Reconcile a planned expense¶

Reconcile a planned expense when the expected payment has actually happened. This records the real transaction and resolves the outstanding plan in one step.

Here, reconcile means turning an expected expense into recorded spending. Checking whether an account balance matches your bank is a separate task.

Before you start¶

Confirm the transaction's account, date, and amount from your records. Check whether it is already recorded in line-budget.com. Reconciliation creates a new account entry; it does not match an existing one.

A due date alone does not mean a bill has been paid. Leave an unpaid expense unresolved until you know what happened.

Record the actual payment¶

Open the envelope and find the item under Planned expenses.
Select its round expense marker. It shows a question mark when the expense is due today or overdue. You can also select the expense marker on the timeline.
If several expenses are offered, choose the one you are recording.
Check Account and set Date to the actual transaction date.
Enter the actual positive Account amount. A bill planned for $65 but paid at $68 should be entered as 68.00.
Check Transaction splits. Enter positive amounts that cover the full spending and include the original planned expense's envelope.
Review Reduce next target for each eligible split.
Select Reconcile expense.

The entry appears in the account, the assigned spending affects the envelopes, and the expense is removed from the unresolved plans. The projection updates using the new records.

The saved ledger entry and its splits are negative because they record spending. If you later edit that entry from the account, use the signed amounts shown in the account editor. The reconciliation form handles that conversion for you.

Selecting an expense's text or amount opens its plan editor instead. Use that when you need to change the estimate without recording a payment.

When the real payment differs¶

Use the actual amount and date, even if they differ from the plan. Keep the account amount and split total equal.

For example, if one $80 payment covers a $65 phone bill and a $15 transport purchase, enter 80.00 for the account and split it into 65.00 for Phone and 15.00 for Transport.

If a bill was only partly paid, remember that reconciling resolves the selected plan. Record the actual part paid and create a separate planned expense for the remaining amount you still expect to pay.

If the payment is already recorded¶

Do not reconcile it again. Check that the existing transaction has the right account, date, amount, and envelope splits. Then open the obsolete planned expense by selecting its text, and use Delete to remove the duplicate expectation.

This leaves the actual transaction in place, but does not link it to that deleted plan. The browser reconciliation form has no existing-entry matching control.

If the payment has not happened¶

Still expected: keep the plan and edit its Due day if the timing changed.
Cancelled: delete the planned expense after confirming it is no longer needed.
Uncertain: leave it unresolved until you can check the payment.

Check the result¶

Confirm there is one actual payment in the account and no duplicate unresolved expense for it. If target reduction was selected, check the remaining allowance too. Later edits to the transaction do not automatically change that allowance.

Continue with Your regular review.