Core concepts

Shared vocabulary for how PennyBolt thinks about your money.

Core concepts is the vocabulary the rest of these docs assume you already have. Every other page in this documentation uses these six words in a specific way, and this section is where each one gets its full definition instead of a passing mention.

Start with the PennyBolt file itself: everything you do in the app is stored in one file that lives on your computer, not in a cloud or on our servers, and that you can copy, rename, back up, or carry on a thumb drive like any other file you own. From there, the next four pages work outward through what that file actually holds, in the order they build on each other. An account mirrors one real-world account: checking, savings, a credit card. A transaction is a single entry inside an account: one date, one payee, one amount. A category groups those transactions for reporting, as either income or an expense. A payee is who you paid or who paid you, and it is what lets a garbled bank description and a clean merchant name refer to the same purchase everywhere in your file.

The section ends with double-entry accounting, the discipline running underneath all of it. You will never see it while you use PennyBolt, but knowing it is there explains something you will notice elsewhere in these docs: if the books do not balance, PennyBolt knows before you do, rather than trusting a single unchecked number.

Read this section once, in order, and the vocabulary in every later page stops needing explanation. It also works as a reference afterward: if a term in another page is unclear, its full definition is here.

• The PennyBolt file

  Your entire financial life, in a single file you control.

• Accounts

  Checking, savings, credit cards, and the rest — and when to use each.

• Transactions

  The anatomy of a transaction in PennyBolt.

• Categories

  How PennyBolt groups where your money goes.

• Payees

  Why your bank's garbled merchant name becomes something readable.

• Double-entry, in one page

  Why every transaction has two sides, and why you never have to see them.