The chart of accounts
In Cashfulness every entry lives on an account, and accounts are organized into a chart of accounts: a tree sorted into sections that mirrors double-entry logic. The Accounts screen is your starting point for exploring the structure, creating new accounts, and keeping them aligned with reality.
The tree structure
The Accounts screen shows the chart of accounts as an expandable tree, grouped by section. The Balance Sheet holds Assets+ (productive assets, the ones that generate value), Assets- (cash and personal-use assets), Liabilities, and Net Worth. Revenues and Costs live in the Income Statement instead.
Each row shows the account name, the account number, the total balance, and the change for the current year. Sections expand and collapse with the arrow next to the name, and the search bar at the top lets you find an account by name, number, or type.
At the bottom of the page a summary row shows the overall Net Worth of the workspace: the difference between what you own and what you owe.
To keep a business's costs separate from the family's you have two routes. If telling them apart is enough, create an organisational account — «Business» — and hang its costs and revenues underneath: reports group them together, and tags give you the cross-cutting view. If the two worlds must never touch, you need a second accounting space, but that is included only in the Ultra plan: with Free and Premium you get one. Either way, don't mix the cash accounts.
Moving and reordering accounts
Every account of yours has, on the right, a drag handle (the dotted icon). With a mouse you just drag; with your finger you press and hold the handle first, then drag: that is the protection that lets the tree keep scrolling normally.
While you drag, each row has three zones. Above or below a sibling account an insertion line appears: that is reordering, the order you choose stays, and account numbers are reassigned automatically. Over the middle of a folder the row gets highlighted: that is moving, the account changes its place in the tree and takes all its sub-accounts along, numbers included. A closed folder opens by itself if you hold the account over it for a moment.
The app refuses drops that would break your reports, and tells you so: an account cannot enter a folder of another family, cannot end up inside one of its own descendants, and system accounts cannot be moved. The handle disappears where the gesture would make no sense: during a search, and when alphabetical order is on, because there the position is decided by the name.
Currencies and balance colors
Every account has its own currency, chosen when you create it. You can keep your checking account in euros and an investment account in dollars: Cashfulness records each entry in the account's currency and converts totals where needed.
Balances use semantic colors: at a glance you can tell the nature of each figure, for example Liabilities apart from what you own, and Net Worth apart from everything else. Color never replaces the accounting sign, it just makes it easier to read.
Creating an account with the wizard
The plus button in the bottom-right corner opens the New Account wizard, which guides you step by step. The wizard asks only for what it needs, one step at a time, showing suggestions and valid examples along the way.
- Give the account a descriptive, recognizable name, for example the bank's name or the account's purpose. You can add an optional description, useful if you share the workspace with other people.
- Choose the account type: it determines which section of the tree the account will live in and how its balance behaves.
- Select the parent account directly from the tree: the new account will sit underneath it, inheriting its position in the structure.
- Set the account properties based on how you will use it (see the next section).
- Confirm: the account appears in the tree right away, ready to receive entries.
Account properties
While creating an account (and later when editing it) you can enable properties that change how it behaves. Reconcilable against the bank statement: the account joins the Account Reconciliation flow, ideal for checking accounts and cards. Subscriptions, on the other hand, are no longer marked on the account: they are recorded as contracts in Tools → Subscriptions and Utilities.
Market valuation: designed for investments, it lets you update the account's value periodically through Investment Updates. Depreciation: for assets that lose value over time, such as a car or a device, so the chart of accounts reflects the real value rather than the purchase price.
Liquidity and non-liquidity: here the choice really does move the account, because liquidity is not read from the subtype but from where the account sits in the tree. Before moving it the app tells you where it is taking it, and mind that «Liquid» and «Non-liquid» exist in both asset branches: read the whole path, not just the name.
Giving a balance to an account created after setup
When you open your Workspace, the initial review asks for the balance of every account and writes the opening transactions for you. But the review happens only once, and accounts you create in the following months start at zero: a current account opened in March, or a savings book you had forgotten, start empty even though there is real money in them.
That is why the New Account wizard has a final, skippable step asking for the starting balance. It only appears on balance sheet accounts — a starting balance does not exist for an expense or a revenue account — and if you leave the amount empty, nothing is created. If you do enter an amount, the wizard asks you one single question: does this money come from an account you already have in Cashfulness?
Answering that question correctly is what matters, because it decides whether your net worth changes. If the money comes from an account you already have (you moved it from your current account to the savings book), it is an internal transfer: the counterpart goes to the account you pick and your net worth stays the same. If instead you are declaring something the app did not know about, the counterpart goes to “Opening Balances” and your net worth rises, as it should.
For liabilities, enter what you owe as a positive number: the app takes care of the accounting sign.
The wizard also asks since when you have owned what you are declaring, and the field starts empty. The entry used to be dated to the day you filled the wizard in: a house you had owned for ten years, recorded in August, showed up as wealth that had grown this year, and the “since January” change on the home page swelled by a figure that had never grown at all. Put the real date in and the year's figures stay right. The Income Statement does not move either way: an opening transaction touches the account and Net Worth, never a revenue or a cost, so no date can change the profit of a past year.
Correcting a review you have already done
The initial snapshot is taken only once, but it is not set in stone. The entry the review generated lives in the Register like any other transaction: search for “Opening” to find it, open it, and from there you can correct amounts, add a line for an account you had forgotten, or move the date to the day you actually took stock.
This is the right way to fix a balance you mistyped during setup, and it is better than an adjusting entry: by correcting the opening, the reports for every period line up again, whereas an adjustment dated today would leave the months in between wrong.
Hidden accounts
Not every account is needed every day: a closed or rarely used account can clutter the tree. You can hide it without deleting it, so its accounting history stays intact.
The eye icon in the toolbar shows or hides hidden accounts: when it is off you only see active accounts, when you turn it on they all reappear.
Reconciling an account
Reconciliation is the moment you compare Cashfulness against your bank statement. From the Account Reconciliation section you pick the account and get the list of recorded entries, split between credit amounts (deposits received and refunds) and debit amounts.
You tick every entry you find on the statement: the credit and debit totals update as you go, along with the Difference. As long as the balance check does not match, the app flags it; once the Difference reaches zero you can confirm with the Reconcile button.
- Open Account Reconciliation and choose the account to reconcile.
- Set the reference date of the bank statement.
- Tick the entries that appear on the statement one by one, both credits and debits.
- Check the Difference at the bottom: it must reach zero. If it does not, look for the missing or extra entry.
- Press Reconcile to confirm: the ticked entries are marked as reconciled.
