Transfers between accounts

Transfers are money moving between your own accounts — paying off a credit card, sweeping money to savings, shifting cash between current accounts. They're excluded from your reports and score because they're not spending or income; the money has just changed location.

keel detects most transfers automatically and pairs both sides where it can, so the same pound never counts twice.

How it works

Transfer types

• Credit card payments — detected automatically from payee patterns (American Express, Barclaycard, MBNA and others). Once you confirm one, future payments to the same payee confirm automatically.
• Internal transfers — same amount, opposite direction, within 3 days, both accounts in your household. Covers salary sweeps, standing orders and moving money between current accounts.
• Savings transfers — money moved to savings accounts, ISAs or pensions. Classified separately because deliberate saving counts toward the savings part of your score.
• Pending transfers — money sent to (or received from) an account that isn't in keel yet.

Loan receipts and debt repayments look like transfers but aren't — they get their own treatment. See Transaction types explained.

Automatic pairing

When both legs of a transfer arrive in the same upload — say you import your main account and your savings together, and a £900 outflow matches exactly one £900 inflow on a different account within 3 days — keel links the pair at import time. Neither side reaches the review queue.

keel only auto-pairs when everything lines up: same upload session, the exact same amount to the penny, opposite directions, within 3 days, on different accounts, and neither side already classified by you. If two or more candidates could match (two £100 outflows on the same day), keel won't guess — both go to the review queue for you to resolve. A wrong auto-pair is harder to recover from than a missed one.

Anything detected as a likely transfer that didn't auto-pair appears in the Transfers section of the review queue for you to confirm or reject. Once confirmed, keel learns the pattern for next time.

Pending transfers — when the other account isn't in keel yet

If you send money to an account you haven't imported, mark it as a pending transfer — it's excluded from your reports immediately, and keel matches the other side automatically when that account's statement arrives. See Transfers to accounts outside keel.

Bulk-resolving recurring transfers

When the same merchant appears several times in the Transfers queue — a monthly standing order to savings, a recurring card payment — keel groups them into one card showing a SENT or RECEIVED label, the total, date range and count. You can:

• Link all to {Account} — when your history clearly points to one destination (you've resolved this merchant the same way at least 3 times, with a strong majority to one account), one tap classifies the whole group.
• Link all — opens the account picker; your choice applies to every row.
• All not a transfer — flips the group back to expenses if keel guessed wrong.

If one row in a group isn't actually a transfer, expand the group and reject just that row, then bulk-link the rest. keel tracks sent and received history separately, so the same merchant can suggest different destinations depending on direction.

Linked counterparts

When both sides of a transfer are matched, the transaction detail page shows a "Matched transfer" section with the other side — account, amount, date, and a tap to jump straight to it. Rejecting a transfer ("Not a transfer") unlinks both sides cleanly.

Misclassification warnings

If you pick an expense category for something that looks like a transfer, keel warns you before applying it: a payment to a known credit card payee, or a payment to a known lender that's probably a debt repayment. Both warnings offer "Switch to transfer" (or "Switch to debt repayment") or "Keep as expense", and they appear on the detail page, in the review queue, and when confirming bulk groups.

Pots, Spaces and Pockets

Monzo Pots, Starling Spaces and Revolut Pockets are sub-accounts within one bank account, so moving money in and out of them isn't real spending or income. keel strips these out before they reach your reports — see Pots, Spaces and Pockets.

Why it works this way

Money flowing through several of your own accounts — business account to current account to savings — is one pool of money, and counting it more than once would inflate everything. Credit card payments in particular are transfers, not expenses: the actual purchases were already categorised when you made them.

FAQ

I sent money to my savings account but it's showing as an expense. Tap the transaction, select "This is a transfer", then choose "Savings transfer". It'll be excluded from your reports and counted toward your savings rate.

I can see a transfer but no linked counterpart — why? The counterpart may not be imported yet, or it wasn't classified as a transfer. Use the account picker to link it manually.