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Accounts

Account types in Evensum, the difference between joint and individual accounts, and a short intro to the three-account model.

Why accounts in Evensum?

Accounts represent your real-world bank accounts inside the app, so Evensum knows where money sits and where it should flow. An account in the app doesn't necessarily mirror a real-time transaction — Evensum is a planning and overview tool, not a banking app with account access. You maintain your accounts manually and plan based on them.

Account types

Evensum supports several account types, which you can combine freely per household:

  • Checking account: The everyday account for regular transactions, typically one per person.
  • Joint account: A shared account used for recurring costs like rent or insurance.
  • Savings/instant-access account: For flexibly available savings, often interest-bearing.
  • Buffer account: Specifically for the pro-rated annual and quarterly costs described below.
  • Cash: For a physical wallet or cash box, if you want to track cash spending too.

Each account is either a joint account or belongs to exactly one person. This unambiguous assignment matters, because Evensum derives from it who pays the items booked against an account — and which buffer account your reserves should be routed to (see below).

Joint accounts vs. individual accounts

  • Individual accounts belong to one person. They're useful for individual income, personal expenses, or personal savings.
  • Joint accounts belong to the household as a whole. They typically carry shared recurring costs — rent, utilities, insurance — as well as the automatic settlement payments between members.

This separation makes it visible what money is "mine," "yours," and "ours," without requiring you to switch banks or open new accounts — Evensum simply mirrors what already exists or is planned.

The three-account model

A proven model for couples combines three account types:

  1. Salary account — where income arrives and everyday expenses are paid from.
  2. Buffer account — where you transfer the pro-rated monthly amount for annual and quarterly costs (e.g., car insurance, broadcasting fees) each month, so the money is ready on the due date.
  3. Savings/instant-access account — for longer-term saving unrelated to recurring costs.

Evensum automatically calculates how much should flow into your buffer account each month, based on all recorded annual, quarterly, and semi-annual items. For a detailed explanation with a worked example, see the blog post The Three-Account Model.

Setting up accounts in Evensum

  1. Open the Accounts section of your household.
  2. Select Add account.
  3. Give it a name (e.g., "Shared Buffer Account"), choose the account type, and decide whether it belongs to a single person or the whole household.

Optionally, you can store the IBAN, BIC, and bank name for each account. The IBAN then shows up right on the dashboard under monthly transfers per account — handy when setting up the actual bank transfer or standing order. These details are purely informational; Evensum never accesses your bank accounts.

You can create as many accounts as you like — most households manage well with three to five.

Routing the buffer to accounts

A buffer account can be personal (owned by one person, e.g. "Buffer Rico") or joint (marked as a joint account, e.g. "Household buffer"). As soon as you have at least one buffer account, Evensum automatically routes the buffer recommendation onto your concrete accounts. The rule is deliberately simple:

  • If one person carries 100 % of a non-monthly item (e.g. split mode "Payer only," or custom percentages with 100 % on one person) and that person owns a personal buffer account, the item's monthly share is routed to their personal buffer account.
  • Every other item — everything that is shared — is routed to the joint buffer account. If several joint buffer accounts exist, Evensum uses the oldest one.

Example: You've recorded your car insurance (€480 annually, split "Payer only": Rico) and your shared contents insurance (€96 annually, 50/50). Rico owns a personal buffer account, and a joint one exists too. Evensum then recommends: €40 per month into Rico's buffer account (paid by Rico alone) and €8 per month into the joint buffer account (€4 per person). The total always matches the overall recommendation exactly — every item is assigned to exactly one account.

Without a joint buffer account, shared items remain unassigned: the dashboard shows them as a combined "No reserve account" block — just like the previous aggregate recommendation. Simply add a joint account of type "Buffer account" so these items get a destination too. Any recommended initial funding is also broken out per account, so each account is covered from day one.

The amounts additionally appear in the "Monthly transfers per account" card (labeled "Reserve"), so you can set up your standing orders right away.

Monthly transfers per account

Once you assign accounts to your recurring items, the overview calculates who needs to transfer how much to which account each month so that all payments are covered. Every item is normalized to a monthly amount and distributed across members according to its split mode (50/50, by income, custom percentages …).

Example: if the €1,500 rent is paid from the joint account and you split 60/40 by income, the "Monthly transfers per account" card shows: joint account €1,500 – person A transfers €900, person B €600. For the reserve account, the total matches the reserve recommendation for yearly and quarterly bills exactly. Set up your standing orders once and know everything is covered on payday.

Salary account: no transfers to yourself

Each member can mark one of their individual accounts as their salary account (checkbox when creating or editing an account). That's where the salary arrives – so the owner's own shares on this account need no transfer and don't appear in the transfers card. If, say, your personal subscriptions are paid from your salary account, the account disappears from the card entirely. If another member owes shares on your salary account (e.g. a 50/50 item debited there), their row stays – that money still has to get there.

Practical tip

Set up your buffer account early, before entering your first annual recurring costs. That way, Evensum shows you the recommended monthly transfer to this account right from the start.