Your finances are easiest to control when most of your tracking is automated. Less work for you, more time to improve your understanding of your general financial picture and more time to do whatever tickles your fancy.

This tutorial will help you set up your Toshl Finance account, presuming you’ll use an automatic connection to your bank, credit card or other financial services. We call it a bank connection to keep it short. Here, we’ll show you how to connect using the Toshl iOS app. There are also tutorials for Web and Android. You can also use Toshl with manual accounts only.

To use a bank connection you’ll need:

• A bank, credit card or financial service supported in Toshl. Thousands are supported worldwide, it’s quite likely that yours is as well. New ones are regularly added: list of supported bank connections .
• A Toshl user account upgraded to Toshl Medici which enables the bank connections and all the other useful features of Toshl Pro. Maintaining all these connections and improving the apps takes significant resources, so we cannot offer this completely free. A free 30-day trial is available though.

So let’s go into the action, here’s what you should do:

1. Add your automatic financial accounts 

Most likely, the first thing you would like to do in your Toshl app is to connect a bank account and add a credit card or two to as well. To do so:

1. Find your bank, credit card or financial account in the list of bank connection. For that, just go to the Bank connections section in the main menu and tap New bank connection / List of supported banks. You can search by country: the institutions available in this country will show up in alphabetical order. You can also use the search on the top to look for your bank by name.

2. Connect to your account. In most cases, this will redirect you to the bank/service’s page to log in, then back to Toshl. In some cases, it requires entering the username and password. Some banks may require additional security steps like a randomly generated code.

3. Choose the date, from which onward you would like the data imported. This is important if you’ve been tracking some of these accounts manually before. Pick a date from which you’d like to switch to automatic and import from that date onward. By default, Toshl will import all available past data. From how far back the data can be imported will differ from bank to bank. With most bank connections either 1 year or 2 months of data are available, but this can vary among the banks.

4. See the incomes and expenses fly in. In a few moments, your financial accounts and transactions will be imported from your account, automatically categorized and tagged.

Connection troubleshooting tips:

• If you get an “invalid credentials” error when connecting the bank or financial service, please first log in to your online bank and make sure that you use the same credentials on the bank connection login screen in the Toshl app. Check the full text of the reported error, sometimes they contain more specific information on what went wrong or even instructions on how to resolve the error.
• When your bank requires multi-factor authentication, e.g. a randomly generated code in addition to your password, please keep in mind that these codes are usually time-sensitive and need to be entered quickly. In most cases, the code is valid just for 30 seconds. When factoring in the time needed to receive, display and send it, you probably have a bit more than 20 seconds to enter it and hit submit.
• If you still experience difficulties in connecting your bank or financial service in the Toshl app, please contact us at support@toshl.com.

Privacy & security

Toshl is dedicated to protecting your data and your privacy. We take numerous technological and organisational precautions to make sure that the data remains safe. We also work with reliable FinTech partners to enable and maintain bank connections. These companies are Salt Edge and Plaid. While there is some overlap of coverage, if your bank is in the United States, Canada or the United Kingdom it’s most likely covered by Plaid. Salt Edge provides integrations most of the other connections around the world.

When you enter your bank credentials to connect, Toshl itself does not see or store the credentials. Where you are redirected to your bank’s website to authenticate, only the bank sees your credentials and sends us a confirmation they’re correct. Where banks don’t offer modern connections and authentication (official APIs), the credentials are saved and kept safe by our connection partners. This is needed to enable the bank connection to keep automatically updated with new data in the background. When you remove the connection, the credentials are deleted as well. You can read more about our policies and precautions we take on our Privacy Policy page. 

2. Review and correct entries from automatic accounts if needed

When each transaction is imported, it’s automatically analyzed, so the information can be made more useful for you. It’s first categorized and tagged. Toshl also detects if it’s perhaps a transfer between your own accounts, rather than an expense or income. Sometimes, even the location of the purchase can be determined and put on a map.

While this automatic detection works well most of the time, there’s a chance that not enough information is available. A lot of this analysis is based on the transaction description from the bank, so if very little information is included, correct transfer detection or categorisation gets a lot more difficult.

In such cases, the entry gets sent to review. There, you can determine if the information is correct or if something needs to be adjusted. 

Transfer detection cases currently get sent to review. Categorisation adjustments can only be done on the entry list for now but will be included in the review process in future app updates.

Reviewing potential transfer entries

When you make a transfer among your own accounts, you move your money from one “bucket” to another. So it shouldn’t count as an income or expense, it’s your internal financial movement.

Normally, Toshl detects transfers automatically and matches the expense (on source account) and the income (on destination account) together.

