Help center · Transactions
How Extrack's double-entry ledger works
Every transaction touches two accounts. The form hides the terminology.
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Extrack uses double-entry accounting under the hood: every stored transaction has a debit account and a credit account. An expense debits a category (or person receivable) and credits the "Paid from" account; income does the reverse; transfers debit the destination account and credit the source. You never enter debit/credit manually — the form picks them from the kind and accounts you choose.
Why double-entry?
Double-entry guarantees every rupee/dollar is accounted for twice — once on the way out, once on the way in. The ledger always balances; impossible states (money that vanished or appeared) are caught at save time.
For you, this means: account balances always reconcile to the sum of their entries, per-person Lent balances always reconcile to the sum of allocations and settles, and Reports totals always tie to the underlying transactions.
How each kind maps to debits and credits
Extrack hides the terminology — you pick the kind and the accounts. Internally:
- Expense → debits the category (spend ↑), credits the Paid-from account (cash ↓).
- Income → debits the Received-into account (cash ↑), credits the income category.
- Transfer → debits the Paid-to account, credits the Paid-from account.
- Split expense → debits both the category (your share) and the per-person Lent receivables (their shares), credits the Paid-from account for the full total.
- Split income (settling repayments) → debits the Received-into account, credits each person's Lent receivable (drawing down their owed balance).
What this gives you in the app
Three concrete wins for users — without needing to know any accounting:
- Account balances are derived, not manually maintained — change a transaction and balances follow.
- Per-person Lent balances are first-class — they balance the same way an account does.
- Reports can slice by account, category, person or kind and the numbers always tie.
Frequently asked
Do I need to know accounting to use Extrack?
No. You pick the kind (Expense / Income / Transfer) and the accounts; Extrack writes the debits and credits behind the scenes. The terminology never appears in the UI.
Why does my receivable show as an "account"?
Because it acts like one — money has temporarily left your bank and is sitting with the person. Treating it as a per-person Lent account keeps the math consistent and makes balances easy to see.
Can I export the underlying double-entry rows?
The export (Profile → Portability) gives you every transaction with its kind and account references. Debit/credit columns are implicit from the kind — they are not stored as separate fields.
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