Understanding Transactions

The Building Blocks of Your Finances

Transactions are at the heart of NivoaFlow. Every purchase, paycheque, and transfer is recorded as a transaction, giving you a complete picture of where your money goes.

Transaction Types

Expenses

Money going out — purchases, bill payments, subscriptions, and any other spending. Expenses reduce your account balance.

Income

Money coming in — salary, freelance payments, refunds, interest, and other earnings. Income increases your account balance.

Transfers

Money moving between your own accounts — like paying a credit card from your chequing account. Transfers do not count as spending or income in your budget.

Key Fields on Every Transaction

Each transaction includes the following details:

• Description — the raw description from your bank (read-only) and a normalised merchant name we clean up for matching and display
• Amount — how much money was involved. Negative values are outflows (spending), positive values are inflows (income or refunds)
• Date — when the transaction occurred
• Account — which of your connected or manual accounts it belongs to
• Category — the spending or income category (e.g., Groceries, Salary)
• Tags — optional labels for extra organisation (e.g., #vacation, #business)
• Notes — optional free-text notes for your own reference
• Goal link — optionally connect the transaction to a savings goal
• Expect reimbursement — flag an outgoing transaction you expect to be paid back for (see tracking reimbursements)
• Review status — "Needs Review" or "Reviewed" to help you process new transactions

How Transactions Arrive

Transactions enter NivoaFlow through three paths:

1. Bank sync — automatically pulled from your connected accounts via Plaid (Personal and Household tiers)
2. CSV import — uploaded from a file you download from your bank (all tiers)
3. Manual entry — created by hand directly in the app (all tiers)

Regardless of how they arrive, all transactions work the same way — you can categorise, tag, split, link to goals, and include them in budgets and reports.

Browsing Transactions

The transactions list scrolls infinitely on mobile and uses page-by-page navigation on desktop. Filters across the top let you narrow by account, date range, category, tag, or review status.

Processing New Transactions

When new transactions arrive, they are marked as "Needs Review." This lets you work through them systematically — assigning categories, adding tags, and confirming everything looks correct before marking them as "Reviewed."