Accounts

Accounts are the foundation of Whisper Money. They hold balances, transactions, and account history.

Quick start

1. Create one account for each place where you keep or owe money.
2. Pick the account type that best matches the real account.
3. Add balances for accounts that are balance-only. A credit card takes its credit limit instead.
4. Import transactions for accounts that have day-to-day activity.
5. Review the Accounts page to see balances and net worth movement.

Moving from another app? Import from another app creates your accounts from its export, with their bank, type, currency and daily balances.

Account map

Account types

Transactional and balance-only accounts

Some accounts are best tracked with transactions. Others are best tracked with balances.

Use transactions for:

• Checking accounts
• Credit cards
• Savings accounts with regular movements

Use balances for:

• Investment accounts
• Retirement accounts
• Real estate
• Loans

Balances, market values, and owed amounts

Whisper Money uses different words depending on the account type.

• Normal accounts use balance.
• Loan accounts use owed amount.
• Real estate accounts use market value.
• Credit cards have no balance at all: they use credit limit and used.

This keeps the language closer to what the number means.

Invested amount and gain

Investment, retirement and savings accounts can record an invested amount next to the balance: what you put in, not what it is worth now. Enter it when you create the account, or with each balance when you update it. If you only know what you put in, the account opens with a balance equal to it.

Once an invested amount is recorded, the account page shows three cards:

• Current Value, the latest balance.
• Invested, what you put in.
• Gain, the difference, and what it is as a percent of what you invested. Below what you invested, it reads as a loss.

The invested amount is always in the account's own currency, like its balance.

Net worth

Net worth adds up your accounts' balances. Not every account type counts the same way:

• Checking, savings, investment, retirement and other accounts add to it.
• Credit cards never count: what you owe on them is neither added nor subtracted.
• Loans subtract what is owed, and real estate adds its market value, but only when you include them.

Use the settings button on the net worth chart to switch Include loans and Include real estate on or off. The choice applies to your net worth everywhere, not just the chart: the dashboard totals, your achievements and the monthly summary email follow it too. Both start off for new users, so your first chart shows money you can use rather than a mortgage or a flat. Users who were already here keep the setting they had.

Connected and manual accounts

You can keep an account up to date by hand, or connect it so it updates itself.

• Manual accounts suit a bank that is not supported, or an account you only update now and then. Add transactions yourself or import them from a file.
• Connected accounts sync on their own. A bank brings in transactions and balances; a broker or crypto exchange, connected with a read-only API key, brings in balances.

Connecting is part of the paid plan. Manual accounts, imports, and everything built on top of them work without one.

Bank connections explains how to connect, what each sync brings in, and what to do when a connection expires. The integrations page lists every bank and app that can be connected today.

Archiving an account

Archive an account you no longer use instead of deleting it.

An archived account:

• Disappears from the accounts page and from every picker for new data.
• Keeps its transactions and its balance history, so past months keep the figures they already had.
• Can be brought back at any time from the Bank accounts settings.

Archiving is not the same as hiding an account from the dashboard. Hiding only removes it from that one view; the account stays selectable everywhere else.

Shared accounts

An account can record the share of it that is yours. Use it for accounts you genuinely co-own, such as a shared household account or a property owned with someone else.

Open Edit account and fill in My share of this account (%). The share goes from 1 to 100, and 100 means the whole account is yours. Leaving the field empty keeps the share the account already has.

From then on, income and expenses only count towards your own figures by that percentage. On an account held 50/50, a shared grocery bill counts as half of what the bank charged in:

• Cashflow
• Budgets
• Label spending

The account itself is left alone. It keeps showing the real balance and the real amount of every transaction, because that is what actually moved. Inside a budget, entries coming from an account with a share below 100% are marked, so you can tell which ones only count in part.

The balance stays whole by default, so all of it counts towards net worth. When the share is below 100%, a checkbox appears under the field: Apply it to the balance too, so only my share counts towards net worth. Tick it for something like a flat you own half of, where only half the value is really yours.

Changing the share later also rewrites what the account has already spent in your budgets, past periods included. Budgets store what each transaction contributed at the moment it was assigned, so they are recalculated for the new share. Cashflow and net worth are worked out as you read them, so they pick up the new share on their own.

FAQ

Why is my loan reducing net worth?

A loan is money owed. When loans are included, Whisper Money subtracts it from assets when calculating net worth. Switch Include loans off in the net worth chart settings to leave it out.

Why don't my loan or my flat show up in net worth?

Loans and real estate start off for new users. Switch on Include loans or Include real estate in the net worth chart settings.

Why is my credit card not reducing net worth?

A credit card is a spending account, not wealth. Whisper Money tracks how much of its limit you have used on the card itself and leaves it out of the net worth total, so paying the card off does not move that number.

Why does real estate use market value?

The important number for property is its estimated value today. That value can change over time.

Should I create one account or combine several?

Create separate accounts when the money is stored separately in real life. Reports are clearer that way.

Why did my past budgets change after I edited the share of an account?

Budgets record what each transaction contributed at the moment it was assigned, so changing the share rewrites that contribution in every period, closed ones included. It keeps a 50/50 account looking the same in January as it does today.