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Using PennyBolt

The everyday work: transactions, rules, reconciliation, reports.

The pages in this section cover the work you do with PennyBolt on an ongoing basis: recording transactions, teaching PennyBolt how to categorize them, reconciling with your bank each month, and reading the reports.

If you’ve just finished Your first ten minutes , this is where you’d head next.

These pages are not meant to be read in a strict sequence the way Getting started is. They are the reference you come back to as you use PennyBolt week to week. Start with the transaction register , since that is where you will spend the most time: adding, editing, and splitting the entries that arrive through import or that you type in yourself. Payee rules build on that page directly, turning a one-off fix on a single transaction into something PennyBolt applies automatically to every matching transaction from then on, past and future. Reconciling an account is the monthly discipline that checks your register against your bank statement down to the penny. Reports is where that ongoing work becomes visible, as net worth, Sankey flow, and spending trends. If you ever work with more than one account open at once, Open more than one window at a time covers what stays in sync between them.

A suggested rhythm

Most PennyBolt users settle into a simple cadence:

  • Weekly (ten minutes): import the latest bank download, let PennyBolt auto-categorize, fix anything that looks wrong, add a rule if the same merchant showed up uncategorized.
  • Monthly (twenty minutes): reconcile each account against its statement. Glance at the Sankey chart.
  • Quarterly (thirty minutes): look at spending trends. Decide if any category needs more attention.

None of this is required. PennyBolt holds still until you’re ready.