Transfers between accounts

What this does

Banking → Transfers records money moving between two of the shop's own bank accounts: checking to savings, savings to checking, operating to payroll. A transfer is neither income nor expense; it's the same money in a different pocket, and the entry says exactly that.

Before you start

accounting.manage. Both accounts must exist as bank or card accounts with linked GL accounts (accounts added under Bank Accounts and CC Accounts always are).

Steps

Pick the From Account and To Account, enter the Amount, the Date it moved, and an optional Memo. Save. Recent Transfers below lists what's been recorded.

Paying a credit card is better recorded as a check: Money Out → Checks, payee the card issuer, category the card's own GL account. That posts the same entry a transfer would (Dr the card / Cr checking), but as a check transaction the statement importer recognizes when it matches the card's payment lines. A transfer to a card posts correctly but the importer won't see it, and the next card import will offer the payment again.

What happens in the books

One journal entry: Dr the To account / Cr the From account, with source transfer. It shows in both accounts' registers on the same date. Nothing touches the profit and loss.

Common problems

The transfer shows up in the inbox too. The bank alerted on the same movement. Reject the inbox row with a reason; the transfer is already in the register, and the duplicate gate won't see it (the keys differ).

I recorded it backwards. Record the same transfer the other way to reverse it, dated the same day, with a memo saying so. Transfers have no edit or void of their own; the two entries net to zero in both registers.

A payment I entered as a check shows up again in a card import. The check's category isn't the card's GL account, so the importer couldn't pair them. Edit the check's category from the register; on the next import the line matches.