If the system cannot be certain enough to make an automatic transfer match, entries from automatic accounts can be suggested for review. To complete the review:

1. Go to the “Bank connections” section in the main menu.

2. Tap “Review entries” below a connection.

3. Open an entry and tap “Expense” / “Income” or “Transfer”.

4. Click “Save”.

You can move back and forth between entries, so you can easily edit any if you change your mind.

Two entries need to be matched together to make a transfer: an expense on the source account, an income on the destination account. When you confirm the entry is a transfer, you’ll be offered potential entry matches on other financial accounts to match them into a transfer.

You can also just select the missing destination or source account and Toshl will create the other entry there and match it into a transfer for you. This comes especially useful if the bank doesn’t report your monthly credit card payment as an income on the credit card account, as often happens.

Cash withdrawals from ATMs are also transfers between accounts. In most cases, they should be detected automatically. If not, click on the ATM expense imported from the bank, click Make transfer, then select the Cash account.

Find out more about how transfer matching works.

Splitting into multiple entries

You can also split an entry when reviewing. This is especially useful if you want to split a single purchase among several categories or tags. For example, if your grocery shopping appears as one big total payment, but you want to track your food, cosmetics, and booze separately.

To do that:

1. Tap “Income” / ”Expense” on Review entry.

2. Turn ON the switch “Split into multiple entries”. The usual splitting interface will show up and you can assign different amounts, categories, and tags.

3. Tap “Save” or the tick button.

You can also split on entry details. Just click the Split option.

Correcting categories and tags

If an entry wasn’t categorised correctly or wasn’t categorised at all (marked “unsorted”), you can edit the entry and set a different one.

Toshl will track your corrections of the categories and tags and match those changes to particular elements of the description. In other words, Toshl will learn from your past choices and apply them to new entries as they get categorised. This works best if the descriptions of the new entries are similar as well. In case you notice that the expense or income from the automatic account has an inappropriate category:

1. Tap on Expense or Income to open the entry details.

2. Tap “Edit”.

3. Tap the category label and change it into the category that fits the case.

We realize that no automatic categorisation system with such a variety of data and choices can be perfect. Anyway, we’re doing our utmost to improve and bring you the correct categorisation in the vast majority of cases. The more you use Toshl and adjust your categories, the more precise it will become. Learn more about categories that learn from you.

3. Track cash and manual accounts 

Not all spending can be tracked fully automatically yet. There’s cash and despite the thousands of bank connections on offer, there can still be banks that aren’t covered yet.

Add manual financial accounts

A financial account to track cash is added to Toshl by default. At least one manual account is always present, so you’re able to add expenses and incomes from the app.

You can add more manual accounts by clicking the accounts button on the top right of the web app, then click “Add account” below the account list.

Find more details on how to set your cash and other manual accounts in this tutorial. As time passes, remember to enter the expenses and incomes from manual accounts (e.g. Cash) on the fly to keep the balance on your manual accounts accurate. 

Add your salary and other incomes (repeating incomes)

If your regular income comes on a manual account, you can enter them in advance and set them to repeat automatically so you don’t have to enter them manually each month. The salary will show up automatically in each period. Learn more about adding repeating incomes.

Add your regular bills (repeating expenses)

Add the repeating bills that you know will be coming each month on your manual accounts to make things more predictable, quicker and financial planning easier. Add things like electricity, internet bills, rent, gym memberships… all the regular expenses you have in your life.

If you would like to be reminded to pay those bills when they arrive you can also set up a reminder so the notifications will remind you when the bills arrive. Learn more about adding repeating expenses.

4. Set up budgets to control your spending 

Now that entries from both automatic and manual accounts are coming in, nicely categorised, it’s time to set up budgets to regain some control over your spending.

Set up your main monthly budget

Take a look at how much you usually earn and spend each month in total. Based on what your goals are, pick a number lower than your income that will be your monthly spending goal. If you’re ok with your current spending, you can keep it much the same as it was in the previous months. If you want to spend much less than before, reduce the number accordingly. Notifications will remind you of your budget limit and spending trends, thus giving you the chance to take control of your spending. 

Set up budgets for specific categories

Besides the main monthly budget, you can easily create monthly budgets aimed precisely at your spending weaknesses. For example, add a budget for the category Clothes & Footwear, then set the budget to equal the amount you can spend on your monthly clothing needs sustainably. Toshl monsters will warn you as you approach the limit, so you could stop and think before buying some related products. You can also set any budget surplus or deficit to automatically roll over into future months.

Learn more about setting up budgets.

5. Enjoy precise tracking of your finances with Toshl app

That’s it. Finally, it is time to discover the gems of the Toshl Finance apps! Now that you’ve made sure all your expenses and incomes are flying in and added the budgets, the financial visualisations in Toshl will look a lot more fun.

