Credit cards

Guides

When you pay by card, Balanced sets the budgeted money aside for the bill. Here's how to set up a card, record purchases and pay it off.

A credit card lets you buy now and pay later. In Balanced, the card is an account you owe money on, and your budget keeps track of the money you’ll need for the bill. Why it works this way is explained in Credit cards and debt. This page shows the steps.

Set up the card

In the journal, tap Edit next to Accounts, open Liabilities and tap ＋ Add account.
Name it after the card, for example “Credit Card”, and pick an emoji such as 💳.
Under Receipt Matching, tap Add Card and type the Last 4 digits printed on your receipts. Scanning receipts then knows which purchases were paid with this card.
Save.

Does the card already have a balance? Record it as an opening balance from Equity, as shown in Accounts. The card’s balance is negative: it’s what you owe.

Buy something with the card

Tap ＋ New Transaction and write a Note, such as the shop’s name.
Tap Choose Account, pick the category, here Groceries, and type the amount.
Pick the card for the second line and leave its amount empty. Balanced fills in −60.00.

Save, and the purchase is on the card:

Supermarket, paid by card

Expenses:Groceries: +60.00
Liabilities:Credit Card: −60.00
Balanced: 0.00 ✓

Nothing has left your checking account yet. Turn on Cleared once the purchase shows up on your card statement.

What the budget does

Say you assigned €400 to Groceries this month and haven’t spent any of it yet. The €60 purchase is covered, so Balanced moves €60 of the Groceries budget to the card. Groceries has €340 left, and €60 is now set aside to pay the card.

Each purchase uses what’s still left in the category at that moment, after everything you spent from it earlier in the month. If that can’t cover the whole purchase, the rest stays on the card as debt with nothing set aside, and the category shows Overspent. Unlike overspending in cash, this doesn’t reduce next month’s To assign. Credit cards and debt walks through an example.

You can see what’s set aside in the budget editor:

Tap Adjust next to Budget and open the Liabilities folder, above your categories. Next to it is the total you’ve assigned to cards and loans this month.
On the left, what you assign to the card yourself: nothing so far. On the right, in green, what’s set aside for it: the €60 from Groceries.
The summary counts payments to the card, not purchases, so it says “No activity” until you pay.

Money set aside stays with the card from month to month until you pay it.

Pay the bill

When the bill comes, pay it from your checking account:

Tap ＋ New Transaction and write a note, such as “Card payment”.
Pick the card and type the amount you pay, here 60.
Pick Checking and leave its amount empty.

Card payment

Liabilities:Credit Card: +60.00
Assets:Checking: −60.00
Balanced: 0.00 ✓

This is a transfer between your own accounts: the spending already happened at the supermarket. The payment uses up the money set aside, and the card’s row in the budget editor now says “Repayment of €60.00.” It doesn’t count toward Spent: the groceries already did when you bought them. The monthly summaries show it as Liability repayment, and the Cash Flow chart counts it toward how much your debt went down.

Pay what’s set aside. If you pay more without assigning it to the card first (see Budget for older card debt), the difference counts as overspending, and next month starts with that much less to assign.

Get a refund on the card

When a shop gives money back to your card, record it the other way round:

Tap ＋ New Transaction and write a note, such as “Refund”.
Pick the card and type the amount, say 20.
Pick the category, here Groceries, and leave its amount empty. Balanced fills in −20.00.

Refund to the card

Liabilities:Credit Card: +20.00
Expenses:Groceries: −20.00
Balanced: 0.00 ✓

The €20 goes back to Groceries, and you owe €20 less on the card, so the money set aside for it goes down by €20. Say the refund comes before you’ve paid the bill for the €60 purchase: Groceries is back up to €360, and €40 is set aside. If part of the card’s Groceries spending this month wasn’t covered, the refund cancels that part first, and only the rest comes out of what’s set aside.

Already paid the bill? Then nothing is left to lower: the card’s row shows Overspent by €20, and the €20 comes off next month’s To assign while Groceries keeps it. To even it out now, assign €20 less to Groceries and €20 more to the card.

Budget for older card debt

Maybe the card had a balance when you started with Balanced, or a purchase wasn’t fully covered. No money is set aside for that debt. To pay it down:

In the budget editor, open the Liabilities folder and type an amount next to the card, say €100. This takes €100 from To assign, like any category.
Pay €100 from Checking to the card, as above.

The row then reads “Repayment of €100.00.” and nothing is left over. Repeat this every month until the debt is gone. Your card balance in the journal overview shows how much is still to go.

Scan card receipts

If you’ve added the card’s last 4 digits to the account, receipt scanning picks the card for every receipt that shows those digits. If it finds digits it doesn’t know yet, Balanced may ask after you save (see Scanning receipts) whether to remember them for the account you chose.