To assign

Your bank reports that 500 left your account. Was it an expense?

That question almost never has an obvious answer. It could have been an expense, sure. But it could also have been a transfer to your own savings account —in which case you spent nothing, you just moved money from one pocket to another—. It could have been your credit card payment, which isn't an expense but the settling of a debt you already recorded when you made the purchase. It could have been a contribution to an investment, which doesn't make you poorer: it transforms your money.

If Clatri guessed, sooner or later it would count the same money twice. So it doesn't guess. It parks the movement and asks you.

The tray

To assign is that tray: "Connect transfers, debt payments, savings and investments to their real destination."

When a movement arrives whose real destination isn't known, it isn't recorded as an expense or as income. It stays in a control account: a temporary place in your Chart of accounts that literally means money waiting for its place. You'll see them with names like Unresolved internal transfers or Unresolved card payments.

Having a balance in them is not a malfunction. It's Clatri telling you precisely what it still needs to know for your reports to be true.

There are four types:

Type	What it really is
Internal transfer	A movement between two of your accounts
Debt payment	A payment toward a card, a loan or an obligation
Savings transfer	Money you set aside in a pocket
Investment contribution	Money you put into an instrument

None of the four is an expense. None of them lowers your result. All of them move things from one side of your Balance sheet to the other, and that's why all of them need a destination.

Assigning

Each movement in the tray shows its amount, how much you've assigned and how much is left: {assigned} of {total} assigned. You can assign it in full or in parts, because real life splits things up: a single withdrawal can cover two debts.

There are two ways to resolve it, depending on the type.

Select destination

For debt payments, savings and investment contributions. You search for the destination, enter the amount —"Assign all of it or part of it. Up to {remaining} is left."— and confirm.

The destination has to be something that already exists: a card, a loan, a savings pocket, an investment. If there isn't one, Clatri tells you instead of offering you a fake list: "This movement can only go to a card, loan, savings pocket or investment that already exists." An accounting account with a similar name doesn't work as a destination, because it isn't connected to the real object.

When you confirm, Clatri tells you what just happened, and what it says is the interesting part:

• Debt payment — your result doesn't change: paying a debt is not an expense. Your cash doesn't move again: it already moved when the bank reported the withdrawal. What goes down is the liability.
• Savings transfer — your result doesn't change: moving money to savings is not an expense.
• Investment contribution — your result doesn't change: a contribution is not an operating expense.

In all three cases, the money already existed and still exists. Assigning it only takes it out of the control account and puts it in its place on the balance sheet.

Pair the other side

For internal transfers, which have a particularity: your bank recorded them twice. An outflow in account A and an inflow in account B. Both movements already exist.

Nothing is created here: they're paired. The screen says it without ambiguity: "Pairing links two movements your bank already made. It doesn't create a new income or expense."

Clatri shows you suggested matches with a confidence level and the reasons behind its suspicion (same currency, same available amount, close dates, different account). But they're suggestions, and it says so: "These are suggestions. Nothing is paired until you confirm." If there are several possibilities, it doesn't choose for you: "Several movements look like a plausible match. Pick the right one; Clatri will not choose for you."

If the accounts are in different currencies, you're asked for the rate that reconciles the two amounts.

Undo without destroying

Every assignment can be reversed. And the reversal is as careful as the assignment:

• Reversing an assignment returns the amount to the tray: "{amount} goes back to the pending tray and the entries are reversed in the ledger."
• Reversing a pairing disconnects the two movements, which still exist: "Both movements go back to the pending tray. No cash is created or destroyed."

A reversal never deletes the bank movement. The money that moved, moved. What gets undone is the interpretation, not the fact.

Splitting a transaction

On each transaction's Accounting screen there are two more tools that divide without duplicating.

Split across accounts

"Divide this transaction between two or more accounting accounts. The total always stays the same."

An invoice from your cloud provider that is 60% infrastructure and 40% software isn't two expenses: it's one, split. You choose the method —percentage or fixed amount— and the lines have to add up to exactly 100%. Not 99, not 101.

If you only declare part of it, Clatri doesn't fill in the rest on its own: it asks you where it goes. An invented remainder is a false number that looks exact.

Business lines

"Split this transaction across your business lines. The entity total never changes."

The same mechanism, another dimension: the rent two of your businesses share, the salary of someone who works for both. You split by percentage and the consolidated total doesn't move a single cent — it only says how much each segment carries. More in Businesses.

Teach it, don't repeat yourself

When you correct a transaction's account you can turn on Use this correction in the future. Clatri shows you what it's going to learn before it learns it: "From now on, every movement whose {type} is "{key}" will be filed under {account}."

You choose which signal it should recognize it by: the contact, the recurring payment, the description, the bank category, the source account or the prepaid balance.

Two important things:

• A rule never reclassifies your history. It only acts on what comes next. Your past is yours and doesn't change on its own.
• Clatri doesn't create rules on its own initiative. It learns when you ask it to.

Archiving a rule stops it going forward and doesn't touch anything already recorded.

Everything is on record

Each transaction's Accounting screen has a History: "Who classified this, when, and what changed." Classifications, splits, distributions and assignments, with the actor —you, another member or Clatri— and the before and after.

Nothing is ever deleted. Corrections are recorded as reversals, with their offsetting entry. It's the difference between an app that edits the past and an accounting ledger that respects it.