Add an account you track by hand.

The cash envelope, the credit union Plaid can't reach, the account you'd simply rather not link — a manual account puts it on your Accounts tab next to everything else. Spense treats it exactly like a synced account; the only difference is who reports the news.

Time

⏱ About 2 minutes

Steps

You'll need

The account's current balance — from your bank app, a statement, or the cash in the drawer

Works in

Every mode

Open Accounts and tap Add

On the Accounts tab, tap the Add button in the header. The Add Account sheet offers two doors: Connect Bank Account for an automatic sync, and Add Manual Account right under it. Take the second one.

Add Account

🏦

Connect Bank Account

Automatic sync with your bank

✍️

Add Manual Account

Track accounts manually

✓

Two doors, no wrong answer. Manual accounts live alongside synced ones — you can mix freely, and add the bank later or never.

Name it and pick its type

Name it something future-you recognizes in a picker — Chase Checking, Emergency Fund, Wallet Cash — then pick the type: Bank Account, Credit Card, Investment, Loan, or Other. The type is not decoration: it decides which group the account sits in and how Spense reads its balance — for credit cards and loans, the balance means what you owe, not what you have.

Add Manual Account

🏦

Bank Account

Checking, savings, cash

✓

💳

Credit Card

Balance = what you owe

The type sets the math. A $500 balance on a Bank Account is money; on a Credit Card it's debt — and Spense moves each in the right direction from day one.

Enter today's balance and tap Add Account

Enter the current balance — grab it from your bank app, the latest statement, or count the drawer. For a credit card or loan, enter the amount owed as a positive number; the form's helper text says so right under the field. Then tap Add Account. That's the whole form: the account is on your Accounts tab before the keyboard is down.

🐟 What just happened

The balance you type is a starting point, not a transaction — nothing lands in your spending history and no category is touched. In Classic Mode, a new Bank Account's balance does report for duty in Ready to Assign, because money you just told Spense about is money that can take a job.

✅

On the books.

From here the balance is Spense's job to move, not yours to retype: every transaction you log against the account — spending, income, a transfer between accounts — updates it automatically, and editing or deleting a transaction puts the difference back. Need to rename the account later? Swipe its row on the Accounts tab and tap the pencil.

Next up

4 stepsConnect a bank account 3 stepsSet up your first budget

Keeping the bank unlinked on purpose? The full system — what to log, when, and the five-minute weekly ritual that keeps hand-tracked numbers honest — is our walkthrough of budgeting without linking your bank account.

🔄 Verified against Spense 2.3 · If a screen looks different in your app, tell us and we'll fix the guide.