Bank sync covers most of your money, but not all of it. The notes in your wallet, the jar of coins for the market, a savings account at a bank Talvo can't connect to yet: none of these show up on their own. A manual account fills the gap. You tell Talvo what the balance is, add transactions as they happen, and the account sits alongside your connected banks in your net worth, your spending and your budgets.
Manual accounts and manual transactions are part of the free Starter plan, with no limit on how many you add.
What a manual account is for
- Cash: a wallet, an envelope at home, the float you keep for the weekly market.
- Accounts that don't sync: a savings account or a bank in a country Talvo doesn't connect to yet.
- Money owed to you: a loan to a friend or family member that you want to see shrink as it's paid back.
- A fresh start: if you'd rather not connect a bank at all, you can run all of Talvo on manual accounts.
A manual account's balance is simply the sum of its transactions. Add a €40 expense and the balance drops by €40. Nothing syncs and nothing changes unless you change it.
Adding a manual account
- 1Open your accounts. On the web, go to Settings → Accounts and choose Add account. On mobile, tap your avatar and then Accounts.
- 2Choose Add manual account. It sits right next to Connect a bank.
- 3Fill in three fields and click Create account.
Name, currency, starting balance. That's the whole form. Add transactions from here on to keep the balance moving.
The starting balance is the amount in the account today. Talvo records it as an opening balance, which sets the account's balance but stays out of your spending, income and budgets. You don't have to type in last year's history to begin.
New to Talvo? You can also add a manual account during sign-up: the accounts step offers Add manual account next to connecting a bank. If bank sync isn't available in your country yet, manual accounts are how you get started.
Editing an account
Click the pencil next to an account in Settings → Accounts to open Edit account. For a manual account you can change three things:
- Name: rename it whenever you like.
- Currency: the currency the account is held in.
- Balance: the figure to correct when Talvo and reality drift apart.
Correcting the balance without rewriting history
Say Talvo shows €185 in your wallet but you count €162. Edit the account and type 162. Talvo doesn't overwrite anything. It adds a balance adjustment of −€23, dated today, so the balance matches and every earlier transaction stays exactly where it was. Adjustments, like the opening balance, stay out of your spending and budgets.
The difference is recorded once, today. Your history and your budgets are left alone.
Bank-connected accounts work differently: their balance and currency come straight from your bank, so the only thing you can change is the name.
Deleting an account
The trash icon next to an account deletes it together with all of its transactions, permanently. Any transfers it was part of are unlinked: a transaction your bank sent stays on the other account, while a side Talvo created for the transfer is removed. When you only want to stop using an account, setting its balance to zero is often the gentler option.
Adding manual transactions
On the web, click Add transaction on the Transactions page. On mobile, tap the + at the top of the screen. You'll see New transaction:
Type the amount without a sign: Expense makes it negative, Income makes it positive.
- Expense, Income or Transfer: Expense takes money out, Income adds it. Transfer is for money you move between your own accounts, covered in the transfers guide.
- Counterparty: who you paid or who paid you. Required.
- Amount and currency: enter the amount as a plain number. Paid in another currency? Pick it from the currency chip and Talvo converts it to your base currency.
- Date: defaults to today. You can backdate an entry, or schedule one in the future. A future transaction doesn't change the balance until its date arrives.
- Account: the manual account it belongs to.
- Category: optional. Leave it empty and Talvo files it under Uncategorized. All categories shows the full list.
- Tags and notes: optional, for anything you'll want to search for later.
- Exclude from budget: keeps a one-off out of your spending totals and budgets, like a deposit you'll get back.
Missing a transaction on a connected account? You can choose a bank account in the Account field too. Keep in mind that a connected account's balance always comes from your bank, so the added entry shows up in your spending without changing that balance.
Editing and deleting transactions
Click any transaction to open its details, then Edit. Every field from the form can be changed. Two time-savers appear while you edit:
- Rename the counterparty and Talvo offers to remember the new name for future transactions and to apply it to existing transactions with the old name.
- Change the category and Talvo offers to remember it for future transactions.
Need to split one receipt across categories, like groceries and household items from the same shop? Choose Split in the transaction details and divide the amount equally or by hand.
To remove a transaction, use the trash icon in its details. Deleted transactions are archived, not destroyed: turn on the Archived filter on the Transactions page to find them and restore them whenever you like. You can also select several transactions at once to edit or delete them in bulk.
A few habits that pay off
- 1Log cash the same day. Ten seconds at the till beats reconstructing a week of market runs on Sunday evening.
- 2Count and correct once a month. Count your cash, edit the balance, and let the adjustment absorb what you forgot. Small drift is normal.
- 3Record ATM withdrawals as transfers. Taking €100 out of the bank isn't spending; buying things with it is. A transfer from your bank account into your cash wallet keeps the count honest.
- 4Categorise as you go. Manual transactions feed your budgets and Insights like any other, so a category on each one pays off later.