Core concepts
These building blocks work together to give you a complete picture of your money. Account: Transaction: Category
Think of it like a set of envelopes, a notebook, and a filing cabinet — just digital.
Account
A real-world container for money: a bank account, cash wallet, credit card, or savings pot. Every transaction belongs to exactly one account (transfers belong to two).
Example: You might have UBS Checking, PostFinance Savings, Cash in Wallet, and Visa Credit Card. When you buy groceries with your Visa, the transaction is recorded against the Visa Credit Card account. When you withdraw cash from an ATM, that is a transfer from UBS Checking to Cash in Wallet.
Opening balance sign: The same sign convention applies to every account, whether asset or liability:
- Positive = money you own (e.g. cash in a bank account, prepaid card balance).
- Negative = money you owe (e.g. debt on a credit card, outstanding loan).
Example — new credit card: You open a Visa account in the app but have already spent CHF 500 with it before tracking. Enter the opening balance as -500. The balance shows -CHF 500.00 (“I owe 500”). New expenses make it more negative; a payment from your bank makes it less negative. If you entered +500 instead, the app would treat the card like a prepaid wallet with money in it, and your net worth would be off by CHF 1,000. The same rule applies to mortgages, personal loans, and any other liability — start negative if you currently owe money.
Transaction
A single movement of money: an expense, income, or transfer. Has a date, amount, account, category and optional tags, attachments and notes.
Example: On 5 June you spend CHF 64.50 at Migros using your debit card. That is an expense of 64.50, on account UBS Checking, in category Groceries. On 30 June your employer pays your salary of CHF 5,200 — that is an income transaction on account UBS Checking, category Salary. Moving CHF 200 from checking to savings is a transfer.
Category
What the money was for (Groceries, Salary, Rent…). Categories are grouped, and most categories represent a monthly envelope you can budget.
Example: You create categories like Groceries, Restaurant, Coffee, Rent, Electricity, Salary, and Holiday Savings. When you record a purchase, you pick the category so the app knows which envelope to draw from. A reimbursement from a friend goes into a category too — but you might leave the category empty so it does not affect your budget.
Category group
A bucket that groups related categories (e.g. Food contains Groceries, Eating out, Coffee). Used in reports and for shared sweep settings.
Example: Your Food group holds Groceries, Restaurant, and Coffee. Your Fixed Costs group holds Rent, Insurance, and Phone. When you look at the Insights Breakdown tab, you can see totals per group — which quickly tells you whether you spend more on food or fixed costs.
Envelope / budget
The monthly amount you plan to spend in a category. The Envelopes screen shows how much is left in each envelope for the current month.
Example: You decide to budget CHF 400 for Groceries this month. The envelope starts with 400. After you spend 120 at Migros, the envelope shows 280 left. If you later spend 50 at the bakery, it drops to 230. If you receive a CHF 30 reimbursement for a shared dinner (linked to an IOU), the envelope grows back to 260 — because you got some of that grocery money back.
At month-end, whatever is still in the envelope (or the shortfall) is handled by your sweep and rollover settings.
Scope
A lens that pre-filters and pre-fills the app — for example a trip, a project, or a shared household. Switching the active scope changes the dashboard, transaction list and add-form defaults.
What it is really for: A scope is meant for one-off events (a vacation, a music festival, a wedding) where you want to collect all related expenses in one place and then close it with a single visible money reallocation. When you close a scope, the total spent is virtually moved from a funding category into the scope’s own category — so you see the whole cost in one transparent “payment.”
What it is NOT for: Regular monthly expenses. Do not create a scope for Groceries or Restaurant — those belong in normal budget categories with monthly envelopes.
Example: You create a scope called Glastonbury 2025 with a planned budget of CHF 1,200, funded from your Fun category. During the festival you record tickets, camping gear, food and drinks — all tagged with the scope. When you get home, you close the scope: the app moves CHF 1,180 (what you actually spent) from Fun into Glastonbury 2025. Now you see the entire festival cost as one line, and your Fun envelope was reduced accordingly. Then you switch back to the default scope and your normal household budget returns.
