Transfers & Payments

Anything where the money is still yours afterwards. It is neither income nor an expense, just a different account holding it:

• Paying a credit card from your chequing account.
• Moving money into savings.
• Contributing to an investment or registered account.
• Moving money between two of your own banks.

The two categories differ in intent rather than mechanics. Use Investments when the money went somewhere it will grow, so reports can show it as an investment contribution rather than plain movement, and Transfer for everything else.

When you sync accounts, Cadence Money usually imports both sides of a transfer: the outflow from one account and the inflow to the other. Its categorisation recognises common transfer patterns and marks them as Transfer so neither side lands in a budget.

It also pairs the two sides directly. When money leaves one of your linked accounts and the same amount, in the same currency, arrives in another within three days, Cadence Money links the pair and labels them Transfer. Only a category that is blank or was chosen automatically is changed - one you set yourself is never overwritten, and neither is the budget.

Credit card payments are the case that matters most. Pay your card from a synced bank account and two transactions appear: a debit from the bank and a payment on the card. Both are treated as transfers, so the payment is not counted as spending and the debit is not double-counted on top of the purchases it is settling.

This is the case most people arrive here for, and the answer is not the one you would expect. An e-Transfer, Interac payment or Venmo-style payment sent to someone else is deliberately not marked as a Transfer. It is left with no category at all, and it surfaces in the Needs Review widget for you to file.

That is on purpose. The rail an e-transfer travels on says how the money moved, never whether it left your household - so Cadence Money looks at who was on the other end. Send money to yourself, between two of your own accounts, and it is categorised as Transfer. Send it to anyone else and the money has genuinely gone, so calling it a transfer would be wrong in the worst possible way: it would drop the payment out of every screen where you would have caught the mistake.

A blank category still counts as spending on the way out, so your totals are not understated while it sits there. Give it the category it deserves - Gifts, Housing, Kids & Family, whatever it was for - and it lands in the right budget.

When one is not detected:

1. Tap the transaction to open it.
2. Tap Edit.
3. Set the Category to Transfer, or Investments if the money went into a savings or investment account.
4. Tap Save.

The Budget field disappears as soon as you pick either category, because neither is spending. The transaction drops out of your budget totals and stays in your history.

If you have other transactions with the same description, Cadence Money offers to change them at the same time - handy when the same standing transfer has been miscategorised for months. The same prompt carries a second, separate offer: to create a rule, so future transactions with that description are categorised this way without you being asked again. The two are independent - fixing the back catalogue and settling the future are different decisions, and you can take either on its own. See Transaction Rules.

Without bank syncing, or for a move Cadence Money never sees, enter it yourself:

1. Tap the + button and choose Transaction.
2. Name it for what the money did, such as “To savings”.
3. Enter the amount and set the category to Transfer or Investments.
4. Set the date and tap Add.

One entry is enough. You do not need to record both sides unless you are also tracking both account balances by hand.

Once you have a goal that can take contributions, a Goal field appears on these two categories, so you can credit the transfer as you enter it rather than linking it afterwards.

A transfer into savings is not spending, but it is progress. Open the transaction and use Link to Goal to credit it to one of your goals without typing the amount a second time.

This is exactly why the option only appears on Transfer and Investments transactions - money you moved rather than money you spent. A goal can also count matching transfers on its own, by watching for a description you give it rather than an account. See Goals.

A transfer never changes your net worth. It moves value from one account to another, and the total is unchanged. Net worth only moves when you earn, spend, or an asset changes value.