{"id":"concept:uncategorized-transaction","kind":"concept","label":"Uncategorized Transaction","synonyms":["unposted transaction"],"definition":"An uncategorized transaction is a bank row that has been imported but not yet assigned to an account, sitting unposted in the inbox with no accounting effect yet.","summary":"Imported, but not yet bookkeeping. It sits with status \"unposted,\" invisible to the P&L and balance sheet, until it's categorized into an account. A reconciliation gap is often explained, or partly explained, by exactly these — categorizing one can close the numeric difference, though a matching total is only a lead, not proof.","explanation":["An uncategorized transaction is a bank row that has made it into BalanceMCP through an import but hasn't yet been assigned to an account. Its status is \"unposted,\" and in that state it has no effect on any report — not the profit and loss, not the balance sheet, not the trial balance. It exists, visibly, in the inbox, but it isn't yet part of the books in any accounting sense.","This is the natural, temporary state every bank transaction passes through before categorization, and it's meant to be brief — the whole point of importing a statement is to eventually categorize everything on it. A pile of uncategorized transactions accumulating over weeks isn't a broken state, but it does mean the books aren't yet reflecting reality for that stretch of time.","Uncategorized transactions play a specific, useful role during reconciliation: when a ledger balance doesn't match a bank statement, BalanceMCP checks whether the uncategorized transactions sitting in that account happen to sum to exactly the gap. If they do, that's a strong lead worth acting on — but only a lead, since a matching total proves the arithmetic lines up, not that those specific transactions caused the discrepancy.","Spending_summary treats them differently depending on how it's grouped: grouping by category can only total transactions that have actually been categorized, and reports the uncategorized dollar amount separately rather than folding it silently into the total — worth checking before trusting a category total as the whole picture."],"commonMistakes":["Assuming an uncategorized transaction already affects reports — it has no accounting effect until it's actually categorized.","Treating a matching total during reconciliation as proof of the cause rather than a lead worth checking first.","Trusting a category total from spending_summary without checking the excluded-uncategorized figure it reports alongside it."],"category":"transactions","questions":[{"question":"Does an uncategorized transaction show up on my P&L?","answer":"No — it has no accounting effect until it's categorized into an account. Only categorized, posted transactions show up on reports."},{"question":"If uncategorized transactions add up to my reconciliation gap, is that proof of the cause?","answer":"It's a strong lead, not proof — a matching total only shows the arithmetic lines up. An unrelated error elsewhere could coincidentally net to the same figure."}],"url":"/glossary/uncategorized-transaction","relatedTo":[{"id":"concept:bank-transaction","relationship":"related","weight":0.9,"api":"/api/knowledge/concept%3Abank-transaction"},{"id":"concept:categorization","relationship":"related","weight":0.9,"api":"/api/knowledge/concept%3Acategorization"},{"id":"concept:reconciliation-difference","relationship":"related","weight":0.9,"api":"/api/knowledge/concept%3Areconciliation-difference"},{"id":"concept:spending-summary","relationship":"related","weight":0.9,"api":"/api/knowledge/concept%3Aspending-summary"},{"id":"tool:list_transactions","relationship":"references","weight":0.7,"api":"/api/knowledge/tool%3Alist_transactions"}],"referencedBy":[{"id":"concept:bank-transaction","label":"Bank Transaction","url":"/glossary/bank-transaction"},{"id":"concept:categorization","label":"Categorization","url":"/glossary/categorization"},{"id":"concept:reconciliation-difference","label":"Reconciliation Difference","url":"/glossary/reconciliation-difference"},{"id":"concept:cleared-transaction","label":"Cleared Transaction","url":"/glossary/cleared-transaction"},{"id":"concept:spending-summary","label":"Spending Summary","url":"/glossary/spending-summary"}],"license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","attribution":"BalanceMCP — https://balancemcp.com"}