A balance or transaction looks wrong

An account can be updating and still show a number you don’t expect: a balance that differs from the bank’s site, a transaction listed twice, or an account that appears twice. A synced balance is the figure the bank last reported through Plaid, on the day Taiga Finance received it, so it can trail the bank’s site. Duplicates are flagged for you. Transactions shows a possible duplicate transactions banner and Accounts a possible duplicates banner. From either one you merge the pair or mark it Not duplicates. An account that has stopped updating altogether is a connection problem, covered in Troubleshooting sync.

What is the balance Taiga Finance shows?

For a synced account it is the bank’s current balance, as Plaid holds it at the last refresh. Taiga Finance doesn’t show the available balance anywhere. Hover the account’s dot on Accounts for Received and a date. That is the day Taiga Finance received the figure, not the bank’s own as-of date. A checking account read on Tuesday morning still shows Tuesday’s figure on Wednesday until the next sync arrives.

Why doesn’t the balance match my bank’s site?

The two are usually reading at different moments, or reading different figures.

• The day it was received. Sync now, in the panel opened from the Synced pill in the page header, reads again. Inside a bank’s daily refresh window the panel says You synced recently, so a sync may not pull anything new yet.
• Current balance only. A bank’s site that leads with its available balance differs from the current balance Taiga Finance shows.
• Pending charges. Pending transactions are listed in the ledger with a PENDING tag, Pending — not yet posted by the bank. Taiga Finance adds nothing to the bank’s balance for them.
• Cards and loans carry a minus sign. A card with $500 owed reads −$500, and net worth subtracts it. A card that shows a positive balance holds a credit, such as an overpayment.

A day the bank got wrong can be corrected. Set balance in the account’s drawer pins a figure for a date: Pin a balance for a specific date — fix a wrong day or fill a pre-sync gap. Won’t be overwritten by sync. The pin holds that day. A newer reading from the bank still becomes the current balance after it. Opening the pinned day again offers Revert to bank value.

What does an “unexplained” banner on an account mean?

The bank’s balance moved by an amount its posted transactions don’t account for. The banner names the account and the amount, followed by unexplained, and reads Balance and transactions disagree since a date. Taiga Finance watches for this on synced cash accounts and cards, and only once the difference has held for several days. A charge that is still settling doesn’t trigger it.

Click the amount to see the working: each interval’s balance change and the part of it no transaction explains. The banner offers up to three buttons:

• Check the feed again asks the next sync to re-read the bank’s transactions. The banner then says what it found: Re-checked the feed and the date, nothing new arrived, or how many transactions were recovered.
• Restore as posted appears when the amount matches a pending charge that dropped out of the feed. The banner names it: Matches a pending charge that dropped out of the feed.
• Accept takes the new balance as the account’s baseline. A later, different gap is still flagged.

Why does the net-worth chart differ from a statement for a past day?

The chart reads one balance per account per day, the one Taiga Finance received that day. A day with no reading carries the previous one forward, and a day you pinned with Set balance keeps your figure. Checking, savings and card accounts also get history before their first reading, worked back from their posted transactions. A statement closes on the bank’s date and the chart uses the day the figure arrived, so the two can differ by a day’s activity. A balances file from another app, imported with CSV & PDF importers, fills the years before your first sync.

Why is an investment account’s value different from the brokerage?

The value is the balance the institution reports for the account, and the holdings split it into positions. When the institution reports no balance, or one older than the holdings, the holdings’ total stands in. The row then reads From holdings in place of its change. Prices are the institution’s, from its last report, so the value moves when the account syncs. Value the holdings don’t cover is shown as cash. Investments covers how each kind of holding gets its price.

Why does a closed or paid-off account still show?

Taiga Finance doesn’t detect a closed account on its own. A loan the bank still reports shows the bank’s figure, $0 once it is paid off. An account the bank stops sending keeps its history and keeps counting at its last balance, and its dot’s hover reads no longer shared at the bank or not in the last fetch. Troubleshooting sync explains both.

Three actions in the drawer’s Manage band take it out of the way:

• Convert to closed stops syncing and freezes the account at its current balance. It keeps counting toward net worth.
• Archive stops syncing and drops the account from your totals from its closed-on day. Earlier history stays on the chart.
• Hide keeps it syncing but out of lists, budgets and net worth.

Managing accounts compares them.

Why do I see the same transaction twice?

