Wallet types and what each one counts toward
Cash, Bank, Card and E-wallet are spending wallets. Savings goals, debts, money you lent and investments are separate kinds with their own rules.
Every wallet in Tavala has a kind. The four spending types (Cash, Bank, Card and E-wallet) hold the money you spend from day to day and make up What's Left. Savings goals, debts, money you lent and investments are separate kinds: they count toward your net worth, but they never move What's Left.
The four spending types
| Type | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Cash | Notes and coins you carry or keep at home |
| Bank | An account at a bank |
| Card | A debit or prepaid card, or a credit card you track as its own balance (see track a credit card) |
| E-wallet | A payment app balance |
All four behave the same way. You record spending against them, and their balances are added up into What's Left. The type chooses the wallet's icon and the label under its name. You can pick a different icon and colour in the Icon and color row of the wallet form.
Two small things do read the type:
- After a trip ends, Tavala offers Count your cash for each wallet of type Cash that the trip used.
- When a connected bank shows a cash withdrawal, Tavala suggests your Cash wallet as the other side of it, if you have exactly one Cash wallet in that currency.
You can change a wallet's type later in Edit wallet.
The other kinds
| Kind | What it is | Add it from the Money tab | In What's Left | In net worth |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Savings goal | A pot with a target. It starts at 0 and you fill it with transfers | + then Savings goal | No | Asset |
| Debt | Money you owe: a loan, a credit card, a person | + then Debt | No | Liability |
| Lending | Money you lent, owed back to you | + then Lending | No | Asset |
| Investment | An investment account that follows a connected bank | Cannot be added by hand | No | Asset |
Details for each: save toward a goal, track a credit card, track money you lent. Loans and debts are covered in track a loan or a credit line. An investment wallet gets its value from the bank connection and updates daily; see what a connected bank imports.
What counts toward what
- What's Left on Home adds up your spending wallets only, in your main currency at today's rate.
- Net worth on the Money tab is assets minus liabilities: every wallet that is not archived, with debts as the liabilities. See the Money tab and your net worth.
- Archived wallets count in neither. See archive a wallet you no longer use.
For example, with "Current account" (Bank, EUR), "Cash" (Cash, EUR) and "Dollar savings" (USD) as spending wallets, all three make up What's Left. A "Holiday" savings goal of €1,000 with €250 in it adds €250 to your net worth, and What's Left stays the same.
Good to know
- The kind and the currency are fixed when you create a wallet. A debt cannot become a savings goal, and a euro wallet cannot become a dollar wallet. The name, the type, the icon and the colour can be edited.
- There is no limit on the number of wallets. The free plan limits the number of currencies a space holds, not the number of wallets. See supported currencies.
- Wallets keep the order you created them in. There is no way to reorder them. When you hold more than one currency, the Money tab also groups spending wallets by currency.
- A small sync glyph on a wallet means a connected bank feeds it.
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