This article explains how Goals and accounts work together, the different ways you can move money in and out of goals, and when to use each method.
Table of contents
- How Accounts and Goals Work Together
- Ways to Move Funds In and Out of Goals
- Adjustment Events in Goals
How Accounts and Goals Work Together
You can use any cash or investment account to contribute to, withdraw from, or spend from Goals. You can also use credit card accounts to spend from funds you've already saved in your goals.
Cash and investment accounts:
You have two options when using cash and investment accounts with goals:
Option 1: Use one account across multiple goals
- A single account can contribute to multiple goals.
- This works well when money in the account is shared across priorities (for example, one savings account funding multiple goals).
Option 2: Fully dedicate one account to one goal
- The account’s entire balance is used for a single goal.
- Any balance change in the account is automatically reflected in the goal.
- That account cannot be used in any other goal.
- The goal itself can still include other accounts.
This setup is especially helpful for investment accounts where balances change due to market activity.
Credit cards
You can spend from any Save Up goal using credit card transactions.
Ways to Move Funds In and Out of Goals
There are four main ways to manage goal balances. You can mix and match these methods depending on your setup.
1. Fully allocate an account to a goal
When you fully allocate an account, Monarch keeps the goal balance in sync with the actual account balance.
When this works best
- If you have Investment accounts with market-driven balance changes
- If you have accounts where you don’t want to manually track individual transactions
Each time the account syncs and the balance changes, Monarch creates an Adjustment event in the goal. You’ll see at most one Adjustment per account per day, summarizing all balance changes for that day.
Adjustments do not affect your budget. They exist only to keep your goal balance aligned with the account balance.
You can combine this method with the other methods below.
2. Manually allocate funds with contributions and withdrawals
You can manually move money into or out of goals directly from the Goals page.
When this works best
- If you want to allocate money on an ad‑hoc basis
- When you’re shifting priorities between goals
- If you prefer not to link individual transactions
When you allocate money into a goal, it creates a Contribution event. When you remove money from a goal, it creates a Withdrawal event.
You can choose whether a manual allocation counts toward your budget actuals and whether it uses today’s date or a past date (which is useful when you're in the new month, but adjusting goals based on last month's numbers).
Important notes
- If an account is fully allocated to a goal, you can’t manually contribute or withdraw from that same account.
- You can still manually allocate funds from other accounts within the same goal.
- Only accounts enabled for goals appear in the allocation list.
3. Link income & transfer transactions to a goal
You can link Income and Transfer transactions directly to goals.
When this works best
- If you want a detailed audit trail of which transactions funded a goal
- When you’re contributing regularly to an investment account
- When an account balance is fully allocated to a goal, in order to help differentiate between market changes that affect the account and goal balance (but shouldn’t appear in your budget) and your actual contributions to an investment account (which are typically categorized as transfers)
When you link income and transactions to a goal, linked transactions will appear in the goal activity list and automatically count toward your goal actuals in the budget. Credit transactions count as contributions, and debit transactions count as withdrawals.
This method pairs especially well with fully allocated accounts, allowing you to count intentional contributions toward your budget and exclude balance adjustments from budget calculations.
Example
- You have an investment account used in your Retirement goal with its entire balance allocated. As the account balance changes with market fluctuations, those changes are reflected in your goal balance.
- In addition to market returns, you also contribute to that investment account monthly. You only want your transfers into the account to count toward the goal contribution in the budget, without being affected by market changes.
- You transfer $1,000 into the investment account account from your savings account. The investment account balance also increases by $150 from market returns.
- If you do nothing (without linking the $1,000 transfer transaction), you'll see an Adjustment event in the goal for $1,150 when the account syncs, and your budget actuals for that goal will show $0.
- If you do link the $1,000 transfer transaction to the goal, your goal activities for that day will show both a Transfer transaction for $1,000 and an Adjustment event for $150 accounting only for the market-driven balance change. Your budget actuals for that goal will now show $1,000.
Important notes
- If an account is fully allocated, its transactions can only be linked to that one goal.
- You may temporarily see mismatches if transactions sync before balances where you may not see the transaction amount reflected in the goal balance immediately. These resolve automatically after the next sync.
4. Spend from a Goal
You can link Expense transactions to spend money you’ve already saved in a goal, without affecting your budget.
When this works best
- For large planned expenses (vacations, home projects, tuition)
- For credit card spending backed by saved funds
When you link Expense transactions, linked Expense transactions appear in goal activity, they count toward the goal’s Total spent metric, and budget actuals are not affected. Linking Expense transactions to a goal doesn't count toward your budget actuals in the expenses or goals contributions category because you're spending money you've already saved.