A real duplicate is one charge that arrived by two paths. Taiga Finance checks for two cases:

• A file imported over synced history. A new synced row is skipped when it closely matches an imported or hand-entered row on the same account. A close match has the same amount, a date within three days and a similar description. A looser match goes to the review below. The import side has its own check, in CSV & PDF importers.
• One account fed by two connections, or entered by hand beside a synced copy. The account usually shows twice too. See How do I merge a duplicate account?

A pending charge doesn’t stay beside its posted row. When the bank links the two, the posted row replaces the pending one in place and keeps its category, notes and splits. When the bank doesn’t, the pending one moves to Cancelled transactions, in the page’s ⋯ menu under Not in your main view. Its note reads Holds your bank released, or charges it no longer shows. Kept for your records — not counted in any total.

Two identical charges from the same feed are not flagged. Within one source, two rows are two events, such as two coffees on the same morning.

How do I clear a duplicate transaction?

1. On Transactions, click the amber banner, 1 possible duplicate transaction or the count of them. Possible duplicate transactions opens with one group per duplicate. Chips such as Same account, Same amount and Similar description say why the copies were grouped.

2. One copy is marked as the one that stays. Click Keep this one on another copy to keep that one instead. The Result row shows the description and category the merged transaction will carry.

3. Click Merge. When the other copy holds something the kept one would drop, such as a different category or a split, Taiga Finance first asks Discard the other copies’ work? and names it. The toast reads Duplicates merged.

Not duplicates keeps both copies and stops suggesting the pair, with a toast reading Marked as not duplicates. Merge all at the top handles every group that is clear to merge automatically, and leaves groups that differ for you to review. Dismissed duplicates, in the page’s ⋯ menu, brings back a pair you marked by mistake.

Delete transaction, in the foot of the transaction’s drawer, removes a single copy and asks you to confirm: This transaction will be permanently removed and will never be re-imported from your bank or CSV files. The toast offers Undo for five seconds. Hide from budgets, in the drawer’s Manage section, keeps the row in the ledger but out of every budget and spending total.

How do I merge a duplicate account?

1. On Accounts, click the amber banner, 1 possible duplicate or the count of them. Possible duplicate accounts lists each pair. Reasons such as Same name or a count of matching transactions say why they were paired.

2. Click Merge… on the pair. Merge two accounts opens.

3. Choose the account to keep. The other is deleted, and its transactions, balances and holdings move onto the one you keep.

4. When more than one connection feeds the pair, choose which one keeps syncing the merged account. The others stop.

5. Read the preview. It counts what moves, including a line such as 3 overlapping transactions de-duplicated for copies the two accounts shared.

6. Type MERGE and click Merge permanently. The toast reads Merged into and the name of the account you kept.

Not duplicates on the pair keeps both accounts. The same merge opens from any account’s drawer: Manage › Advanced status › Merge into another account…. Only the account’s owner sees it.

Troubleshooting

A pending charge disappeared from the ledger

The bank dropped the pending charge without naming a posted row for it. It sits in Cancelled transactions, in the ⋯ menu on Transactions, counted in no total. When the balance moved by that amount, the account’s unexplained banner offers Restore as posted.

“These copies belong to different household members — remove one side.”

The two copies sit on accounts owned by different people in your household, so they can’t merge into one. Remove this one on either copy deletes it, after Remove this duplicate? confirms that it won’t come back on the next sync.

“This bank is already connected” when connecting a bank

Taiga Finance found the bank’s accounts on a connection you already have. The window offers Add accounts to share more accounts through that connection, or Fix connection when it reads That connection needs attention. Connect anyway makes a second connection to the same bank.

The merge list pairs two accounts that are different

The pairing compares names, last four digits, institution, and the balances and transactions the two share. Two cards at one bank with similar names can score as a pair. Click Not duplicates. Dismissed alerts in the ⋯ menu on Accounts brings the pair back.

FAQ

Can I undo a merge?

No. Merge two accounts says This is not reversible. A transaction merge offers no undo either, and what it discards is named before you confirm. A deleted transaction has five seconds of Undo, then it is gone.

Does Taiga Finance merge duplicates on its own?

Only in one case. During a sync, a new row that closely matches an imported or hand-entered row on the same account is skipped. Every other suggestion waits in the review, and nothing merges until you click Merge or Merge all.

Why does a transfer show on both accounts?

It moved money out of one account and into the other, so each account has its own row, with opposite signs. The two are never offered as duplicates. A row in the Transfers category counts as neither spending nor income.

Will a deleted duplicate come back on the next sync?

No. A deleted transaction is blocked from returning, from the bank or from a CSV file. The same holds for a copy removed in the duplicate review.