Most accounts in Cake sync from your bank through Plaid or SimpleFIN. A manual account is one you keep up to date yourself. It works with slices, rules, and Safe to Spend like any other account. The only difference is where the transactions come from: you.

When to use a manual account

Cash. A wallet or a cash envelope you want inside your budget.
A bank that won’t connect. If neither Plaid nor SimpleFIN reaches your institution, a manual account keeps it in the picture.
A paused connection. Disconnecting a SimpleFIN feed turns its accounts into manual accounts with all their history intact.

Manual accounts don’t count toward your plan’s bank connection limit.

Add a manual account

Go to Settings, then the Accounts section.
Choose Add Manual Account.
Give it a name, pick a type (Cash, Checking, Savings, or Credit Card), and enter the current balance.

Safe to Spend treats the account the same way it treats a connected account of that type.

Add a transaction

Go to Transactions and choose Add Transaction.
Fill in the description, amount, and date.
Pick Expense or Income.
Choose the manual account it belongs to. Only manual accounts are listed here.
Optionally set a category, assign a slice, add the merchant name, or leave a note.
Leave Update account balance on unless you have already adjusted the balance yourself.

What happens when you save

The account balance changes by the amount, unless you turned the balance update off.
The slice balance changes if you assigned one. An expense comes out of the slice and income goes into it, and the slice’s balance history records it.
Rules run on the new transaction exactly as they would on a synced one. A rule that matches can assign a slice, set a category, or take any other rule action.
Funding schedules can match an income transaction, so a manually entered paycheck can fund your slices the same way a synced one does.

Why connected accounts don’t take manual transactions

An account that syncs from your bank already receives every transaction automatically. Adding one by hand would create a duplicate when the bank reports the same charge. If a connected account has stopped syncing, reconnect it in Settings and Cake backfills what it missed.

Keeping a manual account accurate

Enter transactions as they happen, or in a weekly batch. Rules will do the sorting.
If the balance drifts from reality, use Update balance on the account’s card in Settings to set it to what the bank or your wallet says. That resets the number without touching any transactions.
The Transactions page filters work on manual accounts too, so you can review one account at a time.