If Spending reduces goal progress is enabled, then expenses reduce the goal’s saved amount. If it is not enabled, the expenses don’t change goal progress.
Important notes
- If an account is fully allocated, its transactions can only be linked to that one goal.
- You may temporarily see mismatches if transactions sync before balances. These resolve automatically after the next sync.
Credit card reconciliation
When spending from a goal using a credit card:
- Link the expense to the goal
- Choose which contributing account will cover the expense
- Transfer funds to pay the card
- Reconcile the transfer with the linked expenses
This ensures your goal, accounts, and credit card balances all stay aligned.
Example
- You've saved $10,000 in your vacation goal. The funds come from two different accounts: Account A ($7,000) and Account B ($3,000).
- You booked a hotel, flights, and a few other related expenses with your credit card. You now have five expense transactions from the credit card that add up to $5,000. You've already saved this amount, so you don't want it counted toward your budget actuals for the month.
- To spend from the goal, link all five credit card transactions to the Vacation goal. In the transaction drawer, you'll be asked to select which of the two contributing accounts (A or B) will cover each expense. Choose the account from which you plan to transfer money from when paying your credit card bill.
- After completing the linking step above, you'll see a reconciliation alert on the goals page for one or both accounts (A and/or B), depending on which you used to cover the transactions.
- Resolve this alert once you've physically transferred the funds from the accounts to pay back the credit card. When you click Select transactions to cover, you'll be prompted to select the Expense transaction(s) you're ready to reconcile, as well as the Transfer transaction that covered them. Note that the Transfer amount must be equal to or greater than the total of the selected Expense transactions.
Handling Refunds on Goal Expenses
If you receive a full or partial refund on a credit card expense you've already linked to a goal, the refund transaction can't be linked directly to the goal, as positive expense transactions are not yet supported. Here's how to handle this depending on whether the refund is partial or full.
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Partial refund
- If you receive a partial refund for an expense already linked to a goal, update the original transaction so the goal reflects only what you actually spent.
- Split the original expense into two transactions: keep the portion you ultimately spent linked to the goal, and leave the refunded portion unlinked. Then reconcile only the amount you actually spent.
- Example:
- Let's say you booked flights for $5,000 on your credit card and linked the transaction to your Vacation goal, selecting Account A as the reconciliation account. Later, you reduced the number of nights and received a $1,000 refund on your credit card.
- The goals page shows $5,000 to reconcile for Account A, but you only spent $4,000.
- To resolve this, split the original $5,000 expense transaction into two parts:
- A $4,000 transaction linked to the Vacation goal
- A $1,000 transaction that you leave unlinked.
- Reconcile the $4,000 transaction using your transfer from Account A.
- Categorize the $1,000 transaction in same expense category as the refund, so the two offset each other in your budget
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Full refund
- If you receive a full refund for an expense you've linked to a goal, simply unlink the original transaction from the goal. This removes it from the goal's activity, and no reconciliation is needed.
Adjustment Events in Goals
Adjustment events appear when you use an account's entire balance in a goal. They ensure your goal balance and account balance remain in sync.
Why are Adjustments needed?
Account balance can change for many reasons: market returns, security price changes, interest, dividends, fees, transfers, and more.
When you link a transaction to your goal, that transaction amount is already part of your account balance. Without Adjustments, the transaction would be counted twice: once from the linked transaction itself, and again when the account balance syncs.
How Adjustments work
Whenever your account balance changes or you link a transaction to your goal, Monarch recalculates the Adjustment event for the day to keep everything aligned. Only the unexplained portion of a balance change appears as an Adjustment
Example
- Your investment account balance increases by $1,150 in a day: $1,000 from a transfer you made, plus $150 from market returns.
- Without linking any transactions to the goal, you'd see a $1,150 Adjustment in the goal activities covering the entire balance change.
- If you then link the $1,000 transfer transaction, your activity updates to show:
- $1,000 linked transaction (your intentional contribution)
- $150 Adjustment (the remaining balance change)
Adjustment timing
Linked transactions and account balance updates can sync at different times in Monarch. If you link a transaction before your account balance updates to reflect it, you may temporarily see the linked transaction in the goal activity but not reflected in the goal's total saved. It will automatically update when the account balance syncs.
Daily aggregation
You'll see one Adjustment record per account per day in your goal activity, even if multiple changes occurred throughout the day. This keeps your activity list clean and easier to review.
Adjustments and budget
Adjustments don't count toward your budget actuals. If you want contributions to show in your budget, link the underlying transactions.
Note: If you've been active in the beta version already, note that this is different than how it previously worked in beta.