What an account represents
An account in Money OS mirrors a real-world place your money lives: a checking account, a savings account, a credit card, or a cash float. Every transaction you log or import belongs to exactly one account. This is what lets Money OS show you an accurate balance per account, not just a single blended number for your whole business.
Creating an account
- Go to Accounts in your workspace sidebar.
- Click New Account.
- Enter:
- Name — e.g. “Business Checking”, “Amex Business Card”
- Type — free text; use whatever matches how you think about it (Checking, Savings, Credit Card, Cash)
- Initial Balance — the account’s real balance on the day you start tracking it in Money OS
The initial balance is the anchor point. Every transaction you add after that adjusts the running balance from there — Money OS doesn’t reach out to your bank to verify it, so accuracy depends on you entering the correct starting number.
Why multiple accounts matter
A freelancer with one card for business and one for personal expenses should create two accounts — even if only the business one gets tracked closely. An agency might have a primary operating account plus a separate account for client trust funds. Splitting by account, rather than dumping everything into one ledger, is what makes per-account balances and per-account reporting meaningful instead of a single number that mixes contexts.
No live bank connections — why, and what to do instead
Money OS does not use Plaid or a similar service to pull transactions automatically. This is a deliberate trade-off: automated bank connections are unavailable or unreliable for many banks outside the US, and they add a recurring cost that would have to be passed on. Instead:
- Import via CSV. Export your bank statement and import it — see Managing Transactions for the exact format.
- Log manually. For accounts with low transaction volume, manual entry takes under a minute per transaction.
Account balances in reports
Every report that breaks down spending (Expense Summary, Cash Flow) can be filtered by account, so you can answer questions like “what did the business credit card cost me this quarter” without manually filtering your entire transaction list. If you only ever use one account, this filtering is invisible — it only becomes useful once you’re tracking more than one.