Most accounts in Cake sync from your bank through Plaid or SimpleFIN. A manual account is one you keep up to date yourself, by adding transactions one at a time or by importing a file from your bank. 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.

Import transactions from a file

Instead of typing each transaction, you can import the CSV or TSV your bank exports. Choose Import on the account in Settings, or beside Add Transaction on the Transactions page, pick the file, and check the rows before anything is saved. Cake unchecks rows it already has, so importing an overlapping range is safe, and every import can be undone as a unit.

Imported rows are treated as history: rules and funding schedules do not run on them, no slice changes, and the account balance stays as you set it (the import ends by asking whether it is still right). Use Apply to past on a rule to sort imported rows, and Set aside on an imported paycheck to fund your slices from it. The full walkthrough is in Import Transactions From a CSV.

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 import your bank’s CSV once a month. Rules sort what you enter by hand; for imported rows, use Apply to past on the rule.
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.