Add a transaction by hand

Most bank lines arrive on their own: you upload a statement, import a CSV, or connect the bank. Some accounts never send you anything to import: a customs or CARM import balance you top up, a provincial sales-tax balance, a line of credit your bank doesn't export. Add transaction is how money that moves through those accounts gets recorded.

1. Go to Ledger › Banking › Transactions.
2. Click Add transaction.
3. Pick the account, set the date, choose Money out or Money in, enter the amount and a short description.
4. Click Add transaction.

The line lands in the register the same way an imported one does: uncategorized and unmatched. Nothing has posted to your books yet, so take the next step: categorize it if it's an expense or a deposit, or match it to the bill it paid.

Why not just write a journal entry

If a balance you hold paid a bill, matching is the step that matters. A match records the payment against the bill and clears it from Accounts Payable at the same time. A journal entry moves the ledger account but leaves the bill sitting there as unpaid, and your Accounts Payable total stays wrong by that amount until someone works out why.

So: add the transaction, then match it to the bill.

What you can't set here

• A category. Choose it afterwards from the register. That way nothing is posted until you've decided where it belongs.
• A currency. It follows the account you picked, so an amount on a US-dollar account is recorded in US dollars.

Accounts that do have a statement

You can add a line to any account, including one you import statements for. TALISK_HQ won't double up when the statement arrives later, as long as you used the same date, amount and description the bank prints. If you word the description differently, you'll get a second line, so delete whichever one is wrong.