Archiving or deleting an account

There are two ways to get an account off your list, and they’re not the same thing.

Archiving keeps everything

Archiving hides the account and keeps all of its history. It’s reversible, and archived accounts have their own page, so nothing is lost and nothing is hard to find again.

You archive an account from its edit screen. That’s also where you bring it back: open an archived account, go to edit it, and the button that normally says Archive says Unarchive instead. You can also unarchive straight from the archived accounts page, using the menu on the account’s row.

Archiving never changes a number

An archived account keeps counting everywhere it did before: your net worth, your savings, your cash flow and your budgets, this month and every month before it. Archiving only takes it off your lists and out of the places where you choose an account. Unarchiving changes nothing back.

So if you empty an old savings pot into a new one and archive the old one, it doesn’t look like you saved or lost anything. The move shows as what it was.

If there’s still money in it

Archive an account that still holds money, or still owes some, and Quidough tells you how much first. That money keeps counting in your net worth, and in your savings if it’s a savings account, until you record where it went. If you’ve already moved it at your bank, record that transfer first.

An empty account archives straight away, with an Undo in case you tapped by mistake. Whatever is left in an archived account shows next to it on the archived accounts page.

Deleting is permanent, and only for empty accounts

Deleting removes an account for good, and Quidough only offers it when the account has nothing in it. If there are any transactions or transfers, the Delete option isn’t there. You’ll see a note explaining that the history is kept, and that archiving is what you want instead. If there’s money left in it, the note says how much.

The reason is simple. Unlike a category, there’s nowhere to move an account’s transactions to. So the only safe choices are deleting an account that’s empty, or archiving one that isn’t.

Editing something inside an archived account

Open a transaction or transfer that belongs to an archived account and it shows that account by name, like any other. Nothing looks broken.

If you go to edit it, Quidough asks you to confirm first. The record still counts toward that archived account, so changing the amount, the account, or the date updates its kept history, and that can ripple into past months and your insights. It never stops you. It just makes sure a change to closed history is one you meant to make.