Accounts, cards, and transactions

Clatri's financial layer covers everything from logging a coffee purchase to tracking investments and debts. It all starts with your accounts and cards.

Bank accounts

An account in Clatri represents any place where you hold money: a checking account, a savings account, cash on hand, a digital wallet, or any other instrument. Each account has a currency, a balance, and optionally associated banking information.

You can create accounts in two ways:

• From the chat -- tell the agent "tengo una cuenta en Bancolombia en pesos con 2 millones" (I have a Bancolombia account in pesos with 2 million) and it creates it
• From the UI -- in the Money dashboard, the create account button takes you to a form where you define name, type, currency, country, and initial balance

The available types are:

Type	Typical use
Checking	Everyday bank accounts
Savings	Savings bank accounts
Cash	Physical money on hand
Digital wallet	Nequi, Daviplata, PayPal, Venmo, Cash App, Mercado Pago
Other	Any other instrument

Each account can have savings pockets inside it -- savings goals with a name, target amount, and transfers from the main balance. You can see the available balance and total bank balance (available + savings) separately.

The Money dashboard

The first thing you see when you open the Money tab is a general summary of your financial situation:

• Total balance -- your consolidated balance in your main currency, with a breakdown by currency if you use several. Includes a period selector (week, month, year) and a summary of how much you spent and received in that period
• Net worth -- breakdown between liquid assets, investments, physical assets, debts, and receivables
• Trends -- historical charts comparing income vs. expenses, assets vs. liabilities, and balance vs. net worth over time
• View mode -- you can toggle between cumulative view (all transactions in the period) and cash flow view (net inflows and outflows)

Below the summary is the list of accounts, organized in tabs: Available (checking, savings, cash, wallet) and Credit (credit cards). If you use multiple currencies, a filter lets you see totals by currency. Each account shows its balance, associated cards, and savings pockets.

When you enter an account, you see two tabs: Info (account data, monthly spending and income stats with a 6-month chart, and the open banking section if applicable) and Transactions (transaction history with search).

Cards

Clatri handles debit and credit cards as payment instruments linked to an account. Debit cards are tied to an account and operate with that account's balance. Credit cards have their own credit limit and track debt independently.

When creating a card you define: name, type (debit/credit), brand (Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Discover), last 4 digits, custom color, and the account it's linked to. For credit cards you also configure: credit limit, statement closing date, payment due date, and interest rate.

Multi-currency debt

If you use a credit card in multiple currencies -- for example, purchases in dollars and euros during a trip -- Clatri tracks the debt for each currency separately. The card detail screen groups transactions by currency and shows the amount owed in each.

Recording expenses and income

There are three ways for your transactions to enter Clatri, and you can combine them however works best for you.

By chat

The most direct way. You talk to the agent and it handles it:

• "Gaste 45 mil en mercado hoy, de la cuenta Bancolombia" (Spent 45k on groceries today, from Bancolombia account)
• "Ingreso de 3 millones por proyecto de diseno, a cuenta principal" (Income of 3 million for a design project, to main account)
• "Registra: almuerzo 28k, Uber 12k, cafe 8k, todo de hoy, tarjeta Visa" (Log: lunch 28k, Uber 12k, coffee 8k, all from today, Visa card) -- batch logging, multiple transactions at once

The agent assigns category, account, date, and any detail it can infer from context. If it's missing information, it asks.

By bank statements

All banks generate statements of your transactions in PDF, Excel, or CSV. The recommended practice is to download them when available and upload them to the chat. The Statement Expert handles the rest.

There are two types of statements and they work differently:

• Account statements -- your bank generates them periodically (monthly or quarterly) with all the transactions in your checking or savings account. Debit cards don't generate their own statements because their transactions show up directly in the statement of the account they're linked to.
• Credit card statements -- generated after each statement closing date of the card. They cover the period between one closing date and the next, and reflect the purchases, payments, and charges of that cycle. If your card closes on the 15th of each month, the April period statement covers March 16 to April 15. That's why it's important to set the closing date and payment due date when creating your card in Clatri -- the system uses them to generate notifications and to correctly align the statements you upload.

The import process is the same for both -- deliberate, nothing gets recorded without your approval:

1. Analysis -- the agent reads the document, identifies the transactions, and prepares them for review
2. Duplicate detection -- the system compares each transaction against your existing records using an algorithm that evaluates amount, date, and description. Matches are flagged as duplicates so you don't record them twice
3. Review -- you see a summary with the new transactions, detected duplicates, and those needing manual review. You can confirm, correct, or discard individual items before executing
4. Recording -- only when you confirm do the transactions get recorded to your account

You can import statements as reconciliation (to record history without affecting the current balance) or as new transactions (which do update the balance).

By banking integration (Open Banking)

The third option is to connect your bank directly to Clatri so transactions import automatically. This is what's known as open banking.

Open Banking

What it is and why it matters

Historically, your banking information was locked inside your bank. If you wanted another app to read your transactions, the options were scraping (simulating that a program is you logging into the bank portal) or entering credentials into third-party services -- both insecure, fragile, and unauthorized by banks.

Open banking changed that. Financial regulators in several countries started requiring banks to expose official APIs -- interfaces that allow authorized applications to read your transactions and balances, always with your explicit permission. The premise is straightforward: your financial data belongs to you, not the bank, and you should be able to share it with the services you choose.

The United Kingdom pioneered open banking regulation in 2018. The European Union followed with the PSD2 directive, requiring all European banks to expose account access APIs. The United States and Canada have mature ecosystems with providers like Plaid connecting thousands of banks.

