The ledger

Personal finance and workspace finance

“Finance” in your personal space shows your own accounts, and in each workspace the accounts made for that space. The pages are the same: three big buttons, “Reports”, “Accounts” and “New account”, a card for every account with its bank, last four digits and balance in its own currency, and in a workspace the owner’s name beside each bank.

Below the cards, “This month” adds up this month’s income, spending and net for each currency separately, and “Latest transactions” shows the last six rows, each of which opens its own account with one tap. “All in the report” goes to the full report.

Pin an account and “Finance” opens straight into it from then on; each space keeps its own pin.

Account alerts

An account whose balance has gone negative, or whose spending has reached eighty percent of its income, appears above the cards in a warning row, and tapping it opens that account. A negative balance also raises a notification that reaches the bell and, when linked, Telegram; the same account going negative again refreshes that one notification rather than stacking ten.

Recording a transaction in two steps

Every “Add transaction” in the app, from the finance page, an account page or a project page, opens the transaction form directly and brings its context along: the space, the account and the project. Only the “+” button at the bottom, when you are inside a workspace, first asks whether you want an action or a transaction.

From an account page the first step disappears altogether: the chosen account sits at the top of the form with a lock badge, and after saving you return to that account.

1. Press “Add transaction”
2. Pick the account; accounts are grouped by space, ordered by use over the last ninety days, each with its balance beside it
3. Choose the kind: expense, income, transfer or fee
4. Fill in the amount, the category and, if needed, a label, the date, a note and a receipt
5. Press “Log”, or “Save and add another” to clear the form for the next row

Amount, category and label

Type the amount in the digits of any language; the decimal separator is your language’s own. Under the amount you see what the account’s balance will be after saving, worked out by the same rule every page uses for balances.

The category is the main dimension, and your eight most used categories for that kind of transaction appear as buttons above the list. The label is a second, optional dimension, such as a trip, a client or “Tax deductible”. If a category or label is missing, create it right from the list with “New category” or “New label”.

That vocabulary is shared across everybody, which is why editing it belongs to the operator: renaming a label re-tags every transaction in the system that carried the old name, which means rewriting other people's rows.

Splitting one purchase across categories

With “Split”, one expense or income is divided into several rows, each with its own category; a supermarket run that is both food and household goods, for example. “Left to split” tells you how much remains, and the form will not save until the rows add up to the total. Each row is its own transaction, and the receipt sits on the first one.

Date, note, receipts and attachments

The date and time default to now and can be moved back, but a future date is not accepted. The note is the title you see in the lists.

“Add receipt” uploads a photo of a receipt or an invoice PDF; up to ten files per transaction. The file stays in your own “My Files” and is shared automatically with the account’s owner and members, so anyone who sees the account can open its receipt. Only your own files can be attached.

Transfers between accounts, and fees

A transfer is one row with two sides: it leaves the source and arrives at the destination, and it never counts towards income or spending. The destination account can be in any space.

If the two accounts’ currencies differ, you type the amount that arrived separately and the rate is worked out from those two figures, with the rate’s source and date; these figures are frozen on the row at that moment. A transfer fee gets its own separate row and is taken from the source, the destination or a third account you choose.

With “To a teammate” you send money to a teammate’s account; in a workspace only that space’s members are offered, and both accounts must share a currency.

1. In the form, choose “Transfer”
2. Press “Between my accounts” or “To a teammate” and pick the destination account
3. Type the amount taken from the source; if the currencies differ, also the amount paid into the destination
4. If there was a fee, give its amount and the account that pays it
5. Press “Log transfer”

Currencies

Every account has one currency, and every total in Flowra is shown per currency; euros and dollars are never added into one figure. Once an account has transactions, its currency no longer changes.

The currency list is shared, and each currency has a three-letter Latin code, an English name and a symbol, such as GBP, British Pound and £. New currencies are stored and shown under that English name, so they read the same in every language. In the account form, “Add new currency” first looks for a currency with that name, English name or code and picks it if one exists; the operator completes a new currency’s code and symbol in the admin panel.

Reports and filters

“Reports” in personal finance sees every account and every currency together, and in a workspace only that space. The period is this week, this month, this year or a custom range, and the direction is outflows (spending) or inflows (income). In personal finance the “Workspace lens” narrows the report to one space, and “Account” to one account.

“Summary” gives income, spending and net for each currency, with the change against the previous period and the total of fees. “Busiest accounts” ranks accounts by their number of transactions. Then, for each currency, come the category chart, the six biggest purchases or inflows of the period, and the labels; tapping a category or a label opens a deeper report of it in that account.

Reports are built on the same shared functions, so the figure in a report is the same figure as in the balance. If the chosen period is empty, the report switches to “This year” by itself and says so.

CSV and PDF export

“Export”, in the report and on every account page, has two routes: a CSV file of every transaction in that period and filter, with date, title, kind, amount, currency, account, category, label and status, which Excel and Google Sheets open correctly in any script; and a print version of the page itself, which becomes a file with “Save as PDF” in the print window.

Projects, contracts and payment milestones

In the transaction form, “Project (optional)” offers that space’s projects. A transaction with a project is added up on the project page, in “Project finance”: contract value, received, expenses, cash profit and contract remaining, each on its own.

Record income for a project that has a contract and “Settle a contract milestone” lists its unpaid milestones; picking one links this receipt to it. In the project page’s “Contract and receivables”, “Log payment received” opens the same form for a milestone and “Link an existing receipt” links income already recorded. No amount is ever guessed from its size or date.

“Add transaction” on a project page opens the form with that project and that space, and returns to the project page after saving.

Recurring costs and salary

For a cost that repeats every month, like office rent, switch on “Repeats every month” in the form. From next month a monthly obligation with the same amount, category and account is created, and each month’s due date raises a payment action by itself. The option appears only for an expense, only in a workspace, and only to that space’s owner or editors.

A salary you receive from a company is set up on that company’s page, and each period has an expected payment. Once you record the salary deposit, link it to that period so the period becomes “received” and the income is never recorded twice.

What counts towards a balance

Only transactions whose status is posted or reversed. Drafts and voided ones do not count. Transfers between two cards and their fees also have double-count handling, or one transfer shows up twice in the cash flow.

That is why balances and totals always come from shared functions rather than from summing rows by hand. Everywhere in the app that shows a figure reads from the same source.

Why nothing is really deleted

Deleting a transaction voids it and records that in the audit trail. A wrong figure is not erased, it is reversed. A ledger you can take rows out of is not a ledger.

Editing a transaction’s amount, title, category or project is also only for whoever recorded it, and the before and after values stay in the history.

Access in a workspace

Recording a transaction for a workspace needs edit rights in that space; a member who is only a viewer sees the finance but records nothing, and cannot create a new account for the space either. A member whose financial access the owner has closed does not see that space’s accounts at all. And spending is only ever recorded from an account that is yours or that you are a member of.

The Flowra Assistant, Telegram and MCP

The Flowra Assistant in “Chat” teaches this very article step by step, and “Open” takes you to the finance page; a free question about finance is answered from this documentation too.

With Telegram linked, “/tx” records a transaction on one of your accounts and the “Undo” button under its message voids it, and “/balance” tells you your balances. Your own AI can also read finance through MCP with the “finance:read” scope; there is no way to write finance through it.

On phones

On a phone the finance page is one column: “Add transaction” at the top, the three big buttons below it and the account cards one under another. The form keeps its two steps, the amount is typed on the number pad, and the save buttons at the bottom of the form sit under your thumb. The “+” button at the bottom of the screen also opens this form directly in your personal space.