, pending, and corrected activity

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Budgie provides five statuses:

When a mistake is found, edit the original transaction where possible so the history remains understandable.

Purchases covering more than one category

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Budgie’s normal transaction model assigns one primary category to a transaction. If one receipt needs to appear in several category totals, record separate transactions whose amounts add up to the receipt total, reuse the same payee and date, and explain the split in their notes or tags. Check the current app version before relying on a dedicated split editor.

Archive, hide, or delete an account

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Archive an account when you want to preserve its history but stop using it for new activity. Hiding can remove it from normal lists, while excluding it from reports keeps its balance out of combined reporting. These choices preserve more context than deletion.

Before deleting an account, create a backup and inspect its transactions and linked transfers. Deletion is appropriate only when you no longer need the account or its history.

Multiple currencies

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Reconcile each account in its own currency. Do not use an exchange-rate adjustment to compensate for a missing transaction or an incorrect account currency. Use Budgie’s financial tools for intentional scenario calculations, and document any manual adjustment in the transaction description.

Protect the result

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Create a backup after a successful reconciliation and before a large import or batch correction. The Backup, restore, and export guide explains how to preserve a known-good copy.