IOU / reimbursable
A transaction flagged because someone owes you (or you owe someone). Open IOUs stay visible until you record a repayment, mark them settled, write them off, or cancel them.
Example: You pay CHF 120 for a team dinner with your credit card and your colleague owes you half. You record the expense as CHF 120, toggle Reimbursable, enter Colleague Anna as counterparty. The full 120 hits your Restaurant budget, but an open IOU of 60 shows up on your dashboard. When Anna pays you back via TWINT, you record a repayment — the IOU closes and your Restaurant envelope gets credited back 60.
Pending transaction
An entry imported from outside the app (via the public API or another source) that has not yet been booked. You review it and then confirm or reject.
Example: Your bank API pushes a transaction: Coop, CHF 45.30, 12 June. It lands in Pending because the app does not know which category it belongs to. You open it, assign Groceries, and click Confirm. Now it becomes a real transaction in your ledger.
Recurring rule
A template that posts a transaction on a schedule (rent, salary, subscriptions). You can skip, edit or post individual occurrences.
Example: Your rent of CHF 1,450 is due on the 1st of every month. You set up a recurring rule: amount 1,450, category Rent, account UBS Checking, day-of-month = 1. The dashboard shows the next upcoming occurrence. If you are on holiday and the landlord delays the debit until the 5th, you can edit that single occurrence without changing the rule.
How the schedule is built (v2 engine):
- Interval is a whole number of months (1 = monthly, 3 = quarterly, 12 = yearly). No weekly cadence.
- Execution and Reporting period are configured independently, each with its own day-rule (
FixedDay N,LastDay,FirstDay). Example: execute on the last business day, report as if for the 1st–31st. - Weekend adjustment (
None/PreviousBusinessDay/NextBusinessDay) only shifts the execution date; the reporting period stays anchored to the original due date. - Period offset (−3…+3) lets you post now for a past or future period (e.g. VAT filed in April for Q1: offset −1).
- Description and note support the tokens
${date},${dueDate},${periodFrom},${periodTo},${runNumber}, with date formatters likedd.MM.yyyy,MMMM,Q(quarter),S(semester),T(trimester),ww(ISO week). Older tokens (${periodLabel},${today},${year}, …) are no longer supported — the editor warns when a saved template still references them.
Reconciliation
Comparing the app’s account totals with reality. The Reconcile screen shows any drift between booked balances, savings envelopes, and unswept money.
Example: Your real bank statement says your checking account holds CHF 3,240. The app says CHF 3,440. The reconcile screen shows a CHF 200 drift. You trace it back: you recorded a transfer to savings but forgot to create the matching incoming side. After fixing it, drift is zero and everything lines up.
Sweep / savings target
At month-end, any leftover budget in an envelope can be swept into a savings category. You can set a default target and per-group overrides.
What happens with leftover money? Imagine your Groceries envelope had CHF 400 for June. You only spent CHF 350. At the end of June, the remaining CHF 50 can be swept into your Holiday Savings category (or any savings target you configured). That CHF 50 is now counted as saved, and the Groceries envelope resets to zero for the fresh month of July.
What happens if you overspend? Imagine you budgeted CHF 400 for Groceries but spent CHF 450. At month-end the envelope shows −50. Depending on your settings, that shortfall can be left as-is (you start July already 50 in the red), or it can be covered from another envelope via Reallocate. The app never silently moves money — you always decide what happens.
Savings categories (like Holiday Savings or Emergency Fund) are different: they are running balances, not monthly envelopes. Money accumulates month after month until you spend from them.
Attachment
A file (receipt, invoice) linked to a transaction. Optionally synced to Nextcloud if you connect it.
Example: After paying CHF 89 for a dentist visit, you snap a photo of the receipt and attach it to the transaction. Six months later, when your health insurance asks for proof, you open the transaction and the receipt is right there.
Tag
A free-form label you can attach to transactions and search by. Useful for cross-cutting concerns that don’t fit categories (e.g. vacation-2025).
Example: You tag flights, hotel bookings, and restaurant meals with #paris-2025. Later, you can search that tag and see the total cost of the trip across all categories — without creating a separate Paris category for each expense type.