How Transactions Work
Every move your money makes, recorded.
A transaction is any movement of money. Flow has three types.
Income
Money coming into one of your accounts.
Examples:
- Monthly salary hitting your bank account
- A client paying your invoice
- Someone paying you back via transfer
- Selling something and getting cash
Expense
Money going out of one of your accounts.
Examples:
- Rent payment
- Groceries
- Streaming subscriptions
- A night out
Transfer
Money moving between two of your own accounts.
Examples:
- Moving money from your bank account to savings
- Paying off your credit card from your bank account
- Converting IDR to USDC in a crypto account
Transfers require two accounts — a source (where the money leaves) and a destination (where it arrives). Both balances update at the same time.
Use the real date
Every transaction has an occurred at date — when the money actually moved in real life.
Set this to the actual date, not the day you're recording it. If you find an old receipt or forgot to log something, go back and use the correct date. Your monthly summaries and trends will be accurate.
Why no decimal points?
Amounts are stored as integers (the smallest unit of the currency). This avoids floating-point rounding errors that would slowly corrupt your balances over time — a known problem with storing money as decimals.
The app always displays amounts formatted correctly, so you'll never see raw integer values.