Not every bank transaction has a receipt behind it. Some are transfers between your own accounts, some are personal spending you want out of your business books, and some, like bank fees or interest, are real costs that never had a document. The Transaction Manager has a specific tool for each case, plus category controls that apply to any transaction. This article covers all of them.
Transfers between your own accounts
A transfer, such as moving money from checking to savings or paying off a credit card from a bank account, is neither income nor an expense. If you treated both sides as real transactions, your totals would be inflated. Mark these as transfers instead. Transfers work between any of your accounts: bank to bank, bank to savings, or bank to credit card.
- When SparkReceipt spots one for you. A transaction that looks like a payment to one of your own accounts shows a hint naming that account (for example, "Looks like a payment to [your credit card]"). If it's right, resolve it. If not, choose Not a transfer.
- Marking one transaction. On an unmatched transaction, open its actions menu, choose Resolve as transfer and pick the account the money went to. In the mobile app the action is Settle as transfer.
- Marking several at once. Select the transactions, open More in the bulk action bar, choose Mark as transfer to…, then pick the account.
- Undoing a transfer. On a transaction already marked Transfer, use Not a transfer to return it to Unmatched.
The account picker is titled Transfer to and lists your accounts under Bank accounts and Credit cards. It includes connected accounts and accounts you added yourself, but not disconnected accounts or the account the transaction came from. The transfer options only appear when there is at least one other account to pick.
My savings account (or other account) isn't in the transfer list
The list only contains accounts SparkReceipt knows about. If the money went to an account you haven't connected and haven't uploaded statements for, such as a savings account, add it as an account first:
- In the Transaction Manager, open the Accounts filter, use New account…, enter an Account name, choose Bank account (or Credit card), optionally the Last 4 digits, and click Create account.
- Or go to Account settings → Cards & Accounts, and click Create account in the Transaction accounts section.
The new account then appears under Transfer to, and you can also assign statements to it.
A transaction marked as a transfer can't be linked to a receipt or turned into an expense. That's by design, because it isn't a business cost. The tooltip says as much: "This looks like money moved between your own accounts, so it can't be linked to a receipt or turned into an expense. If that's wrong, mark it as not a transfer."
For how the same situations look on an uploaded statement, see Refunds, transfers and other special cases on bank statements.
Excluding transactions from your books
Use Exclude for transactions that shouldn't count at all, like a personal purchase on a business card or anything out of scope. Excluded transactions stay visible (in the Excluded queue) but are kept out of reconciliation and your books. Its status label is Excluded.
- Exclude: on the transaction, choose Exclude (or select several and use Exclude in the bulk bar).
- Restore: on an excluded transaction, choose Restore to bring it back to Unmatched.
There's no automatic filter that separates business from personal spending on a statement or bank account. Go through the transactions, match or create entries for the business ones, and exclude the personal ones. Select several at once and use Exclude in the bulk bar to speed this up. Excluding is never required: transactions you leave alone don't reach your reports either.
Excluding vs. creating an entry. Exclude is for spending that shouldn't be in your books at all. For a real business cost with no receipt (a bank fee, interest, a subscription charge), use Create expense instead (below) so it still shows up in your cash flow. The Exclude tooltip makes the same point.
Creating an expense or income entry from a transaction
When a transaction is a genuine business cost or income but has no receipt to link (bank fees, interest, FX charges), you can turn the transaction itself into a document:
- Create expense / Create income on a single transaction (which one you see depends on whether it's money out or money in).
- Create entries in the bulk action bar, to do a selection at once.
This creates a normal expense or income record from the transaction's own details: an expense for money out and income for money in, carrying over the Category already set on the transaction. The entry gets the payment method of the transaction's account. The new entry behaves like any other document and flows into your reports. It simply has no file attached. The transaction then counts as reconciled.
A few rules apply, so you'll only be offered Create expense/income when they're met:
- The transaction must be unmatched. If it's already matched to a receipt, link or unlink instead.
- It can't be a transfer. Transfers aren't costs, so they can't become entries.
- Its date can't fall in a closed accounting period (see below).
A purchase line that includes a bank fee
If a statement line combines a purchase and a fee (for example a card fee or a transfer fee added to the payment), use Split line from the line's actions menu to pull the fee out into its own line. Then match the purchase to its receipt and use Create expense for the fee. See How do I edit, sort, select and export transactions?.
For a money transfer service like Wise, where the statement shows a transfer between your own accounts plus a separate fee, mark the transfer as a transfer and use Create expense for the fee line only.
Undoing a created entry
If you created an entry by mistake, use Destroy expense / Destroy income on that transaction. This moves the entry that was created from the transaction to Trash and returns the transaction to Unmatched. It's the dedicated undo for Create expense/income. (It only removes entries that were created from the transaction. A real receipt you uploaded and linked is removed with Unlink instead.)
Categories on transactions
Every transaction can carry a Category:
- When a transaction is matched to a receipt, it inherits that receipt's category automatically (as long as the category fits the direction of the money and you haven't already set one by hand).
- To set or change a category yourself, use Add category on a transaction, or select several and use Assign category… in the bulk bar. Categories are grouped into Expenses and Income.
- SparkReceipt also categorizes imported transactions automatically, and learns from the categories you set by hand.
Editing and removing transaction lines
- Edit the details. You can correct a transaction's merchant, description, amount or date inline, and add a note with Add note. The amount, date and currency of transactions from a connected bank account are locked to keep them in step with your bank.
- Add transaction adds a line the extraction missed to a statement.
- Delete transaction permanently removes a line the extraction read by mistake. This is only for statement transactions and cannot be undone. It removes the extracted line only, never anything at your bank.
More on editing, sorting and exporting is in How do I edit, sort, select and export transactions?.
Closed accounting periods
If a transaction's date is inside a closed accounting period, it's locked. You can't match it, edit it, or turn it into an entry, and it shows a Closed period marker. Reopen the period to make changes. When a bulk action touches some transactions in a closed period, SparkReceipt applies the action to the rest and tells you how many were skipped.