Free Feature

Manage Payment Types

Payment types let you track how you paid for something — Cash, Credit Card, Debit Card, UPI, Bank Transfer, or any custom method you define. This is separate from the category (which tracks what you spent on) and gives you an extra layer of insight into your money flow. Payment types can be assigned to both expense and income transactions.

Pocket Clear comes with a few common payment types pre-loaded: Cash, Card, and UPI. You can add as many custom payment types as you need — for example, specific credit cards by name, digital wallets, or work expense accounts. Payment types appear as a picker when you log a new transaction.

Knowing which payment method you used most often can reveal patterns — like relying too heavily on credit cards or forgetting to track cash spending. Over time, this data becomes genuinely useful for understanding your money flow.

How to manage payment types

1. Open Pocket Clear and tap Settings (gear icon).
2. Tap Manage Payment Types.
3. To add a new payment type, tap the "+" button and enter a name (e.g., "Amex Gold" or "Venmo").
4. To edit a payment type, tap on it to rename.
5. To delete, swipe left and confirm. Transactions that used this payment type will still exist but will show no payment method — they fold into Unassigned in Reports. If the payment type had an opening balance, that balance leaves the all-time Balance by payment type card too, so the card's total drops by that amount.

Choosing an icon

Payment types open the icon picker with the Payment Methods and Finance sections first — cards, wallets, contactless, bank, cash and QR. Type in the search box to filter across all 95 icons; "upi", "tap" and "wallet" all work.

Every other section is available below, so you can use any icon for any payment type.

Reorder your payment types

You can change the order your payment types appear in, exactly the way category reordering works. On the Manage Payment Types screen, each payment type has up and down arrows — tap them to move a payment type one position at a time.

This is worth a minute of setup: whatever you put at the top of the list also appears first when you log a transaction. If you pay for almost everything with one card, move it to the top and it will be the first option you see every time.

The order you set is stored on the device you set it on, so if you use Pocket Clear on more than one device, arrange the list on each one.

Opening balance

Each payment type can carry an optional opening balance — whatever was already in that account before you started tracking it in Pocket Clear. Set it from the Add Payment Type or Edit Payment Type screen, in the Opening Balance field below the icon picker. A negative amount is allowed too, for a card or account that starts overdrawn.

An opening balance has no date attached to it — it's simply added on top of everything you log for that payment type. That's right for the common case: set it once, before you've recorded anything else, and it becomes the starting point everything else builds on. If you add it later, after months of transactions already exist, it double-counts that history, so Pocket Clear warns you when you set a non-zero opening balance on a payment type that already has transactions.

Opening balances feed the all-time Balance by payment type card on Reports → Trends, with the scope menu set to All time, and the optional Account balances card on Home, which shows the same figures. See Reports for how that card reads and why it won't match your Home balance.

Account balances on Home

You can see how much is in each payment type right on the Home screen. Turn on Settings → Appearance → Show account balances on Home and an Account balances card appears just below the balance card, listing each of your payment types with its balance. It's off until you switch it on.

Each balance is the payment type's opening balance plus everything you've ever logged against it: money in, minus money out, with transfers counted on both sides. These are exactly the numbers on Reports → Trends → All time in the Balance by payment type card. Both are worked out the same way, so they always agree. Tap See all on the card to open that Reports view.

A few things work the same way as the Reports card:

• It covers only your own money. If you're linked in Partner Mode, it ignores the Me / Partner / Combined selector and never adds your partner's balances.
• Transactions with no payment type, or whose payment type you've deleted, are grouped into an Unassigned row at the bottom.
• The Count savings as money out setting applies here as it does on Reports.
• Tapping the eye button to hide your balance hides these amounts too.

The card is labelled Account balances on purpose, so it isn't mixed up with the Overall Balance on the balance card. Overall Balance is everything you've logged and doesn't include opening balances. Account balances do include them, so once you've set any opening balance the two won't add up to the same figure. That's expected. If you have no payment types, the card stays hidden even with the switch on.

Payment method breakdown in Reports

The Reports screen shows a per-payment-method breakdown for the selected period: money in, money out, and the net for each method. Transactions that have no payment method assigned — or that belong to your partner's methods only — are grouped under Unassigned so the totals always add up to your full period activity.

Tips

• Keep your payment types simple — most people need 3-5 at most.
• Payment type is optional on each transaction. If you skip it, the transaction is still recorded normally.
• You can filter your transaction history by payment type to see, for example, all cash purchases this month.
• Assigning a payment type to income (salary, freelance payments, etc.) helps the Reports breakdown show a complete money-in picture per method.