Take a peek Monthly overview and River flow graphs to see how you’re doing this month at a glance. Found something odd? Dive deeper with Expense graphs to clarify your spending distribution among the various categories and tags.

Monthly overview graph

River flow graph

Expense graphs

Better yet, take a longer-term view with Planning and explore the trends of past years to better plan for the future.

Planning graph

Feel free to explore other advantageous features of Toshl app! You will find plenty of other hints in the Tutorials and Frequently Asked Questions.

To track your expenses and incomes more precisely, it is possible to split the total of the bills into smaller parts in the Toshl Finance apps. You can keep an eye on your costs and sort them better by adding different categories to the split parts of the bills. Other than this basic purpose, it can also help you better track your shared purchases, loans, refunds or cashbacks.

Splitting amongst categories and tags

By using the splitting feature, you are able to manage a common receipt issued for different types of expenses with high accuracy. For instance, a grocery shopping expense for 50 € comes in. You want to split it into groceries (30 €), alcohol (5 €) and cosmetics (15 €). By tapping Split on the expense, you can assign new amounts of split entries, use different categories or tags, and your expense tracking will be more precise than it has ever been.

1. Whenever you want to split an expense or income. Just tap it to open the entry details.

2. Then tap “Split”.

3. Enter the appropriate amounts, categories, and tags for split entries.

4. Tap the Save (tick) icon and you’re all done.

The split expenses will show up on the list with a special icon and will always be grouped together.

You can also find the other part of the split on the details of a split entry. In other ways, they behave just like any other expense, except that they can’t be split again.

Quick tips

• The original expense will be split into 2 parts by default, but you can add up to 20 splits by tapping the + icon. New split entries will automatically get the remaining amount which hasn’t been covered by earlier splits yet. You can, of course, change it later to whatever you like.

• The “remaining from total” amount always shows how much of the total amount of the original entry you still have to distribute among split entries so the amounts will match with your original spending. You can set any amount you want, but Toshl will warn you if you leave some funds undistributed or exceeded the original amount.

• The location, description, reminders, and photos remain common for all parts of the split of the certain expense or income. You can edit them all at once when splitting. If you want them to differ among split entries, you can still edit them individually later, on the relevant split entry for an expense or income.

When using with connected accounts (Toshl Medici)

If you use Toshl Medici and have set a bank connection, your bank or financial service transactions will be added automatically to your expenses. Some will require to be reviewed, for example, if they need to be confirmed as transfers. You can also split an entry when Reviewing.

For that:

1. Go to the “Bank connections” section in the main menu.

2. Tap “Review entries” below a connection.

3. Tap “Income”/”Expense”.

4. Turn ON the switch “Split into multiple entries”. The usual splitting interface will show up and you can assign different amounts, categories, and tags.

5. Tap the Save (tick) icon.

When using with manual accounts (Toshl Free, Toshl Pro)

To split manually added expenses, open an expense and tap “Split”. Just like with automatically imported entries, feel free to split your expense into smaller multiple entries and add a matching category and tag.

When using manually added expenses, there’s less of a need for splitting. You can just add the expenses in multiple entries, to begin with. It might come useful though, especially when you import entries from a file.

Primarily, the splitting feature enhances your precision in sorting your expenses in different categories and tags. But it can also come handy for managing shared expenses, loans, refunds or similar. We’ll take a look at those cases below.

Splitting and paying back purchases with friends

The splitting feature will make your life easier when you are struggling with tracking shared costs with your relatives, friends or colleagues. As we all know, people tend to forget the things which are not written down. So how to keep tracking your shared expenses? You can do it in a few taps in the Toshl Finance apps.

For instance, you are going for dinner with your friend. When it comes to paying the 100 € bill, you find out that you have no cash. You suggest paying by card for both, and your friend agrees to pay his (or her) part back. How do you note it down in Toshl

When this expense from your credit card comes in, you just need to split it into appropriate entries, both yours and your friend’s sharing, in the way described earlier.

You might add a special category and tag to your friend’s part of the bill (split entry).

After the splitting is done, you will see both split entries in Expenses marked with the split icon.

If your friend pays his (her) part back in cash immediately:

1. Find the split entry for the lent amount and tap “Delete”.
2. Enter the amount of the lending part as Income on the relevant account if they paid you back in cash.

Whether your friend prefers to pay his part of the dinner costs later, you may add a reminder to your lending split entry. For that:

1. Open your lending split entry.
2. Tap “Edit”.
3. Tap Reminder icon and enter the custom date for the reminder (for instance, 1 day before you expect to get lending back at 11:00 AM).

Toshl will remind you about the due date at the time you set. It can’t notify your friend though, so that part is up to you ;)

As soon as you get the funds back:

1. Open the Toshl Finance app.
2. Go to Expenses.
3. Find the split entry for the lent amount and tap “Delete”.
4. Enter the amount of the lending part as Income on the relevant account if they paid you back in cash.

