Managing multiple businesses

If you run more than one business — a limited company and a rental portfolio, say, or a day job's side hustle alongside an Etsy shop — keel can keep them separate. Each business you name gets its own running picture of how it interacts with your household finances, and keel learns which merchants belong to which business so the tagging work shrinks over time.

This builds on keel's basic business model (business spending excluded from household reports, personal spending pulled in — see Business accounts for sole traders). Businesses add the "which business?" dimension on top.

How it works

Creating businesses

Go to Settings → Businesses and add each business by name ("FTS Ltd", "Rental portfolio", "Etsy shop"). From the same screen you can rename, archive or reactivate a business at any time.

Mapping business accounts

Open a business and assign any business-type bank accounts to it. Transactions on a mapped account default to that business automatically — no per-transaction tagging needed. Income landing on a mapped account is attributed to that business too.

Personal accounts can't be mapped, deliberately: a personal card can carry expenses for any of your businesses, so an account-level default would force the wrong answer most of the time. Personal-card business expenses get tagged per transaction instead.

How a transaction finds its business

keel resolves each business-flagged transaction in a fixed order:

1. You tagged it — an explicit tag on the transaction always wins.
2. It's on a mapped account — the account's business applies.
3. You only have one business — business expenses resolve to it automatically (this shortcut doesn't apply to income, since salary from an outside employer shouldn't auto-attribute to your business).

Anything that matches none of these stays untagged and appears in an "Other" bucket on your reports, with a hint that it needs tagging.

The "Which business?" picker

Once you have two or more businesses, keel asks "Which business?" when you flag a transaction as a business expense. It appears on the transaction's detail page (a row under the Business toggle), in the review queue, and you can also tag income to a business — keel offers the picker automatically for pre-tax income like client invoices, and any income can be tagged manually from its detail page. "Personal income — not from a business" is the none option.

Single-business households never see the picker — there's only one answer.

keel learns your merchants

Tag "Facebk Dublin" to FTS Ltd once and the next Facebook charge auto-tags without asking, for income as well as expenses. After a bulk tag, the confirmation names what was learned: "Tagged 14 transactions to FTS Ltd. Future Facebk Dublin and Google transactions will auto-tag." You can override any individual transaction from its detail page. See How keel learns your merchants.

Each business's own page

Tap Details → on a business (from your reports' business section or Settings) to open its page:

• Net household impact — the headline. Positive means the business contributed more than it cost your household this month; negative means the household funded it.
• Income contributed — personal spending funded by this business's accounts plus income tagged to it, with refunds netted off.
• Business expenses — business-flagged outflows belonging to this business, broken down by merchant.
• Year to date — the same numbers over the year so far.
• Mapped accounts — which bank accounts keel attributes to this business.
• Outstanding to personal accounts — what the business owes you for expenses you paid personally. See Business reimbursements.

Chevrons at the top step back through any past month.

Bulk-tagging untagged transactions

The business page also has a "Tag to {business}" section listing every untagged business transaction in your household, grouped by merchant — tick the merchants that belong to this business and tag them all in one go. This is the fastest way to drain the "Other" bucket after setting up a new business.

Archiving

Archiving a business keeps all its tagged history — nothing is untagged, and it still appears in historical reports. Archived businesses are hidden from the main list and can be reactivated any time.

Why it works this way

A business is one entity whether money is coming in or going out — keel doesn't make you maintain separate income and expense lists for the same "FTS Ltd". And the page is framed around household coaching, not HMRC reporting: keel isn't accounting software, it's showing you how each business interacts with what your household can actually spend.

Good to know

• With zero businesses set up, business-flagged transactions behave exactly the same (excluded from household reports and score) — they're just not grouped by business.
• With two or more businesses, the business section of your full report breaks down per business; untagged transactions show in an "Other" row with an "N need tagging" hint.
• keel doesn't model business ownership within a household — both partners see and manage the same businesses.

FAQ

Do I need to tag every transaction? No. Mapped accounts handle their own transactions automatically, and merchant learning covers repeat merchants after the first tag. Manual tagging is mostly for new merchants on personal cards.

Why didn't keel ask which business when I flagged an expense? Either you only have one business (it resolved automatically) or the transaction is on a mapped account. The picker only appears when there's a genuine choice to make.

Can I move a transaction from one business to another? Yes — open the transaction and change the "Which business?" row.

What happens to a business's transactions when I archive it? Nothing — all history stays tagged and visible in past reports. Archiving just removes the business from active lists. Reactivate any time.

Why can't I map my personal current account to a business? Because a personal account can carry spending for several businesses at once. Mapping would force one answer for everything on the card; per-transaction tagging keeps it honest.