Glossary

Reference

The words Balanced uses, in one or two sentences each.

Terms in bold are written as the app shows them. Each one links to the page that explains it.

Your books

Term	Meaning
Journal	A complete set of books: accounts, transactions and budget. You can have several, for example one for your household and one for a club. Journals
Account	A place money is in, comes from or goes to: your checking account, a credit card, groceries, your salary. Accounts
Assets	Accounts with what you have: checking, savings, cash. Account types
Liabilities	Accounts with what you owe: credit cards, loans. Credit cards and debt
Expenses	Accounts for what you spend money on. Each one is a budget category. Account types
Income	Accounts for where money comes from: salary, gifts, interest. Account types
Equity	Accounts for your starting point and corrections. Account types
Transaction	One event with a date and a note, such as a purchase or your salary. Its postings add up to zero. Transactions and postings
Posting	One line of a transaction: an account and an amount. Plus means money arrives, minus means it leaves. Money moves
Multi-account transaction	A transaction with more than two postings, for example one receipt across two categories. Transactions and postings
Transfer	A transaction that only moves money between your own accounts, such as paying your credit card. Transaction types
Opening balance	What an account already held when you started. It’s booked from an Equity account. Accounts
Correction	A transaction from an Equity account that makes a balance match your bank when you can’t find the cause. Corrections

Your budget

Term	Meaning
Budget	Your plan for a month: how much each category may spend. Zero-based budgeting
Category	An expense account, seen as part of your budget. Account types
Assign	Give money a purpose by entering an amount for a category in the budget editor. Budgeting each month
Available	The money you can budget this month. Budget formulas
Ready to assign, To assign	Money that has no category yet. Zero-based budgeting
Overassigned	You’ve assigned more than you have. Lower an amount somewhere. Budgeting each month
Overspent	A category has spent more than it had. Month to month
Planned spending	Spending dated after today in this month, counted ahead of time. Planned spending
Carry-over	What last month left behind: Remaining last month or Overspent last month. Month to month
Liability repayment	Money paid from an asset account to a credit card or loan. Credit cards and debt

Day to day

Term	Meaning
Cleared	The transaction has shown up on your bank statement. Cleared and uncleared
Repeat	A schedule that creates a transaction again and again, such as rent every month. Repeat rules

Receipts, sync and sharing

Term	Meaning
Receipt Merchants	The shops Balanced has learned from your receipts, with their category and payment account. Scanning receipts
Cash Account	The account Balanced picks for receipts paid in cash. Scanning receipts
iCloud Sync	Keeps your journals the same on all your devices, through your own iCloud account. iCloud sync
Shared journal	A journal you’ve shared with other people, or they with you. Everyone in it can record transactions. Sharing a journal
Member	A person who pays for things and shares costs in a journal. They don’t need Balanced or iCloud. Members
Split	The share of an expense that each member bears: equally, by amounts or by ratio. Recording shared expenses
Settle up	Pay each other so that nobody owes anything. Balanced suggests who pays whom. Settling up