Transfers between accounts

A transfer moves money from one of your accounts to another: checking to savings, checking to a credit card. The money never left your life, so a transfer is not spending and doesn't need a category.

How Climb records them

A transfer creates a matched pair of transactions: an outflow in the sending account and an inflow in the receiving one. Together they cancel out: your total money is unchanged, just parked somewhere else.

Why no category?

Categories answer "what did I spend this on?" A transfer spent nothing. Moving $500 from checking to savings doesn't make you $500 poorer, and logging it as an expense would drain an envelope for money you still have.

If you're saving toward something, the envelope does that job: budget money into a Vacation category and it's earmarked no matter which account it sits in. See On-budget vs. off-budget for why the account doesn't matter.

The classic case: paying a credit card

Your card payment is a transfer, not an expense. The spending was logged category-by-category when you used the card; the payment just settles the balance. How credit cards work walks through it.

Watch out for double counting

If your bank statement shows a transfer and you log it as two unrelated transactions (an "expense" in checking and "income" on the card), your envelopes drain for money that never left. When both accounts are in Climb, always record the move as a transfer.