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Open Net Worth Docs

The ledger and how transactions work

Every amount you record — by hand, from a statement, or through Lucius — goes into one ledger: the list of every transaction in every account. Your account balances and your net worth are always worked out fresh from it, so there’s no stored total that can drift out of date.

You don’t need to know any bookkeeping. There are no debits and credits to balance — just transactions, each with a kind.

The five kinds

KindWhat it isShown in the edit form as
ExpenseMoney left an account — a purchase, a bill, a fee.Expense
IncomeMoney came in — salary, interest, a refund.Income
TransferMoney moved between two of your own accounts.Transfer
InvestmentA buy or sell that touches your portfolio.Invest
AdjustmentA correction to an account’s balance. Every account’s Starting Balance is one.“Balance adjustment” badge

In an account’s register, the +/− toggle on a new row makes it income or an expense. To record a transfer, pick To/From in the Payee field. You can change a transaction’s kind afterwards by opening it.

Expenses, income, transfers and investments can carry a category; an adjustment never does, because a correction isn’t spending.

Transfers: one transaction, two accounts

“Move $500 from Checking to Savings” is one transaction with two ends, not an expense in one account plus income in another. That’s why a transfer never shows up as spending or income, and why the two accounts can’t disagree about it — there’s no way to record money leaving Checking without it arriving in Savings.

The app refuses a transfer that doesn’t make sense:

  • Only one account named — money paid to someone outside your accounts is an expense, not a transfer. The message says: “a transfer needs both from_account_id and to_account_id — for money sent to an external party, record an expense instead”.
  • The same account on both ends — a fee or interest charged on an account is an expense or income. Two currency wallets at the same broker need to be two separate accounts (e.g. “IBKR USD” and “IBKR SGD”).
  • Amounts that imply an impossible exchange rate — moving 1,000 USD into a VND account and entering 1,000 VND on the other side, for example. If one side is more than ten times off the known rate, or both sides show the same number across two currencies that aren’t worth the same, the transfer is refused with a message explaining which side looks wrong. Usually one amount was copied across without converting it.

When the two accounts are in different currencies and you only know one amount, enter that one; the other side is converted for you.

Splits

One purchase can cover several categories — a $140 supermarket trip that’s $90 groceries and $50 household goods. Open the transaction and click Split into multiple categories. Each line needs a category and an amount, and the lines must add up to the total exactly: the editor shows Balanced when they do, or what’s still Remaining. Nothing is rounded away for you, because small silent corrections are exactly how a budget drifts.

Only expenses and income can be split.

Cleared

Tick Cleared on a transaction once you’ve confirmed it against your bank or card statement. Linking a statement row during an import marks the matching transaction cleared for you. It doesn’t change any amounts — it’s a way to see what’s been checked.