Excluding transactions from your budget

Not every transaction should count

Reimbursed work expenses, money moved between your own accounts, one-off oddities — some transactions shouldn't count against your budget. Zypper gives you control at two levels, and handles a third case automatically.

Excluding a single transaction

Every transaction has a budget impact setting with two states: Normal, which is the default, and Excluded from the budget.

An excluded transaction still appears in your transaction list and still counts toward your account balance and net worth — it just doesn't count as spending or income in any budget figure. Its category's Spent total and the summary at the top of the budget page both ignore it. If the transaction is a payment in a recurring group, that cycle's bill drops out of the budget along with it.

When you split a transaction, each part carries its own Exclude from the budget setting, so you can keep the part that's genuinely yours and drop the part that isn't.

Excluding a whole account

An account can be left out of budgeting entirely with the Include in the budget setting — see Editing and removing accounts. Its balance still contributes to net worth, but none of its transactions reach your budget.

This suits accounts whose activity isn't day-to-day spending, such as a business account or one you only use for investments.

Transfers are handled for you

Money you move between your own accounts isn't income or spending, and doesn't need excluding by hand. When two transactions are recognized as the two sides of one transfer, Zypper treats them as a movement rather than as budget activity — see Splitting and linking transactions.

Common questions

Does excluding a transaction change my balances? No. Exclusion affects budget figures only. Account balances and net worth are unchanged.

Can I exclude a category rather than a transaction? Yes — turn on Exclude from the budget for the category in Settings › Categories or in the budget page's Edit category dialog, which leaves out everything categorized under it in every month. Its budget settings are kept for when you include it again. A Flex category leaves the Flex pool while it's excluded, and its whole spending history goes with it.

Will an excluded transaction still show in my reports? Yes. It remains in your transaction list and in spending reports; it's the budget that leaves it out.