Transactions

To record something by hand:

1. Tap the + button and choose Transaction.
2. Enter the Name. Suggestions appear from your own history as you type, so a merchant you have recorded before takes two keystrokes.
3. Enter the Amount. Enter it as a positive number either way; the category decides whether it counts as money in or money out. If you use more than one currency, a picker sits beside the amount - set it to the currency the charge was actually in, and the transaction is saved in that currency.
4. Set the Date.
5. Pick a Category. Cadence Money pre-selects its best guess from the name you typed, so check it rather than assuming it is blank.
6. Pick a Budget, if the category is a spending one. Leave it on Unbudgeted to keep the transaction out of your budget totals.
7. Optionally pick an Account. It starts on No account and lists your manual accounts, so a cash purchase or a card you track by hand can be tied to the account it came out of.
8. Add Notes if you want them, and tap Add.

If you picked an account, one more step follows, titled Update Account Balance?. It shows the account’s balance now and what it would be after this transaction. The Also update this balance box starts unticked, so tapping Save as it stands records the transaction and leaves the balance exactly as it was. Tick it when the balance you entered earlier does not already include this purchase.

The Budget field disappears on anything that is not spending. A Transfer, an Investments transaction or an income category has nothing to budget against, so Cadence Money hides the field rather than letting you set one that would be ignored. See Categories for which categories keep it.

Tap any transaction to open its detail view. What you see there is a summary and nothing on it is editable in place - the rows are there to be read. To change anything at all, tap Edit. That opens the same form you filled in when you created it, including the name, the category, the budget, the amount and the date. Tap Save when you are done.

The rows the detail view shows you, when it has them:

• Category - what the transaction was.
• Rule - sitting directly under Category, naming the Transaction Rule that chose it. It only appears when a rule was responsible, and it is there to answer “why does this say that?”. Rules are changed in Settings → Transaction Rules, not from here - see Transaction Rules.
• Budget, Date, Account and Notes - the rest of the record. Notes and the budget row are hidden when empty.

A transaction that came from your bank is yours to organise but not to rewrite. Cadence Money keeps the bank’s record of what happened intact so your history still matches your statement.

• Yours to change - the name, the category, the budget, notes, splits, and any link to a bill, a goal or an expense.
• The bank’s - the amount, the date and the account. Those three are greyed out on the edit form. If one of them is wrong, it is wrong at your bank.

Merchant names are tidied for display, so a row reading SQ *THE COFFEE BAR 004 at your bank shows as something you can read here. If the tidied version is still wrong, rename it - the name is yours, and search, category learning and recurring detection all key off it.

Transactions you typed in and transactions imported from a CSV both carry an Account field you can change at any time. Open the transaction, tap Edit, and pick from the Account list, or choose No account to leave it unassigned. Only manual accounts are listed, each shown with its institution beside the name. A synced transaction always belongs to the bank account it came from, so it has no such field.

This is also the fix for a file that landed against the wrong account, or one imported before you had created the account it belonged to. To move a batch at once, use the Account action in Bulk Editing.

A charge your bank has authorised but not yet settled arrives as pending. Cadence Money counts it in your budgets right away rather than waiting, so what you see reflects money that has effectively gone.

When it settles, the pending row is replaced by the final one rather than sitting beside it, and the amount can move slightly - a restaurant tip or a fuel pump pre-authorisation is the usual reason. Settlement normally takes one to three business days.

Open the transaction and tap Delete. Where it goes depends on where it came from:

• A transaction you added yourself moves to Recently Deleted and can be restored for 30 days.
• A synced transaction does the same, whether you delete it on its own or as part of a multi-select.
• A transaction that came from a CSV import is removed outright. There is no trash for imported rows, on their own or in a batch.

If the transaction is tied to a manual account, the delete confirmation also offers to take it back out of that account’s balance, with the same unticked Also update this balance box. Swiping a row away to delete it skips that offer, so open the transaction instead when the balance should move.

See Trash & Restore for the full recovery rules, and Bulk Editing before you delete a batch.

The detail view is also where a transaction gets connected to the rest of your setup:

• Split it across several budgets when one purchase covered more than one thing. See Splitting Transactions.
• Link to Expense on a refund or reimbursement, to net it off the original purchase.
• Link to Goal on a Transfer or Investments transaction, to count it as a contribution.
• Link to Recurring Bill or Create Recurring Bill, to tie a charge to a bill you track - or turn it into one.