Transactions

Record expenses, refunds, income, and transfers with the shared transaction form, and import from CSV.

Recording a transaction

Every time you spend or receive money, record it in InfinitelyZero. This keeps your account balances accurate and updates the Spent and Available values in your categories.

Use Add transaction from Transactions or + Txn in IZ Assist. They share the same form and validation. The desktop transaction host is a side panel; a transaction started in IZ Assist stays in its + Txn tab. Context may be prefilled, but you review and save it explicitly.

Type: Choose Expense, Refund, Income, or Transfer.
Account: Choose directly from the eligible accounts for that transaction type and context.
Backed by: For a credit-card expense, choose the eligible cash account backing the purchase.
Date: The date the transaction occurred. This determines which budget month it belongs to.
Payee: The person, store, or company you paid or received money from.
Category: Which budget category this transaction belongs to.
Amount: The transaction amount.
Status: Mark as Cleared (confirmed by your bank) or Pending (not yet confirmed).
Notes: Optional free text for any additional details.

Expense category splits and income-account splits remain available from this form. When the entered transaction resembles an existing one, review the duplicate warning before saving. Receipt scanning remains a separate proposal-and-review workflow.

Transaction date

The date you enter for a transaction determines which month it belongs to in the budget. This is one of the most important fields to get right.

Warning: A transaction entered on August 1 but dated July 31 belongs to July, not August. For an expense, it increases July's Spent and reduces July's Available, not August's — even if you record it after the month has ended.

Backdated transactions can change:

The Spent and Available values for that category in the prior month.
Rollover balances flowing into the current month.
The account working balance shown on the Accounts screen.

This is expected behavior, not a bug — always use the date the transaction actually occurred.

Income

When you receive a paycheck or other income, record it as an income transaction. Select the account the money lands in and assign it to an income category (or leave it uncategorized if you prefer to categorize only spending).

Income increases Ready to Budget

Income recorded in an eligible Normal on-budget cash account increases that account’s balance and Ready to Budget. On-demand cash remains outside Ready to Budget until used as a funding source. Expected income alone does not create spendable cash.

Expected Income is a plan, not a transaction

The Expected Income section of the Planner shows what your paychecks are projected to cover. This is planning information — it does not automatically record income or move money. Actual income arrives only when you record a transaction.

Transfers are not income

Moving money from savings to checking is a transfer, not income. It does not increase your total budget — the money already existed. See the Transfers section below.

Refunds

Use Refund when money is returned for earlier spending. Select the appropriate account and category so the refund follows the app's existing account, category, and credit-card rules.

Transfers

A transfer moves cash from one of your accounts to another. Examples: moving money from savings to checking, paying off a credit card from checking.

Paired transfer records

When you record a transfer, InfinitelyZero creates two matching transaction records — one as a debit from the source account and one as a credit to the destination account. This keeps both account balances accurate.

Which money moved?

For a transfer between eligible Normal on-budget cash accounts, choose Unassigned, Category money, or Mix. Select the source ownership and amounts so they total the transfer. Review the preview of account balances, affected categories, and per-account Ready to Budget before recording it.

The transfer form asks “I've transferred the actual money between my accounts to match this.” Fund and Cover flows that require a later bank move use “I'll transfer the actual money between my accounts to match this.” Neither action moves cash at your bank.

Ordinary transfers between Normal cash accounts conserve total Ready to Budget while moving its backing or category backing. A Normal/On-demand boundary changes which money participates in Ready to Budget. Card payments use their separate funded-payment rules.

Why transfers do not count as income or spending

A transfer moves money that already exists in your budget. It does not add new money or remove it — it only changes which account holds it. Treating a transfer as income would double-count money that was already part of your budget.

Note: Credit card payments are a special type of transfer. See the Credit Cards article for how those work.

Receipt scanning

Receipt scanning is optional. Choose Just scan for a straightforward transaction proposal or Categorize & split to review extracted line items. The app shows Reading receipt while processing and never applies a transaction automatically.

Review the merchant, date, total, account, category, and any selected split lines before Apply. Checked/selected receipt lines control which observations may be collected for your personal Price Book. Account and category choices are not silently guessed.

Lifetime, Connected, and the trial include 5 scans per month. Receipt Scanning raises the allowance to 25 scans per month. Receipt images may be sent to an external provider for limited extraction and are not intended as long-term InfinitelyZero image storage. Applied transaction and Price Book data follows your Local or Cloud storage choice.

Editing and deleting

Editing the date

Changing a transaction's date can move it from one budget month to another. This affects Spent and Available in both the old and the new month. Use care when editing dates on transactions in months you have already reconciled.

Editing the category

Changing the category reassigns the spending from the old category to the new one. Both categories' Spent values update immediately.

Deleting a transaction

Deleting a transaction removes it entirely. The account balance, Spent, and Available values all adjust as if the transaction never existed.

Warning: Deleting a transaction does not automatically reverse any category funding moves you may have made in response to it. If you funded a category because a bill arrived and then delete the bill transaction, the funding remains — you may want to adjust it manually.

CSV import

InfinitelyZero can import transactions from CSV, OFX, and QFX files — useful for adding a batch of historical transactions or moving from another budgeting tool.

Importing transactions

Export a supported file from your bank or previous budgeting app. Open the transaction import, choose the account and file, and review the preview. For CSV, map date, payee, and amount columns to the correct fields.

Reviewing fields

Before confirming the import, review the mapped fields and check that dates, amounts, and payee names look correct.

Avoiding duplicates

The import preview flags likely duplicates using the current same-account, exact-amount, nearby-date check. Review those flags before importing; they are warnings rather than an automatic decision to overwrite or delete a transaction.

Reviewing backdated transactions

Imported transactions with dates in a past month will affect that month's Spent and Available. If the past month has already been reconciled, verify that the changes make sense before proceeding.

Credit-card import review

Card inflows that need classification remain for explicit review. A recognized card payment must fit funded Available to pay. If funding is short, fund the payment category, then Retry the import review; do not classify a payment as income to bypass the shortfall.