The numbers look wrong
Check common causes of incorrect spending, income, or net worth totals.
1. Transfers counted as spending
Symptom: spending is far higher than you expect, often by about the amount of your credit card payment.
Card payments, savings transfers, and brokerage contributions need a transfer category to stay out of spending. Counting a card payment as an expense also counts the purchases on the card a second time.
Fix: categorize both sides of each transfer, then write a rule for future ones.
2. A duplicate account
Symptom: net worth roughly doubled, or every transaction appears twice.
Fix: delete the extra account, keeping whichever has the longer history.
3. A closed or deleted account, or hidden transactions
Symptom: net worth is lower than it should be, or a chunk of spending is missing.
Fix: check whether an account was closed or deleted. Closed accounts count as zero from their closure date; deleted accounts drop out of past reports too. Check the archive for deleted accounts and for hidden or deleted transactions. Hiding affects spending, not net worth.
4. Uncategorized spending
Symptom: the category breakdown doesn't add up to what left your accounts.
Uncategorized transactions count toward totals under Uncategorized, not under any named category or group.
Fix: filter the Transactions tab to uncategorized and assign categories.
5. A rule doing more than you meant
Symptom: a category has transactions that clearly don't belong, or money is missing from totals.
Fix: a transaction's history shows which rule changed it. Tighten that rule's conditions, and check the archive for anything a hide rule caught.
6. Different periods
Symptom: the month doesn't match your statement.
Penny groups transactions by calendar month, while statements often run mid-month to mid-month. An annual charge can also make one month look unusually high.
7. Exchange rates
With accounts in more than one currency, net worth moves with exchange rates even when nothing else changes.
Still wrong
Contact us with what you see, what you expected, where, and a screenshot if you can.
Last updated on