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Accounts

What accounts are for

Section titled “What accounts are for”

An account in Tovari stands for one real place your money sits or is owed: a checking account, a savings account, an investment account, a credit card, or a loan. Everything else in Tovari hangs off accounts — transactions belong to one, the budget spends the money they hold, and Safe to Spend counts only the accounts you tell it to.

You can create an account by hand or let a linked bank create it for you. Either way it behaves the same afterwards.

The type decides more than the icon

Section titled “The type decides more than the icon”

Each account is one of five types — Checking, Savings, Investment, Credit Card, or Loan. The type decides:

  • which of the four groups the account is filed under: Cash Accounts (checking and savings), Investments, Credit Cards, and Loans;
  • whether its balance counts as something you own or something you owe;
  • which extra fields you are offered — an interest rate on deposit accounts and cards, a credit limit on cards;
  • whether the account can count toward Safe to Spend at all. Only checking and savings accounts can. Investment accounts, credit cards and loans are excluded and cannot be opted in.

A new checking account starts included in Safe to Spend; a new savings account starts excluded. You can change that later on a checking or savings account.

The balances Tovari shows you

Section titled “The balances Tovari shows you”

Tovari works out an account’s balances on the server and sends you the answers, so every place you look at an account agrees:

  • Cleared — the part of the account that has settled at the bank.
  • Uncleared — what you have recorded that has not settled yet.
  • Working balance — the headline figure, and the one to read when you want “what is in here”.

These are meanings, not a sum to reproduce: read the figures Tovari gives you rather than adding them up yourself.

Investment accounts linked to a brokerage

Section titled “Investment accounts linked to a brokerage”

A linked investment account does not use the three balances above. A brokerage reports what an account is worth rather than a stream of purchases to reconcile, so Tovari shows the value it last reported, and the change since the last update rather than a monthly one.

Opening the account shows its value history — dated values, newest first, each with the change from the one before. A linked investment account never receives transactions, so a register would only ever be empty. The history is a record, not a worksheet: values are never edited or reconciled.

An investment account you keep by hand is unaffected — it uses the balances above and has an ordinary register. Either way, investment accounts stay out of Safe to Spend.

“As of” and “checked” are different claims

Section titled ““As of” and “checked” are different claims”
  • as of — the brokerage said when the value was true, and that is the moment shown.
  • checked — the brokerage gave a value but no time to attach to it, so Tovari shows when it looked. Some brokerages share only an account’s total, and report no time of their own.

Tovari never presents its own reading time as the brokerage’s.

Before the first value arrives

Section titled “Before the first value arrives”

A newly linked investment account shows a dash until the brokerage sends its first figure. Tovari asks as soon as the account is linked and keeps asking, so this normally clears on its own. A dash means “not yet”, never “zero”.

If Tovari needs your permission before it can ask, the account says so and offers a Reconnect button — see Keeping a connection healthy.

Closing an account is not deleting it

Section titled “Closing an account is not deleting it”

Closing an account archives it. Its transactions stay, your history stays intact, and the account simply drops out of your everyday lists. You can bring closed accounts back into view whenever you want to look at them.

The last four digits

Section titled “The last four digits”

The optional last-four-digits field is for your own recognition. Tovari does not check it for uniqueness, and it is never used on its own to decide anything — if two of your accounts end in the same four digits, Tovari treats a possible match as “no match” rather than guessing.

Finding your accounts

Section titled “Finding your accounts”

Accounts is in the left-hand navigation, and your accounts also appear in the navigation itself under an expandable list so you can jump straight to one.

The screen opens with three tiles across the top — Total Assets, Total Liabilities and Net Worth — and then one collapsible section per group, in the order Cash Accounts → Investments → Credit Cards → Loans.

Adding one

Section titled “Adding one”

Press Add Account in the header. You are offered Connect a bank and Add manually; choosing manual opens the Add Account dialog with name, type, bank, last four digits, starting balance, and — on a checking or savings account — the Include in Safe to Spend switch.

Editing one

Section titled “Editing one”

Click an account to open its detail panel. There is no Save button: every change you make is saved for you a moment after you stop typing, and the panel tells you when it has saved. Closing an account is done from the same panel, via Close Account, with a confirmation.

Housekeeping

Section titled “Housekeeping”
  • Search and a Show Closed switch sit in the header. Closed accounts are hidden until you turn that switch on.
  • Reordering is drag-and-drop, and it works only inside one group — you cannot drag an account into another group, because the group follows the account type.
  • Collapsing a group is a convenience for the visit you are in; it is not remembered next time.
  • Favorites are a personal marker: starring an account pins it to the top of the navigation list, and it is yours alone — starring an account in a shared household does not change what anyone else sees.

On a phone browser

Section titled “On a phone browser”

Opening the web app on a phone gives you the same accounts, laid out as a full-screen list with an Add account control and a full-screen editor instead of a side panel. Two things are not in this layout: favorites, and drag-to-reorder. Use View Desktop Site in the More menu if you need them.

When your bank and your records disagree

Section titled “When your bank and your records disagree”

For a bank-connected account, Tovari sometimes notices that the balance your records add up to and the balance your bank reports have drifted apart — usually because a transaction was delivered twice, or one the bank never sent. When that difference has held across a couple of daily checks, a card appears in the account’s editor, directly above the Starting Balance field, showing three lines: what your records say, what your bank says, and the difference between them.

The card exists so you don’t fix the difference the wrong way. Don’t change the Starting Balance field to make the number match — that silently rewrites your account’s history. Instead, choose Record the difference. Tovari adds a single dated entry in a “Starting Balance” category that closes the gap. It’s an ordinary transaction: it shows up in your register, and you can delete it at any time.

Before it’s recorded, Tovari shows you the exact amount, its date, and the category it will book to, and asks you to confirm. One thing worth knowing: if the transaction that was missing later arrives on its own, your recorded entry can briefly count it twice. Tovari re-checks every day and will flag it on the same card if that happens, so you can remove the entry — the card will suggest exactly that when it sees a recorded correction and the difference pointing in the same direction.

The card never guesses why the numbers differ, and it never launches a new bank connection. If a difference keeps coming back after you’ve recorded it, the card points you at your existing bank connection to review — it won’t quietly add a second one.

This surface is web and mobile-web only; the difference always rides the account itself, so there is no separate inbox or badge for it.

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