Basics

Accounts & currencies

Track every place you keep money — cash, cards, savings, loans — in any currency.

An account in Flow represents a real-world container of money: a bank account, a wallet, a credit card, a savings jar, even a friend who owes you money. Every transaction you record belongs to exactly one account.

Account types

Flow supports six account types, each tuned for the way that container behaves:

  • Checking — a regular bank or wallet balance you spend down. The default.
  • Savings — a balance you mostly grow.
  • Credit (e.g., card) — a credit card or other credit line.
  • Loan — money you owe or are owed.
  • Asset — a non-liquid store of value, like an investment account.
  • Other — anything that doesn't fit the above.

ℹ️ Why the type matters

Flow uses the account type to decide whether to include it in your total balance, how to display the running balance, and how to color debt vs. assets in reports. You can change the type at any time from the account's edit page.

1. Create an account

  1. Open the Accounts tab and tap the + button.
  2. Type an Account name. Tap the wallet icon above to pick a different one.
  3. Tap Update balance to set today's balance — leave at $0.00 if you'd rather start fresh.
  4. Set the Currency, Account type, and (optionally) Change color.
  5. Tap the ✓ at the top right to save.
The new-account form, with fields for name, icon, balance, currency, type and color.
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Creating a new account.

2. There is no "current balance" field

An account's balance isn't a number Flow stores anywhere — it's the running sum of every transaction in that account. There's nothing to keep in sync because there's nothing to drift.

That's why Update balance doesn't ask "what is the new balance" and overwrite a field. Instead, you enter what the balance should be, Flow computes the difference between that target and the current running sum, and inserts a single income or expense transaction for the delta. The books still add up afterwards.

💡 Add what you have today

Don't try to back-fill years of history. Open Update balance, enter today's number, and start logging from now. You can always add older transactions later if you want a full picture.

3. Re-syncing after drift

Real life drifts: ATM withdrawals you forgot, fees, rounding. To resync an account without recreating it, open the account and tap Update balance again. Same mechanism — Flow inserts the corrective transaction for whatever the difference is, and you can choose the date the correction lands on.

Multi-currency

Each account holds one currency. If you keep money in MNT, USD, and EUR, you create three accounts. Flow stores transactions in the account's native currency and converts to your primary currency on the fly for reports.

ℹ️ Exchange rates

Flow downloads up-to-date exchange rates when you have an internet connection and caches them. Conversion happens locally; no transaction data ever leaves your device.

Transfers

Moving money between two of your accounts isn't an expense — it's a transfer. Flow has a dedicated transaction type for this so transfers don't pollute your spending reports. See Recording transactions for the full flow.

Excluding from total balance

On the edit page, toggle Exclude from balance if an account shouldn't roll up into your home screen total — useful for shared accounts, business accounts, or test accounts.

Archiving an account

Closing an account in real life? Set its balance to zero (transferring out the remainder if needed), then archive it. Archived accounts hide from picker lists but keep their history intact for reports.

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