Latin America is at a different stage. Brazil moved forward with its own open banking framework. Colombia published its open finance decree, but practical implementation -- Colombian banks actually exposing functional, standardized APIs -- is still in development. In most countries in the region there's no global open banking provider comparable to Plaid, and banks aren't practically required to open their data.

How it works with Plaid

Clatri uses Plaid as its open banking provider. Plaid is a certified intermediary that connects apps with banks -- currently covering banks in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Europe. When you connect a bank:

1. Clatri opens Plaid's secure interface inside the app
2. You select your bank and enter your credentials directly in Plaid -- Clatri never sees or stores your banking credentials
3. You select which accounts you want to connect
4. Plaid establishes the connection and starts delivering transactions and balances

From there, updates arrive via webhooks -- when your bank reports new activity, Plaid notifies Clatri and the system syncs automatically. It's not permanent real-time sync, but you don't need to do anything manually either.

Each transaction that arrives through Plaid is compared against existing ones in your account to avoid duplicates. If you'd already logged an expense manually, the system detects it and updates the existing record instead of creating a new one.

The access token that Plaid generates for your connection is stored encrypted on the server -- with the same system encryption (AES-256-GCM) that protects the rest of your financial information.

Availability and cost

Today, the Plaid integration is enabled for banks in the United States and Canada. As Clatri acquires more users, Plaid can give us access to their United Kingdom and European banks -- the infrastructure on their side already exists. Each connected account costs 300 credits per month -- details are in Pricing.

Latin America

For Colombian and Latin American banks, automatic integration is one of the most important medium-term goals. The obstacle isn't technical -- it's regulatory and infrastructure. There's no open banking provider today with regional coverage comparable to Plaid, and banks in the region aren't required to expose standardized APIs.

When regulation advances and viable providers emerge -- or Plaid expands coverage to the region -- Clatri will be able to integrate them. In the meantime, bank statements and chat-based logging cover that function.

Recurring payments

A recurring payment is any charge or income that repeats on a predictable schedule: subscriptions, utilities, rent, salary, interest. Clatri records them as separate entities from individual transactions.

Each recurring payment has:

• Type: expense or income
• Frequency: daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual
• Payment day: when the charge or deposit is expected
• Associated account or card
• Amount: fixed or variable (if the amount changes each period)
• Status: active, paused, canceled, or completed

Alignment with statements and integrations

When you import a statement or sync through Plaid, the duplicate detection system takes your recurring payments into account. If you have a monthly Netflix payment of $15.99 registered and a $15.99 Netflix transaction shows up in your statement, the system identifies it as the same transaction and avoids duplicating the information.

This means you can keep your recurring payments as a reference for what you expect to spend or receive each month, and when real transactions arrive -- by statement or integration -- they reconcile automatically.

Transfers between accounts

You can move money between your accounts: "transfiere 500 mil de Bancolombia a Nequi" (transfer 500k from Bancolombia to Nequi). The transfer reduces the source account balance and increases the destination's. It's not recorded as an expense or income -- it's an internal movement that doesn't affect your net worth.

If the accounts are in different currencies, the system asks for the exchange rate for conversion.

Categories

Clatri uses a system of predefined categories to classify expenses and income -- over 50 expense categories (housing, food, transport, entertainment, subscriptions, health, education, etc.) and over 15 income categories (salary, freelance, dividends, sales, rent, etc.).

Categories aren't editable. When you record a transaction, the agent assigns the category automatically based on context -- if you say "gaste 12 mil en Uber" (spent 12k on Uber), the category is transport. If it's unsure, it asks.

Categories are the foundation of the budget system, dashboard statistics, and expense breakdown by group.

Counterparties

Counterparties are the people or entities linked to your transactions. You can associate an expense, income, obligation, or recurring payment with someone and then ask questions about that relationship:

• "Cuanto gaste en mama este mes?" (How much did I spend on mom this month?)
• "Cuanto me debe Juan?" (How much does Juan owe me?)
• "Muestrame todas las transacciones con el proveedor de cafe" (Show me all transactions with the coffee supplier)

Each counterparty has a type that defines the relationship:

Type	What it represents
Person	Family member, friend, acquaintance
Client	Someone who pays you for a service or product
Supplier	Someone you buy from regularly
Lender	Someone who lent you money
Borrower	Someone you lent money to

The counterparty detail screen has two tabs: History (all transactions with that person, with period filter) and Analytics (category breakdown of how much you've spent or received from that person). You can mark counterparties as favorites for quick access.

Counterparties are automatically linked with Clatri's unified contacts system -- the same person can appear as a counterparty in Money and as a traveler in a Space trip without being duplicated.

Expense groups

An expense group bundles transactions that belong to the same purpose: a trip, an event, a renovation, a project. Each expense can belong to only one group.

Each group has a name, emoji, description, and an optional budget. The detail screen shows two tabs: History (list of transactions with amounts and dates) and Top categories (bar chart with the percentage breakdown by category within the group). If you set a budget, you see a progress bar with a warning when you go over.

Groups can be open (accepting transactions) or closed (when the event is over -- transactions stay but you can't add new ones). You can also link counterparties to a group to identify the people involved -- for example, the friends who went on the trip.

If you're planning a trip, you can create a "Japan trip" group, associate all related expenses -- flights, hotels, meals, transport -- link the travelers as counterparties, and have a clear picture of how much the trip cost, in which categories, and how much you spent per person.