Add a Transaction

How to manually enter a transaction in Forbidden Finance, including amount conventions, categories, tags, and merchant auto-categorization.

Overview

Manual transaction entry lets you record income and expenses by hand. This is the primary way to track your finances on the Free tier, and it remains useful on paid tiers for recording cash purchases, side income, or anything your bank does not capture. You can add a transaction in under 30 seconds once you are familiar with the form.

How to Add a Transaction

Open the transaction form

Tap the + button on the bottom navigation bar or go to Transactions and tap Add Transaction in the top right.

Select an account

Choose the account this transaction belongs to. If you only have one account, it is selected automatically.

Enter the amount

Type the transaction amount. Use a negative number for expenses (e.g., -45.00 for a grocery purchase) and a positive number for income (e.g., 2500.00 for a paycheck). You can also use the income/expense toggle to set the sign automatically.

Add the merchant name

Type the name of the business or person. Forbidden Finance remembers your merchant-to-category associations, so after you categorize a transaction from "Trader Joe's" once, future transactions with that merchant are categorized automatically.

Choose a category

Select a category from the list. Categories are organized into groups like Food & Drink, Transportation, and Housing. If you leave this blank, the transaction is marked as uncategorized and you can assign a category later.

Set the date

The date defaults to today. Tap it to change it if you are recording a past transaction.

Add optional details

Expand the details section to add a description (a note to yourself), tags (free-form labels like "business" or "vacation"), or to adjust the currency if you have multi-currency enabled.

Save the transaction

Tap Save. The transaction appears immediately in your transaction list and counts toward your budget.

Amount Conventions

What You Are Recording	Amount	Example
An expense or purchase	Negative	`-85.00`
Income, a refund, or deposit	Positive	`1200.00`
Transfer out of this account	Negative	`-500.00`
Transfer into this account	Positive	`500.00`

The income/expense toggle at the top of the amount field handles the sign for you if you prefer not to type a minus sign.

Auto-Categorization

Forbidden Finance learns from your categorization choices. The first time you assign "Groceries" to a transaction from "Whole Foods," every future transaction from that merchant is automatically categorized as Groceries. You can always override the suggestion.

If you change the category on a transaction, Forbidden Finance updates the rule so that future transactions from that merchant use the new category.

Key Details

Manual transactions are always marked as "posted" — they skip the pending state that bank-synced transactions go through.
Tags are free-form text labels. Use them for anything your categories do not cover, like "reimbursable," "gift," or "tax-deductible."
Currency defaults to your primary currency. If you have multi-currency enabled (Starter and above), you can select a different currency per transaction.
Editing: Tap any transaction to open it and make changes. Your edits are saved immediately.
Deleting: Swipe left on a transaction or open it and tap Delete. Deleted transactions are removed from your budget calculations.

Tips

Use the merchant name consistently. Typing "Starbucks" the same way each time ensures auto-categorization works reliably. Forbidden Finance normalizes minor differences in capitalization and spacing, but very different names are treated as separate merchants.

Add tags like "vacation" or "holiday" to group transactions across categories. Later, you can filter by tag to see exactly how much a trip or event cost.

Negative amounts are expenses and positive amounts are income. If your budget numbers look off, double-check that you used the right sign.