Set up a credit card the right way.

Add the card — linked or by hand

On the Accounts tab, tap Add. If you link the card's bank through Connect Bank Account, the card comes in with it — name, type and balance all filled in by the sync, so skip straight to step three. For a card you'd rather keep unlinked, choose Add Manual Account and tap the Credit Card tile. Name it the way it's printed on the plastic — in Classic Mode you'll see that name again on a budget row.

New to manual accounts in general? The manual-account guide walks the whole form in two minutes.

Enter what you owe, as a positive number

Under Current Balance, type what you owe today — from the card app or your latest statement. Positive, no minus sign: the helper text under the field says “Enter your current balance owed (positive number)”, and it means it. Then tap Add Account.

From here the direction is automatic. A purchase you log against the card raises the balance (more debt); a payment into it lowers it (less debt). You never flip a sign by hand.

Know where the starting balance went

What happens to the balance you walked in with depends on your budget mode — this is the one step where the two modes differ.

Classic Mode: whether you link the card or add it by hand, Spense creates a Credit Card Payments category on your Budget tab with a row named after the card and tagged Card payment, and records a Starting Balance transaction on the card for the amount you owe. This month's row starts with that debt already counted, so the old balance can't sneak into a spending category as if you'd bought it today. The row belongs to the system — you can't delete it by hand, and it goes away on its own if you ever delete the card.

Auto Mode: nothing extra appears. The balance shows on the Accounts tab with your other debts, and the budget is left alone.

Linking a bank never changes your budget mode, so a Classic Mode budget stays Classic Mode when its cards arrive by sync.

Not sure which mode you're in? You picked it in setup, and the top of your Budget tab shows it: Classic Mode has Ready to assign there. The guide to choosing a mode has the rest.

Categorize purchases on the card like any other spending

A $60 grocery run on the card is a grocery run. Give it the same category you'd give it on debit — Groceries, not “credit card” — whether it syncs in or you log it by hand on the Spending tab against the card account. The spending is counted once, when you buy. That's the whole trick: by the time the bill comes, the money was already spent and already in a category.

In Classic Mode, every card purchase also raises what the card's row says to pay: a synced one when you approve it, a hand-logged one the moment you save it. The row keeps a running tally of what the bill will need to cover, and if you edit or delete a purchase, the row follows. A category that guesses wrong is a two-tap fix — here's how.

Record payments as transfers, not spending

Paying the card is not a new expense — it's money moving between two of your own accounts. Count it as spending and the month counts your groceries twice. How you record it depends on whether the accounts are linked:

• Both linked: let the sync bring the payment in — don't also log it by hand, or it lands twice. Spense looks for card payments as they sync and treats them as transfers, so they stay out of your spending totals. In Classic Mode the payment waits in Review. The fish flags it as money moving between your accounts, and under Category the card's row is already picked when Spense can match it. Tap Approve (or swipe the card right). Approving it into the card's row is what counts it as paid on the row, so choose that over It's a transfer, which records the move without touching the row.
• Both manual: on the Spending tab, tap Add. At the top of the New transaction sheet, choose Transfer. Enter the amount, pick checking under From and the card under To, and tap Move money. There's no category to pick on purpose: transfers don't touch your spending categories.
• One linked, one manual: log the payment by hand the same way. Only a transfer you log moves the manual account's balance (and, in Classic Mode, counts the payment on the card's row). Your bank still syncs its own copy of the payment on the linked side. In Classic Mode that copy waits in Review. Whatever is picked under Category (the card's row, Ready to Assign, or nothing), tap It's a transfer, not Approve: your transfer already counted the payment, and approving the copy could count it a second time on the card's row or add it to Ready to Assign. Usually the fish flags it as money moving between your accounts, but not always: a payment that showed as pending first arrives unflagged. The copy then sits in that account's list beside the one you logged. Neither counts as spending, and neither touches Ready to Assign. In Auto Mode Spense recognizes most card payments as they sync and keeps them out of your spending without asking.