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Creating your first account

Commander begins tracking your finances when you create your first account. Each account requires a name, an initial amount, and a classification as either a depository or credit account.
  • Depository accounts represent assets like checking or savings accounts
  • Credit accounts track credit cards and lines of credit.
An account’s type affects how certain metrics display throughout the app, but both types function identically for transaction tracking and budgeting. When you create a depository account with a positive balance in Envelope Mode, that balance immediately becomes available as unbudgeted funds. This pool of money then sits ready for allocation to budget lines. In Tracking or Targets modes, the initial balance simply establishes the account’s starting point for balance calculations. The account appears in your accounts list immediately after creation and begins accepting transactions.

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Setting up budget lines

Budget lines organize your transactions into categories that track spending patterns according to your chosen budgeting mode. You create a budget line by providing a name and color, which identifies the line throughout the app. The line appears in your Budget Overview immediately but shows no activity until you assign transactions to it. You can create budget lines at any point—before entering transactions, during transaction creation, or after transactions already exist in your accounts. If you create a transaction and want to assign it to a line that doesn’t exist yet, you can create the budget line during the transaction entry process if you have enabled budget line creation in transaction forms. The sequence you choose depends on your workflow preference, though creating key budget lines before entering transactions can streamline the initial setup process. By default, your budget uses Tracking mode. You can change it on the Budget Settings page.

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Entering transactions

Transactions record the movement of money into and out of your accounts. Each transaction requires an amount, date, an associated account, and either a name and/or a linked merchant name. When you enter a transaction, it immediately updates the associated account’s balance to reflect the new activity. You can also optionally assign the transaction to a budget line when it’s created. Linking a merchant to a budget line from the merchant details view automatically assigns future transactions created with that merchant to the linked budget line. Otherwise, unassigned transactions remain unassigned until you manually connect them to a budget line either through the transactions list page or individually through the transaction detail page.