Cash accounts
Checking, savings, and physical cash - the accounts your budget spends from, and how reconciling works.
Cash covers three types: Checking, Savings, and Cash for money you hold physically. They behave identically inside Pocketwatch - the type is there so your account list reads the way your real accounts do.
They are the accounts your budget runs on
Cash accounts are always on budget. Money arriving in one becomes Ready to assign on the Budget page, and a categorized purchase from one draws down that category. That is the whole loop: money lands, you give it a job, spending it uses the job up. See Budgeting.
Moving money between two of your own accounts is a transfer, not spending. Transfers never touch a category - the money has not left your hands, it just changed seats.
The balance is the sum of your register
An account balance is always the sum of the transactions in it, starting from the balance you opened it with. Nothing edits the balance behind your back - even correcting it posts a visible Balance Adjustment row, so the ledger and the balance can never disagree.
Balances can go negative if you overdraw, and that is reflected honestly in your net worth rather than hidden.
Cleared, uncleared, and reconciled
Each transaction carries a state. Uncleared means you have recorded it but the bank has not finished with it. Cleared means it has posted. Reconciled means you have checked it against a statement and agreed it is correct.
Reconciling asks for the closing balance on your statement, compares it against your cleared transactions, and shows the difference. If there is one, Pocketwatch posts a single Reconciliation Adjustment for the gap and marks everything cleared as reconciled. Nothing is silently rewritten - the adjustment is a normal row you can inspect and categorize.
Last updated July 25, 2026