Payments

Not sure about a term? See the Glossary.

What payments are

Payments represent what actually happened (past / ground truth).

Important rule:

You can only create payments for today or the past.
For the future, use instances via Plan.

Connecting payments to your plan

You can connect a payment to a planned instance.

In that case:

A payment that is linked to a plan item is always linked to exactly one instance of that plan item.

Why this matters:

your forecast stays realistic
you avoid counting the same thing twice

Good practice: keep your data up to date

Valutra works with plan items (expectations) and payments (what actually happened). The quality of forecasts and reports depends directly on how up to date this data is.

Good to know:

Forecasts are based on the current state of your plan items and payments.
Missing, late, or unreconciled payments will cause deviations.
Regular reconciliation helps keep results realistic.

Good practice:

Record payments regularly (e.g. monthly).
Reconcile payments with planned instances as soon as you have them.
If you see bigger deviations, review your plan items.
Update starting balances if your accounts changed.

Valutra does not automatically correct or fill in your data — the app shows relationships and effects, but keeping data up to date is your responsibility.

No double counting (rule)

If a payment exists for an instance, the payment wins.

Practical effect:

the planned instance is not added on top

Typical use cases

rent paid late: payment date differs from planned date
subscription amount changed: payment amount differs from planned amount

The behavior depends on how you open the modal:

From a planned instance (clicking a specific instance in the timeline): the modal starts a new payment fixed to that instance/date.
Via “New payment”: if you then select a plan item, the matching instance is computed from the chosen payment date (valueDate).

Payment category summary

At the top of the page you can open the Category totals section. It aggregates your data by category for a selected time period.

Period selection: choose a preset (e.g. last $n$ months) or a custom month range.
Only categorized payments: the summary only includes payments that have a category assigned.

How to read the columns:

Income / Expenses / Balance: sums of recorded payments within the selected period.
Remaining: sum of planned instances in the same period that do not have a linked payment yet.
Total: recorded payments + remaining planned instances (i.e. the full expected impact for the period).

The optional “Usage” range shown under a category is the overall time span where the category appears (based on both payments and plan items) and can differ from the currently selected period.

Note: VAT and business reporting are typically relevant for freelancers/self-employed and companies. If you are employed, this is usually not relevant.

If VAT is enabled in your user settings, you can open the Sales tax modal from the payments area to see a VAT summary (monthly and sometimes also quarterly/yearly) including an optional “forecast included” warning.

Details: VAT (Germany) overview

Next topics:

Balance
Plan