# Accounts, cards, and transactions

URL: https://docs.clatri.com/en/finance/

> How to record accounts, cards and transactions in Clatri by chat, statements or bank connection, with two dates per movement and a chart of accounts.

Clatri's financial layer covers everything from logging a coffee to your business's income statement. And although underneath it's a **double-entry** system —the same 1494 invention that holds up the world's accounting—, you'll never see a debit or a credit.

That's the whole idea: **you speak plainly, Clatri does the accounting.** You say *"I spent 50 at the grocery store"* and a balanced entry writes itself into the ledger. You get on with your life; the reports add up when you need them.

It all starts with your accounts and cards.

## Bank accounts

An account represents anywhere you hold money: a checking account, a savings account, cash on hand, a digital wallet.

You can create them from chat —*"I have a savings account with 2 million"*— or from the form on the dashboard, where you set name, type, currency, country, and starting balance.

| Type | Typical use |
|------|-------------|
| Checking account | Day-to-day use |
| Savings account | Saving |
| Cash | Physical money in hand |
| Digital wallet | Wallets and payment platforms |
| Other | Any other instrument |

Inside an account you can have **savings pockets**: reserved portions of the same balance, with goals. See **[Budgets and savings](https://docs.clatri.com/en/finance/budgets/)**.

Accounts belong to the **entity**, not to a business. If you have several businesses under the same tax ID, they share the accounts —because legally they're the same— and what gets split is the movements. See **[Businesses](https://docs.clatri.com/en/finance/business/)**.

## Cards

Clatri handles **debit** and **credit** cards. Debit cards operate on their account's balance. Credit cards have their own limit and track debt separately, **per currency** — if you buy in two currencies during a trip, the debt is kept in both.

When creating them you set name, type, brand, last 4 digits, color, and associated account. Credit cards also take: limit, statement-close day, payment due day, and rate.

A credit card expense **raises the debt automatically**. And when you pay the card from an account, that **is not an expense**: it's paying off a debt you already recorded when you made the purchase. Counting it again would count the purchase twice. See **[To assign](https://docs.clatri.com/en/finance/assign/)**.

## How to record — chat, statements, bank and Shortcuts

You can combine them however suits you.

**By chat.** The most direct: *"I spent 45k on groceries today"*, *"3 million income from the design project"*. Also in batch: *"log: lunch 28, taxi 12, coffee 8, all today on the card"*. If the agent is missing an important detail —which account it came from, for example— **it asks instead of assuming**.

**By statements.** You upload the PDF, the Excel, the CSV or even a screenshot, and Clatri reads it, detects duplicates, detects transfers between your accounts and leaves you an editable draft that **you approve before anything is recorded**. See **[Statement processing](https://docs.clatri.com/en/finance/statements/)**.

**By bank connection.** You connect your bank once and transactions arrive on their own. See **[Open banking](https://docs.clatri.com/en/finance/open-banking/)**.

**By Apple Shortcuts.** iPhone automations that send Clatri your Apple Pay payments, your bank's SMS and notifications, and its emails with PDF statements. Each event lands in chat. See **[Apple Shortcuts](https://docs.clatri.com/en/apple-shortcuts/)**. Requires a subscription.

## Every transaction has two dates

This is what makes Clatri different, and it's worth understanding early:

- **When it happened** — when you earned the income or incurred the expense. *Used in the Income statement.*
- **When the money moved** — when you collected or paid. *Used in Cash flow.*

They're almost always the same. But when you sell on credit, or when you pay in advance, they aren't — and that's where a single date would force you to lie in one of the two reports.

When recording, you can mark **Not paid yet** / **Not received yet**: *"It counts now; the money moves later."* That creates a receivable or a payable, which **counts in your results but doesn't touch any bank balance**, because there's no money to move.

All of this lives in **[Accrual and cash](https://docs.clatri.com/en/finance/accrual/)**.

## Every transaction lands in an accounting account

There are no categories. Every expense and income is filed in an **account** of your **[Chart of accounts](https://docs.clatri.com/en/finance/chart-of-accounts/)**, and that account is the report line where it will show up.

When Clatri can't know for sure where a movement goes, it leaves it **Unclassified** and waits for you. It never invents an account so a report looks complete: a made-up number is worse than a missing one.

And when you correct it, you can ask it to remember forever. The rules it learns **never reclassify your history** — they only act going forward.

