A payment method tells you how an expense or income was paid: a credit or debit card, a bank account, cash, PayPal or something else. You create your payment methods once, under Account settings → Cards & Accounts on the web or Account settings → Payment methods in the mobile app, and then pick one in the Payment method field of each document. To mark something as cash, create a payment method with the type Cash and pick it on the document. Whether a document is paid is a separate field, Payment status, which invoices and income have.
Create a payment method (for example Cash)
On the web:
- Open Account settings and go to Cards & Accounts.
- Click Create payment method.
- Give it a Name and pick a Type: Debit card, Credit card, Bank account, Cash, PayPal or Other.
- For a card or a bank account, enter the Last four digits. For PayPal, enter the Account name.
- Pick the Owner, the person who uses this card or account.
In the mobile app: open Account settings, tap Payment methods, then Create payment method. The fields are the same, and the owner is called Holder.
Members, admins, the owner and Accountants see every payment method in the account and can create one for another person. A contributor sees and creates only their own.
Set a receipt's payment method to cash or a card
Open the expense or income and pick the method in its Payment method field. If the method isn't in the list yet, the web picker has a Manage payment methods link that takes you to Cards & Accounts.
When SparkReceipt scans a receipt, it tries to pick the matching payment method from your list on its own, for example by the card's last digits. You can always change it by hand.
Set the payment method on several documents at once
On the web: open Documents, tick the documents, open Actions and choose Set payment method.
In the mobile app: tap Select on the Documents tab, tap the documents, and set the payment method from the bar at the bottom (under More if it isn't shown). See How do I change the Category or other details of many documents at once?.
To have new documents get a payment method automatically, use an auto-assign rule. See How to set up automations in SparkReceipt.
Payment methods and bank or card transactions
A transaction from a bank or credit card statement has no payment method field of its own. It belongs to a transaction account, which you set with Assign account… in Transactions. Each transaction account has a matching payment method, shown under Transaction accounts in Cards & Accounts. Expenses you create from that account's transactions are tagged with it automatically. To change which payment method that is, edit the account there and pick a different Payment method.
Cash purchases don't appear on a bank statement, so you can't mark a bank transaction as cash. Record a cash purchase as an expense and give it your Cash payment method.
A receipt paid partly in cash and partly by card
A document normally has one payment method. Pick the one that paid most of it, and note the other part in a comment on the document. If your document shows Add another payment method under the payment method, you can add the second method and its amount there.
Retire an old card without losing history
There is no archive for payment methods. Deleting one removes it from every document that uses it: the confirmation says the documents will be untagged. The documents themselves stay, but their Payment method field becomes empty.
To retire a card and keep its history, don't delete it. Rename it instead, for example by adding "closed" to its name, so nobody picks it for new receipts. Names can be up to 30 characters.
A payment method that was created for a connected bank or card account can come back when new transactions arrive from that account. Connected accounts can't be deleted, so disconnect the bank first if you no longer want its transactions. See Manage bank account connections.
Link a card to a person
Every payment method has an owner: Owner on the web, Holder in the app. Create one payment method per card with the card's last four digits and pick the person who carries it as the owner. Then filter Documents by Payment method to see the receipts paid with that person's card.
To find card charges that still have no receipt, open Transactions, switch to the Unmatched queue and narrow it with Accounts. This shows a single card on its own when that card has its own statement or transaction account.
Mark an invoice or income as paid
Income, and expenses whose kind is Invoice, have a paid status. A regular receipt has already been paid, so it doesn't show one.
On the web: open the document and set Payment status to Unpaid or Paid. For an expense, Payment status shows once Document kind is set to Invoice. When the Documents list shows a Paid or Unpaid badge on a row, you can click it to change the status.
In the mobile app: turn on the Paid switch on the document. For an expense, the switch shows once Expense type is set to Invoice.
To mark many at once on the web, select them in Documents, open Actions and choose Set paid status. It applies to income and invoices in your selection.
What sets the paid status automatically
When SparkReceipt first scans an invoice, it reads the paid status from the document itself, so an invoice that says "unpaid" comes in as Unpaid. After that first scan, the status changes only when you change it, and a rescan doesn't reset it. Some things people expect to update it don't:
- Taking a photo of a payment receipt creates a separate document. It doesn't mark the original invoice as paid. Set the invoice to Paid yourself.
- Matching an invoice to a bank transaction doesn't change its paid status.
- Auto-assign rules can't set the paid status. Custom AI instructions (Elite) can set it on new documents while they are scanned, for example "mark invoices from this merchant as paid". See How to set up automations in SparkReceipt.
Partial payments and a remaining balance
SparkReceipt doesn't track partial payments or a remaining balance on an invoice. The status is paid or unpaid. Keep a partly paid invoice as Unpaid until it is paid in full, and note what has been paid so far in a comment on the document.