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Linking your first account

Commander connects to your bank through Plaid when you create a synced account. After selecting your financial institution and authenticating, you choose which accounts to import into Commander. For each selected account, you specify how much transaction history to import, ranging from no historical transactions for up to two years in the past. The app then imports the account name, current balance, and requested transaction history. The imported account appears in your accounts list with its balance matching the balance reported by your bank. In Envelope Mode, a positive balance in a depository account immediately becomes available as unbudgeted funds ready for allocation to budget lines. The imported transactions arrive unassigned to any budget line and require manual categorization. Imported transactions include merchant names, amounts, dates, and additional data from your bank such as geographic information and bank-provided categories that manual transactions don’t capture. Users can opt out of importing transaction locations in the synced account settings page.

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Assigning imported transactions

After linking an account, you assign imported transactions to budget lines to begin tracking spending patterns. Transactions imported before your budget start date, which you set in the app’s Budget Settings, don’t require budget line assignment and remain unassigned without affecting your budget tracking. Transactions after that date need assignment to connect spending to your chosen budget structure. You can create budget lines before, during, or after assigning transactions. If you encounter a transaction that should belong to a budget line that doesn’t exist yet, you can create the budget line from the transaction edit form. Once you link a merchant to a budget line, future transactions imported with that merchant automatically assign to the linked budget line, but past transactions remain unassigned to prevent data conflicts with existing assignments.

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Managing synced accounts

Synced accounts update automatically through Plaid with near real-time transaction imports and balance updates depending on your bank’s policies. You can edit imported transactions if bank data is incorrect or incomplete, and you can manually add transactions to synced accounts when needed. The account functions identically to manual accounts for budgeting purposes—the only distinction is on how transactions enter the system. Sync users can also create manual accounts alongside synced accounts. When creating an account, you choose between automatic linking through Plaid or manual creation, allowing you to maintain a mix of synced and manual accounts that all appear together in your accounts list and function within the same budget structure.