Accounts
Checking, savings, credit cards, and the rest — and when to use each.
An account in PennyBolt mirrors a real-world financial account: a place money comes from, goes to, or sits. You add one account per real account — one for your Chase checking, one for your Discover card, one for your savings — and transactions flow between them.
Account types
| Type | What it’s for |
|---|---|
| Checking | A bank account you write checks or make debit purchases from. |
| Savings | A bank account that earns interest and holds reserves. |
| Credit card | A revolving credit line you pay off each month. Balances run negative (you owe the bank). |
| Cash | Physical cash you track manually. |
| Asset | Something you own with real value — a car, a home, a brokerage account. PennyBolt v1 does not track investment performance; record the current value manually and update it when it changes. |
| Liability | Something you owe — a mortgage, a car loan, a debt not on a credit card. |
When in doubt, pick the type that matches your bank’s label for the account. Checking accounts are checking; savings accounts are savings; everything else fits into one of the other four.
Opening balance
When you add an account, PennyBolt asks for an opening balance — the account’s balance as of the date of your oldest transaction. This is the anchor that keeps your running totals correct.
If you’re importing three months of history, the opening balance is the account balance at the start of those three months. If you’re starting from the day you opened the account, the opening balance is $0.00.
If you don’t know the exact opening balance, enter your best guess. You can correct it later: click the account name in the sidebar, then Edit account.
Transfers between accounts
When money moves between two accounts you’ve added — a payment from your checking account to your credit card, for example — PennyBolt records it as a transfer rather than an expense. The money didn’t leave your financial picture; it moved.
If you import a credit card payment from your bank download and the matching debit doesn’t already exist, PennyBolt will ask you to confirm the other side. See Importing OFX/QFX for how this works in practice.
See also
- Transactions — what lives inside each account.
- Reconciling with your bank — agree with your bank down to the penny.
- Backups — all accounts are included in every backup.