Track assets

Assets

Keep a register of things you own outside regular accounts — cash on hand, metals, crypto, property, or money owed to you.

Last updated 2026-07-19

Use this page to keep a private register of things you own that aren't bank accounts: physical cash, precious metals and coins, cryptocurrency, receivables (money someone owes you), property, vehicles, collectibles, and anything else worth tracking.

An asset is not a transaction and not an account. It deliberately sits outside your cash flow: owning gold or being owed $500 doesn't change your spending, income, budgets, or forecast. Only when money actually moves — you sell something, or a debt is repaid into a bank account — do you record a normal transaction for that movement.

Before you start

Know the quantity and unit for each asset — grams, ounces, coins, units, or a currency amount for physical cash.
Decide who has custody: you, another person, or an institution.
A valuation is optional. If you add one, it's your own estimate as of a date — TallyFolio never fetches market prices.

How to use it

Open the Assets page and add an asset with its type, quantity, unit, custody, and an optional purpose note.
Add a valuation if you want a currency value shown — the amount, currency, and the date it was true.
Open the asset's detail page for everything that happens later: adjust the quantity, update the valuation, change the custodian, change the purpose, or mark it settled or sold. Every change is kept in the event history.
Attach labels to group related assets, and use the Assets tab on the Reports page for grouped quantities, custody, valuation freshness, and per-currency values.
Export the filtered asset list as a CSV file when you need it elsewhere.

Custody: who holds it

Custody records where the asset physically is — and one distinction matters more than the rest:

Custody	Meaning
Self	You hold it yourself.
Held by other	You still own it, but someone else has physical custody — gold stored at a relative's place is still your gold.
Owed by other	This is a receivable: someone owes you the money or value. You don't hold an object — you hold a claim. Used only for receivable-type assets.
Institution	A company holds it for you — a vault service, a platform.
Unknown	You haven't recorded where it is yet.

The event history

Every change to an asset is recorded as an event, so the register keeps its full story:

Event	When it's recorded
Valuation update	You re-estimated what it's worth, as of a new date.
Quantity adjustment	The amount changed — you bought more, used some, or corrected a count.
Custodian change	It moved between you, another person, or an institution.
Purpose change	Why you hold it changed.
Settled	A receivable was repaid. If money arrived in one of your accounts, record that transaction separately.
Sold	You sold the asset. The register records the sale; the cash you received is a transaction you record yourself.

What affects this page

Only your own entries: the assets you add, the events you record, and the valuations you update.
Asset labels, for grouping and for the Assets report filters.

What does not affect this page

Transactions, budgets, and the forecast — and the reverse is true too: assets never affect them unless you separately record a transaction.
Market prices — there is no live pricing; valuations are yours, dated when you made them.
Account balances — an asset is not an account, and its value never appears in one.

Common mistakes

Expecting an asset to affect budgets, cash flow, or the forecast. It never does — only transactions move those numbers.
Recording money lent to someone only as an expense. Record the cash leaving as a transaction if it left an account, and the claim as a receivable asset — that keeps both the outflow and what's owed to you visible.
Confusing "held by other" with "owed by other". Held by other means you still own the thing and someone else is keeping it; owed by other means what you own is a claim to be repaid.
Letting valuations go stale and reading them as current market value. A valuation is your estimate as of its date; reports show how fresh each one is.

FAQ

How do I record selling an asset?

Mark the asset sold on its detail page — that records the event and closes out the register entry. If the sale money landed in one of your accounts, record that as a normal transaction too; the register never creates transactions for you.

Why don't my asset values show up in my net cash flow?

By design. Assets are ownership records, not money movements. Cash flow only changes when a transaction happens.

Do valuations update automatically?

No. There's no price feed of any kind. A valuation is your own estimate with a date, and it stays until you update it.

Can I total different assets together?

Summary totals group by unit and by currency, and never mix unlike things — ounces don't get added to euros. The Assets report shows per-currency values side by side.

Does the ownership percentage scale an asset's value?

No. Ownership percentage is recorded for your reference only. Every value in TallyFolio — the assets list and the asset detail page — shows the asset's full valuation, never a scaled share. If you want a figure to reflect only your portion, record the valuation as your portion.

Where this lives in the app

Labels
Labels group transactions and assets by trip, project, or event — without changing any of the math.
Reports
Historical, read-only analysis of spending and merchants over any period you choose.
Transactions
Every money movement in TallyFolio is a transaction. Learn the types, the statuses, and how to keep them categorized.
Export your data
Download your record as CSV files, restore core data from a TallyFolio export ZIP, or export just the filtered view you're looking at.