Categories & cashflow

Category types

Galene categories are named buckets. A single name (for example “Coffee”) can hold both expenses and refunds — there is only one row per name for normal categories.

• Normal categories — unique by name per user. Income vs expense comes from each transaction’s sign, not from a fixed category type.
• Transfer — money moved between your own accounts (for example a credit card payment from checking). Transfers use a separate flag and do not share names with normal categories.

When you create a category from an income or expense flow, Galene may store a type hint on the row; that hint does not filter pickers or drive cashflow sectioning.

Create and edit them under Settings → Categories (Add / Edit open in a dialog). Transfer categories show a transfer badge and a short note that they are excluded from reports by default.

Categorizing transactions

The category picker lists all non-transfer categories, then transfers with a “(transfer)” label. There is no income/expense filter on the list.

Deleting a category

Deleting a category opens a confirm dialog. Choose Move transactions to… another category, or None (uncategorized). Galene reassigns that category’s transactions (and any subcategories’ transactions), then deletes the category. Subcategories are removed with the parent. Budgets and rules that pointed only at the deleted category are removed as well.

Starter transfer categories (Credit card payment, Transfer) can be deleted like any other category; they are seeded for new accounts and are not recreated on every page load.

Why transfers exist

Paying a credit card from checking usually creates two bank transactions: a debit on checking and a credit on the card. If the card credit is categorized as income, cashflow (and other income totals) inflate. Mark both legs with a transfer category such as “Credit card payment” or “Transfer” instead.

New accounts get starter transfer categories (Credit card payment and Transfer). Demo data also seeds transfer categories for checking↔savings moves. Existing category names are never renamed automatically.

Cashflow, budgets, and reports

Cashflow Income and Expenses sections follow transaction / split sign:

• The same category can appear under Expenses for spending and under Income for refunds (or other credits) in that category.
• Section placement does not use a fixed category type.

Budgets use signed activity for the period: for example a $400 limit with −$100 spend and +$10 refund shows about $90 used (used = max(0, −signed total)). Dashboard budget widgets use the same rule.

By default, transfer-categorized amounts are excluded from:

• Cashflow Income and Expenses sections and totals
• Home / dashboard month income and expense summaries
• Spending trends that roll up expense totals. A bar lists the transactions behind it, and the Cashflow actual drill links to the same filtered Transactions list.
• Budgets (transfer categories are not offered when creating a budget)

Account balances still include every in-scope transaction (plus any opening balance on/after its as-of date — see Accounts & tags).

Cashflow page filters (gear)

The Cashflow page has a gear control that opens a dialog to include or exclude accounts and categories for that page only.

• Preferences are saved per user and survive reload.
• Defaults: all accounts, and all non-transfer categories.
• Transfer categories stay excluded unless you explicitly select them in the gear dialog. The gear is a view filter — it does not replace transfer category semantics.
• Empty multi-selects mean “all” for that dimension (with the transfer default above).

Transfer icon

Transactions assigned to a transfer category show a small transfer icon next to the category on the Transactions page so you can spot them quickly.