Note that at this last step you don’t have to do anything if you use Toshl Medici and have connected a bank account that the lending is paid to. Your friend’s transaction will be added to Incomes automatically.

So, it is all covered now. Savor the relief.

You can use this to track any kind of reimbursement in Toshl. For instance, business travel reimbursements could also be noted this way.

Splitting in foreign currencies

Let’s visualize that you are going on a business trip to some foreign country, for instance, Ukraine. You stay for a few nights at the luxury hotel in Kyiv booked by your company in advance. Later, you order a coffee and snacks at the hotel and you get the common receipt (3500 ₴) at the reception desk at the end of your stay.

Your company will reimburse the accommodation costs (3200 ₴), but you need to cover all other expenses (300 ₴) on your own. You can split this receipt into two parts in the Toshl app. You’re also able to track your reimbursement for the accommodation part, as it has been described in the previous case. However the bill is issued by the hotel in foreign currency, and you have no idea how to convert both parts of expense to your main currency (e.g. €). What should you do?

Just relax. It is not a big deal at all. When you split an expense in Toshl app, you may use any currency for each entry.

To do that:

1. When entering split entries of your expense, just tap the currency icon in the split entry.
2. Select the preferred currency from the drop-down menu.

The preview in your main currency will be displayed, so you’ll know if you’ve covered the original amount, no matter which currencies you used.

No need to panic when you receive a bill for shared expenses in a currency that you are not quite familiar with. Toshl monsters will help you juggle those multiple currency exchange rate calculations with such ease, it will be as if you can see inside the matrix.

Quick tips

• Like everything in Toshl, splitting also works with different currencies. You can set individual currencies and amounts for the split entries.
• Toshl will automatically recalculate the value in the entry in your main currency.
• If the currency of the entry doesn’t match the account currency or the main currency, a preview of the value in your main or account currency will be shown.

Getting a refund

Let’s suppose that you purchase two items (T-shirt for 15 € and wallet for 25 €) at some online shop. You pay by card and receive the common receipt for 40 € for both items. When you get the parcel, you try the T-shirt at home and it happens to be oversized. You contact the shop, and they answer they could make a refund for a T-shirt to your bank account. Then you run into a dilemma how to track this expense in Toshl app: this common expense has been already noted on your account.

First of all, it might be a good idea to set a reminder for your refund for the date when you expect to get it back from the shop, as it is described in one of the cases above. In this way, you will be updated about the due date by Toshl monsters so you could send a polite email to the shop if no refund arrives.

You’ll get the refund as an income on your account. If you’re ok with this kind of tracking you’re all done, no need to do anything more. However, if you’re bothered by the full original expense still being present, for budgeting or other reasons, you can:

1. Open Toshl Finance app.
2. Go to Incomes.
3. Find a refund income that has just arrived in your account.
4. Delete the refund income.
5. Split the original expense amount into two entries: the amount of refund and the amount of the other purchased item.
6. Delete the refund split entry of the original expense.

This way, you are able to balance your expenses and incomes.

Cashback

In some countries, you may also have the option to withdraw additional cash from your card when paying at a supermarket or other location. You can ask the merchant to add an extra amount to the purchase price and receive the added amount in cash. The common expense will be noted on your bank account. The thing is you will receive cash in hand. How to note this?

Toshl will take care of the correct balance of your accounts. As soon as you get the cash, you can note that a part of this expense is really a transfer between your card and cash accounts. Just like an ATM withdrawal.

When the expense comes in:

1. Open Toshl Finance app.
2. Go to Expenses.
3. Find the expense that has just arrived in your account.
4. Split it into two parts: the amount of purchase and cashback amount
5. Find the split entry for the cash amount and tap “Make transfer”.
   Select your cash account and tap “Save”.

Thus, the amount of cashback is noted as transfer to another account, so you have it all under control.

You‘ve got your money in the right place. That’s good news!

Quick tips

Occasionally, if you decide to un-match the transfer of split entry, you can revert the change easily:

1. Just tap “Un-match transfer”. The pop-up window will be displayed explaining what happens on this action.
2. Tap “Cancel” if you change your mind, or tap “Un-match transfer” if you want to complete the action.

Unsplitting

You might unsplit your expense or income whenever you feel like. To do so:

1. Open any of the split entries of the original expense.
2. Tap “Unsplit”.

The splitting changes will be reverted, and the original expense will appear in the Expenses list.

To sum up, with the splitting feature, you are able to manage your expenses more precisely. Moreover, it allows you to better track your shared purchases, loans, refunds, and cashbacks. It will take care of all the records, no matter which currency they’re in. By splitting, your finances become whole. Toshl, powered by irony.