Obligations and debts

Clatri has two separate systems for handling debt: the one for credit cards and the one for obligations. They work differently, appear in different parts of the dashboard, and serve different purposes. Worth understanding both.

Credit card debt

When you log an expense with a credit card — by chat, statement, or bank integration — that card's debt rises automatically. You don't have to do anything extra. If the card is used in multiple currencies, the system tracks debt per currency separately.

The full flow:

• You log an expense with the card → debt rises by the amount of the expense, in the corresponding currency
• You import a credit card statement → transactions are recorded as expenses and the system can also sync the actual debt balance from the statement per currency
• You pay the card → you tell the agent from which account and how much ("I paid 500 off the card from my main account"). The system subtracts from your account and subtracts from the card's debt
• You manually update the debt → from the card detail or by chat ("my card now owes X") you can correct the balance when you want to align it with reality

In the card detail screen you see: total debt broken down by currency, a utilization bar against the credit limit, a 6-month evolution chart, transaction history, and a separate debt history.

Card debt history

Card debt has its own event system, separate from obligations.

Today that history includes:

• Statement updates — store previous and new balance, interest, fees, minimum payment, and period dates
• Payments — store how much the debt dropped when you paid from an account
• Manual adjustments — store the correction when you sync the balance manually

That means you can review not just individual purchases, but also the balance evolution of the card as consolidated debt.

On the Balance sheet, card debt appears as a separate liability.

Obligations

An obligation is a debt between two parties not tied to a payment instrument. Bank loans, money you owe someone, financings, pending invoices — or the other way around: money owed to you.

Payable and receivable

• Payable — you owe someone. A bank loan, a financing, money a friend lent you.
• Receivable — someone owes you. You lent to a family member, a client hasn't paid you, a friend owes their share.

Both are items on the Balance sheet, not on the Income statement. What you're owed is already yours even if it hasn't arrived; what you owe already weighs on you even if you haven't paid it. That's why payables subtract and receivables add, and why neither of them shows up as income or expense when the money finally moves — the income or the expense was already recognized earlier.

To collect and pay

They have their own screen, To collect and pay, and its subtitle sums up the whole model: "It already counts; the money hasn't moved yet".

There you see what you're owed and what you owe, sorted by age:

• 0 to 30 days
• 31 to 60 days
• Over 60 days

An invoice that has gone 90 days uncollected isn't the same as one from last week, even if the amount is the same. Aging is what turns a list of balances into a signal. More detail in accrual and cash.

Reconcile payment

This is the operation that keeps you from duplicating money, and it's the one most worth understanding.

When you collect an invoice or pay a loan, the bank movement almost always already exists in Clatri: open banking brought it in, a statement brought it in, or you recorded it by hand. That deposit already raised your balance. If you also "mark as collected" the invoice against new money, you've just counted the same money twice.

Reconcile payment exists for that. The screen says it:

"Connect an existing account movement to one or more receivables or payables. This will not create another transaction."

It has two modes:

Mode	When	What it does
Use existing	The money already moved and the movement is already in Clatri	Connects that movement to the obligation. It doesn't create a second transaction
New payment	No bank movement exists yet	Records the money movement and reduces the balance in a single operation

In Use existing mode you first choose the account movement and then assign the amount. You can split a single deposit across several invoices — a client who pays you three invoices with one transfer — and you can also pay down the same obligation with several movements, in partial payments. The only rule is that the movement's available amount must be fully assigned: money that came in and you don't know what it's for isn't reconciled money.

When what moved isn't what was settled

It happens all the time: you get a deposit of 970 but the invoice was for 1,000. The difference isn't invented or silently absorbed — you classify it:

• Processing fee — the platform or the bank kept a part
• Tax withholding — tax was withheld at the source
• Discount — you forgave part of it for your client, or someone forgave part of it for you
• Write-off — you give up on what you won't collect

Each one has a different accounting effect, which is why the system makes you say which it is instead of guessing. On a receivable, no more money can come in than the invoice settles. On a payable, if you paid too much the excess is recorded as a payment fee; if you settled more than you paid, the difference can only be a discount or a write-off.

Payment history

Each obligation keeps the detail of everything applied to it: how much each movement settled, and how much went to fees, withholding, discount or write-off.

If you reconciled the wrong thing, you can reverse it. The app is explicit about what that means:

"The bank movement will remain, but the receivable or payable balance will reopen."

Reversing doesn't delete the money. The deposit happened and it's still there — what gets undone is the connection to the invoice, which is left open again.

The rule

Never settle a debt against money that already exists in the app. If the movement is already recorded, you reconcile it. "Mark as paid" or creating a new payment when the bank already reported the movement duplicates the money: your account balance drops twice and your reports stop adding up.

If you're not sure whether the movement is already there, look for it in Use existing before creating a new one.

Loan payments that come from the bank

When your loan installment leaves your account and the bank brings it in, Clatri sees the outflow but doesn't know which debt it belongs to. It doesn't guess: the movement sits in a bridge account and waits in To assign until you connect it to the loan.

Here's something that often surprises people: paying debt isn't an expense. It doesn't touch your Income statement. The expense — if there was one — was recognized when you were lent the money or when you bought something; paying only lowers a liability and lowers cash, two items on the Balance sheet. The only thing that is an expense is the interest.

Event history

Obligations also have their own event history, designed for loans, personal debts, receivables, and debt buyouts, not for cards.

If you update the balance because a statement arrived, the event stores:

• Previous and new balance
• Interest charged
• Fees
• Minimum payment
• Period dates (start, end, payment due)

After months of paying a loan, you can review exactly how much went to principal, how much to interest, and how much to fees.

Interest

Obligations support simple and compound interest. You can enter the rate in monthly or annual format — the system converts between them automatically.

If you enable auto-interest, Clatri calculates and applies interest automatically per the configured close day and frequency. You can also define a grace period (days after the close where no interest is charged).

Debt buyout

When you transfer a debt from one bank to another because they offer better terms. In Clatri:

1. The original obligation is closed
2. A new one is created with the new bank, linked to the previous one for traceability
3. The new one records the terms: original rate, new rate, number of installments, monthly value

Each month you record the installment payment. The system keeps count of how many are done and how many are left. When all are completed, it's marked as paid.

States

• Active — has a pending balance
• Paid — balance at zero or installments completed
• In default — overdue or non-compliant

From the app

Obligations can be created and edited both from chat and from the UI. The detail screen shows balance, progress, interest rates, the history of applied payments, and a timeline of all events.

In short

	Credit cards	Obligations
What they track	Debt on a payment instrument	Debt between people or entities
Update	Automatic with every expense	Manual, or by reconciled payments
History	Individual transactions + card debt events	Events with interest, fees, periods + payment history
Interest	Doesn't calculate it (comes in the statement)	Calculates it (simple/compound, auto or manual)
Payment	By chat ("I paid the card")	Reconcile payment — connects to the movement that already exists
Where you see it	Accounts and cards section	To collect and pay, with aging
On the Balance sheet	Liability (card debt)	Liability (payable) or asset (receivable)
On the Income statement	Doesn't appear. Only the interest	Doesn't appear. Only the interest