Transfer marking in PocketSmith

A transfer icon is applied to any transaction identified as a transfer in PocketSmith, allowing you to differentiate between your regular transactions and transfer transactions.
Any transactions belonging to a  transfer category will be marked as a transfer and PocketSmith will also try to automatically identify transfer transactions and mark these as transfers for you. You can also manually mark transactions as transfers. 
Learn more about how transactions are marked as transfers in PocketSmith below! For more on transfer transactions see our topic overview - Transfers.

Transfer marking for transfer categories

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

Transfer transactions like this will be removed from the Earning and Spending chart on your Dashboard, the Digest page, and the Income & Expense statement. They will also be excluded, by default, from totals on the Budget Summary (at the top of the Budget page), as well as the overall figure on the Trends page.

Options for transfer marking when creating a transfer category or reverting a transfer category

  • Creating a transfer category

    When you create a transfer category, this will mark any new transactions assigned to this category as a transfer, however, it won't mark as a transfer any existing transactions assigned to this category.


    To mark the existing transactions as transfers at this time of changing the category to a transfer category, you will need to select the following option that will become available to you Mark transactions already assigned to this category as transfers.


  • Removing a transfer category

    If you want to remove a transfer category so that it is a regular income or expense category, this can be done by editing the Transfer options and de-selecting the 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 as transfers.


    See: Reverting a transfer category to a regular category for further details


PocketSmith's additional automatic transfer marking

Automatic transfer marking analyzes your transactions to find and mark both the income and expense transactions that match a transfer between accounts, regardless of whether these transactions have been assigned to a  transfer category

This is based on a complex matching rule that compares the amounts, dates, merchant names, and accounts of the transactions.

For example, a $100 credit transaction occurring on January 5th in one of your accounts, will likely be matched with a $100 debit transaction occurring on January 4th in another of your accounts. Both transactions will then be automatically marked as a transfer.

Transfers that PocketSmith hasn't automatically marked

PocketSmith won't mark transactions as transfers if it finds conflicting transactions. Transfers are seen as conflicted when there is more than one possible match for a given transaction. For example, if you had two expense transactions within a day or so of each other, and one income transaction on the same day, PocketSmith might not be able to determine confidently which of the expense transactions should be associated with the income transaction.

PocketSmith will attempt to resolve these conflicts by inspecting merchant descriptions and stored account numbers. If PocketSmith cannot resolve these conflicts through these means, then it'll err on the side of caution and leave the transactions unmarked as transfers.

A way to resolve these conflicts manually is to search for possible transfers on the Transactions page. Just head to the Transactions page, use the Tools menu, and choose Possible transfers. This will show all possible transfers based on a simpler matching algorithm, and lets you quickly track down transactions that were considered conflicted when they were imported.

Reviewing transactions that have been automatically marked as a transfer

You can review transactions that have been automatically marked as transfers on the Awaiting confirmation section of the Transactions page. If you have any transactions you'd like to unmark as a transfer, you can do this here.

Your transaction review settings allow you to choose whether you'd like to review these types of transactions. 

Change the transaction review setting
  1. Head to your User Preferences  ( Profile menu User preferences)
  2. Click Transaction confirming in the side-menu
  3. Check or un-check the option:  I want to confirm transfers automatically detected by PocketSmith

  4. Click Save

Manually marking and unmarking transactions as transfers

You can manually mark and unmark transactions as transfers when editing a single transaction or by using the bulk edit tool to change multiple transactions in one go.

To mark or unmark a single transaction as a transfer, click the transfer icon in the Edit transaction form.

For more detail, including how to mark or unmark multiple transactions in one go, please see the following user guides:


Dealing with incorrect transfer marking

If some of your transactions have been incorrectly marked with the transfer icon, and don't have a matching credit or debit transaction in another account, this is likely caused by automatic categorization from the bank feed

If you have automatic categorization from the bank feed turned on, and your transactions are being incorrectly assigned to a transfer category, these transactions are simultaneously marked with the transfer icon. However, if you manually reassign a transaction to a different (non-transfer) category, that transaction won't have the transfer icon removed during this process, and you'll also need to remove this manually.

Instead of manually reassigning a transaction, it's best to create category rules or filters to assign the transaction to your preferred category correctly. To learn how to create category rules or filters, please see:

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