What is the difference between an immediate debit and a deferred debit card?
Immediate debit: payments are taken directly from your current account as soon as they are made.
Deferred debit: payments are grouped together over the month and debited in one go, on a fixed date, usually at the beginning of the following month.
How does Finary display deferred debit card transactions?
Deferred debit cards work differently from one bank to another. Finary reflects the information exactly as it appears on your bank statement.
Typical deferred debit case:
During the month: payments appear as expenses on the Card account.
Beginning of the following month:
A single transaction appears as an expense on the current account.
That same transaction appears as income on the Card account, bringing its balance back to zero.
💡 Good to know: some banks group all the transactions of the month into a single line. In that case, that is also what you will see in Finary.
Why are my expenses counted twice?
Depending on your bank, the monthly debit that appears on your current account has no matching entry on the Card account: the card balance is not brought back to zero by an incoming transaction. Finary then cannot tell that this debit groups purchases already listed on the card, and your Budget counts them twice: once on the card, once with the debit. Two solutions:
Untick the card in Budget > Accounts. The monthly debit is still counted, but you lose the detail and categorisation of your purchases.
Keep the card and exclude the monthly debit: see Exclude a transaction from my Budget. To avoid doing it again every month:
Create a dedicated main category first: Budget > "Create" > "New Category", leaving "Main category" empty. A smart rule cannot create a category, so it has to exist beforehand.
Create a smart rule on the debit's label: Budget > "Create" > "New Smart Rule", then pick the category created in step 1 (see Create and manage smart rules for my Budget). The rule also reclassifies past debits, not only new ones.
Untick that category in the Budget category filter (see Exclude a category from your Budget): on the web, with the "All categories" button above the chart; in the app, with "Filter" > "By category", then "Apply".
💡 Good to know: an unticked category also disappears from your Budget totals and from the "See all" list. The filter is saved on your account, so it applies on both the web and the app. A new category only shows in the filter once at least one transaction is filed in it. These steps require a Finary Plus or Pro subscription.
If a debit covers purchases made before your card was connected, those purchases are not in Finary: keep that debit in the analysis.
Why do some transactions disappear or get recategorised?
After the monthly debit:
Transactions may be re-imported or reorganised.
This can lead to the loss of categorisations or of reconciliation marks previously applied.
This is due to the way your bank presents deferred debits.
What about immediate debit cards?
No surprises there: each transaction is deducted directly from the current account. You see them appear as immediate expenses, with no grouping.