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Transactions

Alto tracks inflows, outflows, and transfers. Transactions drive your budget: categorized outflows increase category “spent”, categorized inflows reduce spent (refunds) or count as income (when assigned to an income category on a cash account).

Transaction types

Inflow

Money coming in. On checking/savings, inflows can become “income” when categorized to an income category.

Outflow

Money going out. Categorized outflows increase “spent” and reduce “available”.

Transfer

Money moving between accounts. Transfers do not affect category budgets.

Status: pending vs cleared

Transactions can be marked pending or cleared. Plaid-synced transactions may arrive as pending, then later be modified to cleared.

Tip

If your bank shows the final settled amount differently than a pending amount, the Plaid “modified” update will reconcile it during sync.

Common workflows

Categorize new transactions to keep spending accurate in the Budget view.
Use Link transfers when you imported/downloaded both sides of a transfer as separate inflow/outflow entries.
Use CSV upload to bulk import transactions (Chase format supported).
Use bulk actions to set a category or delete many transactions at once.

Categorization rules that affect the budget

Cash-to-cash transfers don't affect category budgets. They're just moving money between your accounts.
Cash-to-credit transfers (credit card payments): the cash side is categorized to the credit card's payment category, and the credit card side shows as a paid transaction.
An inflow categorized to an expense category reduces net spent for that category (refunds and reimbursements).
An inflow categorized to an income category on a cash account contributes to Total Income (and therefore Ready to Assign).
Credit-card inflows are not treated as income; they represent payments or refunds, not new cash entering your budgeting ecosystem.

CSV import

CSV upload is intended for “download from bank → import into Alto” workflows. The current importer expects a Chase-style export with headers like Posting Date, Description, Amount.

Amount sign

Negative amount in CSV → outflow
Positive amount in CSV → inflow

Linking transfers

If you have two separate transactions that are really the two sides of one transfer (a cash outflow from one account and an inflow to another), Alto can link them. Linking helps keep reporting cleaner and prevents accidental categorization from affecting budgets.

The linker looks for equal amounts across different accounts with opposite directions and close dates.
You can open the linker generally, or start it from a specific “source transaction” to find matches for that transaction.

Credit card inflows

All inflows on credit card accounts are treated as "paid" transactions that reduce your balance. This includes payments, refunds, and credits.

Transfers from tracked accounts are the preferred way to record card payments, because they reflect cash leaving your checking account. The cash side of the transfer is automatically categorized to the credit card's payment category.
External payments (from untracked accounts or someone else paying your card) simply show as paid transactions that reduce your balance.
Refunds and credits are also treated as paid transactions—they simply reduce your credit card balance.

Bulk actions

You can select multiple transactions and apply actions like “set category” or “delete”. This is useful when importing a lot of data or cleaning up uncategorized transactions.

Quick math in amount fields

Amount inputs support simple arithmetic expressions (e.g. 120.50 + 9.99) and are rounded to 2 decimal places.

Common workflows

Categorize new transactions to keep spending accurate in the Budget view.

Use Link transfers when you imported/downloaded both sides of a transfer as separate inflow/outflow entries.

Use CSV upload to bulk import transactions (Chase format supported).

Use bulk actions to set a category or delete many transactions at once.

Categorization rules that affect the budget

Cash-to-cash transfers don't affect category budgets. They're just moving money between your accounts.

Cash-to-credit transfers (credit card payments): the cash side is categorized to the credit card's payment category, and the credit card side shows as a paid transaction.

An inflow categorized to an expense category reduces net spent for that category (refunds and reimbursements).

An inflow categorized to an income category on a cash account contributes to Total Income (and therefore Ready to Assign).

Credit-card inflows are not treated as income; they represent payments or refunds, not new cash entering your budgeting ecosystem.

Linking transfers

The linker looks for equal amounts across different accounts with opposite directions and close dates.

You can open the linker generally, or start it from a specific “source transaction” to find matches for that transaction.

Credit card inflows

All inflows on credit card accounts are treated as "paid" transactions that reduce your balance. This includes payments, refunds, and credits.

Transfers from tracked accounts are the preferred way to record card payments, because they reflect cash leaving your checking account. The cash side of the transfer is automatically categorized to the credit card's payment category.

External payments (from untracked accounts or someone else paying your card) simply show as paid transactions that reduce your balance.

Refunds and credits are also treated as paid transactions—they simply reduce your credit card balance.