## What you can do to a transaction

When you open a transaction you see the receipt and, above all, **what changed**: which balance went up or down, which debt moved, what was left pending. From the **Accounting** button you reach everything else:

| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| **Accounting account** | Reclassify, and optionally teach it a rule |
| **Split across accounts** | An invoice that's 60% infrastructure and 40% software |
| **Business lines** | Split a shared expense among your businesses |
| **What this settles** | Connect it with the invoice or the debt it pays |
| **History** | Who classified this, when, and what changed |

None of this is ever deleted. Corrections are recorded as reversals, with their offsetting entry. See **[To assign](https://docs.clatri.com/en/finance/assign/)**.

## Transfers between accounts

*"Transfer 500k from the main account to savings."* One goes down, the other goes up. **It's neither an expense nor an income**, and it doesn't affect your net worth: the money just changed pockets. If the accounts are in different currencies, Clatri asks for the rate.

When the transfer comes **from the bank** (statement or connection), your bank reported it **twice**: as an outflow from one account and an inflow into another. No third one is recorded there: the two that already exist are **paired**. See **[To assign](https://docs.clatri.com/en/finance/assign/)**.

## Recurring payments

Subscriptions, utilities, rent, salary. Each with its type (expense or income), its frequency, its day, its account and its amount —fixed or variable—.

When the real transaction arrives by statement or by bank, **it reconciles on its own** with the recurring payment you already had. And in **Reports** there's a **recurring payments** report that detects them from your own transactions, even if you never declared them. It's the list almost nobody has and almost everybody needs.

## Contacts and counterparts

Any transaction can have an associated **contact**: who paid you, who you bought from, who you lent to. Later you can ask *"how much did I spend on mom this month?"* or *"how much does Juan owe me?"*.

It's the **same directory** as the rest of the app: the contact you assign as a task's assignee is the same one that appears as an expense's counterpart, without duplication. In Money, each contact has its **History** and its **Analytics**, and there's a flow to **link transactions** that suggests which ones might be theirs.

See **[Contacts](https://docs.clatri.com/en/space/people/)**.

## Projects

A **project** groups what belongs to the same purpose that **ends**: a trip, an event, a renovation, a client.

A project groups **income and expenses**, and shows you the **net**. A trip tells you how much it cost; an event you charged for tells you whether you made money.

Projects can be **open** or **closed** — once closed they stop receiving new transactions, but they keep their history.

If what you have doesn't end —it's an ongoing business—, that's not a project: it's a **[business](https://docs.clatri.com/en/finance/business/)**.

## And from there

| | |
|---|---|
| **[Chart of accounts](https://docs.clatri.com/en/finance/chart-of-accounts/)** | Where your money is filed |
| **[Accrual and cash](https://docs.clatri.com/en/finance/accrual/)** | The two dates, and what already counts without having moved |
| **[To assign](https://docs.clatri.com/en/finance/assign/)** | Connect movements with their real destination, without duplicating |
| **[Reports](https://docs.clatri.com/en/finance/reports/)** | Income statement, Cash flow, Balance sheet |
| **[Budgets and savings](https://docs.clatri.com/en/finance/budgets/)** | What you plan to spend, per account |
| **[Balances](https://docs.clatri.com/en/finance/balances/)** | What you prepaid and use up over time |
| **[Businesses](https://docs.clatri.com/en/finance/business/)** | Sell, invoice and measure each line |
| **[Obligations and debts](https://docs.clatri.com/en/finance/obligations/)** | What you owe and what you're owed |
| **[Investments and assets](https://docs.clatri.com/en/finance/investments/)** | What you have invested and what you own |

## Repeated movements and possible duplicates

Two purchases or income payments can have the same amount, merchant, and date while being separate movements. A similarity is a reason to review, not proof that the same payment was already recorded.

If you clearly identify **another independent movement** —for example, “also record the second payment; it is separate from the first”— you do not need to repeat that confirmation afterwards. When this is unclear, Clatri may show a similar movement and ask you to distinguish them. Do not alter the date, amount, or merchant to bypass the review.

Retries of the same Apple Pay event retain its identifier; a separate event can record another identical fare. Statements and bank connections also reconcile movements recorded through other sources: importing the same receipt again does not make it a new payment. These rules do not depend on specific merchant names or fares.