Set Up Your Bank Accounts

Accounts are where your money lives. Every transaction and every payment in Budget Planner comes from or goes to one of them, so it's worth adding all of them early: your checking account, savings accounts, and credit cards.

What you'll learn

• How to add a checking, savings, or credit card account
• How your current balance is worked out
• How to correct a balance that doesn't match your bank

The Accounts page

Open Bank Accounts from the Overview section of the sidebar. At the top you'll see a total for each account type: Checking Accounts, Savings Accounts, Credit Card Accounts, and a Grand Total of everything together.

Below that, Where your money sits shows how your positive balances are split across your accounts. The list then groups your accounts by type, with an Opening Balance, any Adjustment, and the Current Balance for each one.

Add an account

1. Click Add Account in the top-right corner.
2. Enter an Account Name, for example "Main Checking". Each account needs its own name.
3. Choose the Account Type: Checking Account, Savings Account, or Credit Card Account.
4. Enter your balance today in Opening Balance.
5. Click Create.

You'll see "Account created successfully", and the account appears in its group straight away.

Credit cards are different

When you pick Credit Card Account, the balance field changes to Amount Owed. Type what you currently owe as a positive number, without a minus sign. Budget Planner saves it as money you need to pay down, so it shows as a negative balance and reduces your Grand Total.

How the current balance is calculated

You don't update balances by hand. The Current Balance starts from your Opening Balance, adds any Adjustment, and then follows your activity in the current budget year:

• Added: payments marked as paid for income into this account, income transactions, and transfers into this account
• Subtracted: payments marked as paid for bills, subscriptions, debts and savings from this account, and expense transactions

This is why marking payments as paid matters. Until you do, a bill doesn't reduce your balance. See Track recurring bills and payments.

Fix a balance that doesn't match your bank

Small differences happen, such as a bank fee you didn't record or interest you earned. Instead of editing old transactions, use an adjustment:

1. Click the pencil icon on the account's row.
2. In Edit Account, enter the difference in Adjustment. Use a negative number to lower the balance.
3. Optionally, explain why in Adjustment Note, for example "Monthly service fee".
4. Click Update.

The account type and opening balance can't be changed after an account is created. Only the name, adjustment, and note can be edited.

Other things you can do

• Search and filter — use Search accounts... or the All Types menu to find an account quickly.
• Reorder — click Reorder to change the order of accounts inside each group.
• Copy a balance — use the copy icon on a row to copy the current balance.
• Delete — click the trash icon and confirm. The account disappears from your lists.
• Bank Connections — a section at the bottom of the page for linking a bank. If bank linking isn't available on your account, you'll see "Bank integration not configured".