Track money

Accounts

Create the accounts your money lives in, keep credit-card details current, and retire accounts you no longer use.

Last updated 2026-07-07

Use this page to manage the accounts your money lives in: chequing, savings, credit cards, cash, investment accounts, loans, and anything else. Every transaction belongs to exactly one account, and each account keeps a running balance.

The balance is derived, not typed: after you set it up, it moves automatically as transactions are added, edited, or deleted. Real and pending transactions move it; planned transactions never do.

Before you start

Gather each account's current balance — the balance it has right now, on the day you start tracking it.
For credit cards, also find the credit limit, the statement closing day, and the payment due day. The forecast needs all three to project statement balances and payment dates.
Decide each account's currency (CAD, USD, EUR, or GBP). An account has one currency, and its transactions use it.

How to use it

Open the Accounts page and choose to add an account.
Pick the type, give it a name you'll recognize, choose the currency, and enter the opening balance — what the account holds on the day you start tracking it.
For credit cards, enter the limit, statement closing day, and payment due day.
Set the two switches on the account: whether it counts in cash-flow calculations, and whether its balance counts toward your emergency fund.
When an account ends in real life, close it. When you want it out of everyday lists entirely, archive it. Both keep the full history and both can be undone (reopen or restore).

Where the balance comes from

You set an account's opening balance once, when you add it. From then on the balance is your transactions: every posted or pending row moves it, and nothing else does. There is no current-balance field to edit, because a balance you can type over is a balance that disagrees with your ledger the moment you record the next transaction.

So if an account reads wrong, the ledger is missing something — most often the payment that moves money from a chequing account to a credit card. Record that as a Transfer from the paying account to the card and both sides correct at once: the chequing account goes down and the card comes up, from one row.

If the opening balance itself was wrong, correct it on the account and the current balance moves by exactly the same amount, leaving every transaction since untouched.

Balance snapshots

An account's balance is derived from your transactions, which tells you what it is worth now but not what it was worth last March. A balance snapshot fills that gap: choose Record balance snapshot on an account, pick a date, and type what the account was actually worth then — from a statement or your own records.

Snapshots record what an account was worth on a date. They never change your current balance or any total. They are a separate history, kept so that net-worth views can be built on what you actually recorded rather than on a number reconstructed backwards from today's balance. Nothing is filled in between snapshots, and a date earlier than your first snapshot stays unknown rather than being guessed at.

Credit cards and loans take a snapshot too — enter what was owed. Investment accounts keep their own snapshots on the Investments page, so the action does not appear for them here.

When an account's latest snapshot is more than 60 days old, the Accounts page, the Investments page, and the dashboard show a reminder chip to record a new one — nothing is ever captured automatically. Each reminder can be hidden; it comes back only after another lapse follows a newer snapshot.

The account lifecycle

Status	What it means
Active	In normal use. Only active accounts are selectable when you create new transactions, and only they enter forecast and reserve calculations.
Closed	Ended in real life. All history is kept and old reports still make sense, but the account no longer accepts new records and the forecast ignores it. Can be reopened.
Archived	Tucked away from everyday lists entirely, with history preserved. Use it for accounts you closed long ago and don't want to see. Can be restored.

What affects this page

Adding, editing, or deleting transactions changes account balances automatically — including both sides of a transfer.
CSV imports move the balance of the account they were imported into.
Pending transactions count toward the current balance; planned (projected) ones never do.

What does not affect this page

Projected transactions — balances only move for real and pending entries.
Labels, budgets, and reports — they read your accounts but never change them.
Assets in the private register — owning something is not an account balance.
Subscriptions on their own — a tracked bill doesn't touch a balance until a real transaction exists.

Common mistakes

Deleting an account to "clean up". That destroys history — and history is what makes reports trustworthy. Close or archive instead; both are reversible.
Reading an investment account's balance as contribution room. Room is estimated from the contribution records and room settings you enter on the Investments page — never from a balance.
Expecting a closed account to accept new transactions. It won't appear in pickers; reopen it first if the account is genuinely active again.
Leaving credit-card limits or statement dates blank, which leaves the forecast unable to project card utilization or payment dates.

FAQ

Should I close or archive an old account?

Close it when it ended in real life but you still want it visible in lifecycle filters. Archive it when you want it out of the way entirely. Both keep every transaction, and both can be undone.

Why doesn't my balance match my bank?

The balance is calculated from the transactions in TallyFolio. A mismatch means a transaction is missing, duplicated, or has the wrong amount — compare recent entries against your statement.

Can I change an account's currency later?

Yes — editing the account lets you change its currency. But transactions already recorded keep the currency they were entered with, so if an account has real history it's usually cleaner to create a new account in the right currency and close the old one.

Where this lives in the app

Getting started with TallyFolio
Set up your accounts, record your first transactions, and learn how the pieces fit together.
The year grid
Read a whole year at once: categories down the side, months across the top, and the totals on the right.
Transactions
Every money movement in TallyFolio is a transaction. Learn the types, the statuses, and how to keep them categorized.
Forecast
See projected cash over the next 30, 60, or 90 days under three scenarios, plus what your credit-card statements are heading toward.