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Transfers

Moving money between your own accounts is neither earned nor spent. Counting it as either is the biggest single way a spending chart overstates, so Wicker Money records a transfer as its own thing: two linked rows, one on each account.

Added in 0.1.0.

Recording one​

On the Transactions page, press Add transaction and switch the toggle at the top of the dialog from Spending or income to Transfer.

FieldWhat to enter
From accountThe account the money leaves
To accountThe account it arrives in. The account you chose as the source isn't offered
AmountA positive amount. Which account it leaves sets the direction
DateThe day it moved
DescriptionOptional, up to 300 characters

Press Move money. Both rows are written together, or neither is. An amount of zero or less is refused, and so is a transfer from an account to itself.

Any two of your accounts will do, whatever their types, so paying a credit card or a loan from checking is a transfer too. A balance is the account's opening balance plus its rows, so the positive row raises the destination's balance by the amount and the negative row lowers the source's.

If you leave the description empty, the row on the source account reads Transfer to Account, and the row on the destination reads Transfer from Account. If you give one, both rows carry it.

Two rows, one event​

A transfer is a pair: a negative row on the account the money leaves and a positive row on the account it reaches, sharing one link. Balances are derived from the ledger, so a single row would take money out of one account and put it nowhere. Every balance after it would be short, and the missing money would turn up in the spending chart instead.

In the Transactions table, a transfer row shows a transfer tag where the category would be, and has no category picker.

Editing​

Edit on either row opens the usual dialog with a note: "This is one side of a transfer. Saving also updates the other side." What carries over:

  • Amount: the other row gets the same amount with the opposite sign.
  • Date: the other row moves to the same date.
  • Merchant (the label) and notes change on the row you edit only.

A row keeps its direction. You can change the amount, but not make it zero or flip its sign. To reverse a transfer, delete it and record a new one. The accounts and whether something is a transfer can't be edited at all: an ordinary transaction can't be turned into a transfer. Delete it and record a transfer instead.

Deleting​

Delete on either row removes both, after a confirmation that says so. A half-deleted transfer would be money that left one account and arrived nowhere.

Categories​

A transfer row can't take a category, and a rule never files one. When you categorize several transactions at once, any transfer rows among them are skipped. A transfer also can't be split. Uncategorized transfer rows don't appear under Only uncategorized, so that list can be worked down to empty.

How other features treat transfers​

A transfer is left out of everything that measures earning or spending:

  • Budgets. Neither row counts as spending in a monthly line or an account allowance.
  • Charts. The money-in-and-out and spending charts on the dashboard leave both rows out.
  • Account balances. Both accounts change, which is the point.

And one feature is about them: a recurring item of kind Transfer (or a debt payment) is the schedule behind one you make every month. When the real pair lands, matching links one row and its partner row together to the occurrence.

A transfer that isn't recorded as a pair​

Not every transfer will arrive as a pair. A bank statement for a card lists your payment on the card's account, and your checking statement lists the same payment going out. CSV import reads each file as ordinary transactions and never creates a transfer, so importing both leaves two unlinked rows.

For that case, a category can count as a Transfer (see Categories and rules). The starter set has Transfers with Between accounts, Credit card payment and, if you said you were paying down debt, Loan payment (principal). Money filed there is left out of spending and income like a real pair. The difference is that each row only changes its own account's balance, so both statements must be imported for the balances to agree. For a payment you enter by hand, the Transfer form is simpler and can't leave one side behind.

Limits​

  • Two accounts only. A transfer can't be split across three, and it has one amount. A paycheck that is split between accounts is a recurring income item, not a transfer.
  • No currency conversion. Both rows carry the same amount.
  • Deleting an account. If you delete an account together with its history, the other row of any transfer is removed too, even when it is on a different account. The dialog says so before anything happens.
  • Moving an account's history to another account. Transfers between those two accounts are removed rather than moved, since they would become a transfer from an account to itself. The dialog counts them first.
  • Importing from code. The API accepts an optional externalId on a transfer, stored on both rows and unique per account, so sending the same transfer twice answers 409 duplicate_external_id instead of writing a second copy. Neither row is written when either account already has that id. See the API reference.

Where it connects​