Dealing with transfers in PocketSmith

To ensure that transfers are dealt with accurately in PocketSmith, it’s best to assign transfer transactions to categories that are set up to specifically deal with transfers. 

Examples of transfer transactions might be credit card repayments, mortgage and loan repayments, setting aside savings, or moving funds to access them from a different account.

Reasons to create a transfer category

We recommend transfer transactions are assigned to their own transfer category. Setting up transfer categories in PocketSmith will affect the following: 

Reporting

This changes the way a category is displayed by removing it from the Earning and Spending chart on your Dashboard, the Digest page, and the Income & Expense statement.

Budgeting

It will also remove any budgeted transfer categories from totals on the Budget page summary, as well as the overall figure on the Trends page.

Transfer marking

All transactions assigned to your transfer category will be marked as transfers and displayed with the transfer icon so they are easy to recognize within your PocketSmith account. 

If you change one of your categories that already has transactions assigned to it, to be a transfer category, you'll have the option to treat any existing transactions as transfers too. Learn how to set up a transfer category  below.

Preventing double-ups of expenses 

Using transfer categories is especially useful in order to prevent double-ups of expenses in your reporting, and so that your forecast is accurate. Here are some examples:

• Credit card repayment transfers:

  When you are repaying a credit card purchase and don't want to count the repayment of a credit card purchase as an expense

• Mortgage and loan repayment transfers:

  When you have a loan account, the interest transaction out of your loan account represents the expense, not the loan repayment. Assigning loan repayments to a transfer category means that the amount you actually pay off your mortgage (mortgage payment less interest payment) will reduce the loan amount, even though the net worth amount does not change.

• Savings transfers:

  When you transfer money to a savings account, these funds still contribute to your net worth and so they aren't actually expenses, but a transfer of your positive funds from one account to another

  
  

  If you want to show transfers in a different way, please  get in touch and we’d be happy to help.

Steps to create a transfer category

Transfer categories are easy to set up - just follow the steps below: 

1. Head to Categories ( Manage > Categories) and navigate to the category you'd like to make a transfer category.

2. Hover your mouse over the far right side of the row, click the three-dot menu and select Edit

   

   
   

3. Select Transfer options from the menu and tick 'The category "category name" is a transfer category':

   

   
   

   For transfer categories, we recommend the category type be set to Yes, this category can include both income and expenses

   
   

4. After selecting this, another option will become available to you -  Mark transactions already assigned to this category as transfers. 

   
   

   If this category already has transactions assigned to it that you'd like to be treated as transfers, choosing this option will also mark those transactions as transfers and display them with the transfer icon. We recommend choosing this option.

   

5. Click SAVE

Types of transfer categories

You can set up as many transfer categories as you like, but it's best to separate your transfers into categories that make sense to you. For example, if you want to budget for your savings and mortgage repayments, then it's best to have two different transfer categories for these. 

Here are some examples of transfer categories that some of our users like to use:

Transfers between accounts

• Transfers between accounts
• General Transfers
• Account Transfer

Credit Card repayments

• Credit card transfer
• Credit card repayment

Mortgage and loan repayments

• Mortgage repayments
• Loan repayments
• Mortgage
• Loan
• Property
• Mortgage transfer
• Loan transfer

Savings

• Savings
• Joint savings
• Savings (transfer)
• Holiday Savings

On the  Categories page, the transfer icon beside the name quickly shows which of your categories are set up as transfer categories.

Assigning transactions to a transfer category

We recommend having both accounts that a transfer moves between set up within PocketSmith. 

When transferring money between accounts, as long as both accounts exist within PocketSmith, two transactions should be imported into PocketSmith - the debit transaction leaving one account, and the credit transaction entering the other.

You will need to assign both 'sides' of a transfer transaction to the same transfer category. This applies for both bank feed accounts and manually-updated accounts.

Removing transfer categories from different reports, pages, and areas of PocketSmith

Once a transfer category is set up, the category and all its transactions are automatically removed from most areas of PocketSmith reporting. This is useful so that transfers between your accounts aren't counted as income or expenses. 

Automatic removal of transfers

Transfer categories are automatically removed from the following reports and pages:

• The Earning and Spending chart on the Dashboard
• The Digest page 
• The Income & Expense Statement
• The Summary at the top of the Budget page
• The Trends page

The Income and Expense Statement

By default, transfers are removed from this page, but you can easily toggle between displaying and hiding transfers on the Income and Expense statement!

The Budget page

The Trends page

The overall budgeted figures that are displayed when first landing on Trends page, will exclude transfers. But you can still analyze your transfer categories by selecting them from the left panel.

Reverting a transfer category to a regular category

You can change a transfer category back to a regular income or expense category at any time by  editing the category and de-selecting the Transfer option 'This is a transfer category'.

Following this, you'll be given the additional option  Unmark transactions already assigned to this category to no longer be transfers. 

It's important to consider this option because if it is left unchecked, all transactions within the category will still be marked with the transfer icon.