Understand the words used in AceMoney

Short definitions of the words you see in the apps and in these guides, grouped by topic. Words in bold are the exact labels the apps use.

Products and plans

AceMoney Studio: The full personal-finance app for macOS, Windows and Linux. Your data is a document on your computer. AceMoney Studio Mobile, for iPhone, iPad and Android, is coming, starting with version 1.2.
AceMoney Cloud: A yearly or monthly subscription, sold on our website. It syncs your AceMoney Studio documents between your computers, end-to-end encrypted, and connects US bank accounts so transactions arrive by themselves. It includes the Receipts Pro and Mileage plan features. See AceMoney Cloud.
AceMoney Receipts: The phone app (iPhone, iPad, Android) that scans receipts, with a web version for desktop browsers. Mileage tracking, bill splitting and the Filing Cabinet are coming in AceMoney Receipts 2.0.
AceMoney Classic: The earlier AceMoney program for Windows, also offered for macOS. It is no longer sold but still supported, and it calls itself “AceMoney” in its own menus. AceMoney Lite is its old free edition, limited to 2 accounts: it keeps working for people who already have it, but it is no longer offered for download.
The web version: AceMoney Receipts in a desktop browser, using the same account as the phone app. A phone or tablet browser is told to get the app instead.
Free version: AceMoney Studio without a license: 3 accounts you can edit, one portfolio and one goal. Other accounts stay read-only, and Investments is locked.
Unlocked: AceMoney Studio with a license: every account editable, Investments open, no limits on portfolios or goals.
AceMoney Studio license: The one-time purchase for AceMoney Studio on a computer, bought on our website and activated with a key. See Choose a plan and understand your license.
Receipts Pro: The monthly or yearly subscription for AceMoney Receipts: automatic reading, item lists, voice, unlimited Filing Cabinet documents (from AceMoney Receipts 2.0), no ads. AceMoney Cloud includes it. See Receipts Pro and the Mileage plan in the AceMoney Receipts guide.
The Mileage plan: A yearly subscription for unlimited automatic trip detection, and for the mileage Tax pack (CSV) in AceMoney Studio. AceMoney Cloud includes it.
Founder price: The price at which owners of an AceMoney Classic license can buy AceMoney Studio, through the upgrade page at www.mechcad.net/upgrade/. A Classic license bought on or after April 1, 2026 gets a lower price still.
The reading service: The cloud service that reads a receipt image for Receipts Pro users. On the free plan, reading happens on the phone.
The store: The App Store or Google Play, which sells subscriptions in the app, checks them for the app and decides refunds.

Licensing words

License key: The code that starts with AMS- in your AceMoney Studio order e-mail. The app’s field is labeled License key.
Purchase email address: The e-mail address you used for the order; needed together with the key to activate.
Activation: Entering the key and purchase e-mail on a computer so AceMoney Studio is unlocked there. Needs the internet once.
Seat: One activated computer. An AceMoney Studio license covers 2 seats; Deactivate this seat or Release frees one.
Activation limit: A lifetime count of activations per license, including re-activations. Reaching it asks you to contact support, who raise it.
Updates window: The 12 months of updates included with a license. After it, the version you have keeps working forever.
Check-in: The brief message an activated copy sends when online to say the license is still in use. It never blocks the app.
Claim a Cloud license: The Claim a Cloud license… button in AceMoney Studio’s Settings ▸ Account, which links an AceMoney Cloud license to your signed-in account.
Restore Purchases: The AceMoney Receipts button that asks the store again about purchases you already made, for example after a reinstall.
Manage Subscription: The AceMoney Receipts button that opens the store’s subscription screen to change or cancel a plan.
Serial number and licensed name: AceMoney Classic’s license: a name and a six-line serial, entered exactly as in the license e-mail under Help > Register AceMoney….
Evaluation: AceMoney Classic’s 30-day trial mode, shown as Days Installed: N of 30.

Accounts and money

Account: A place money sits: a bank account, a credit card, cash or an investment account. Each has an opening balance and a currency.
Account type: In Studio one of Checking, Savings, Credit, Cash, Investment or Not set.
Account group: A heading that groups accounts on the Accounts page, for example Bank accounts.
Opening balance: What the account held on the day you started tracking it. A credit card or loan balance you owe is entered as a negative number.
Posted balance: The opening balance plus every transaction. For an investment account, Studio can add the value of the holdings to the cash, with Add investment value to account balances in Settings ▸ Currency & Quotes.
Balance limit and APR %: Optional fields on an account: a credit limit or overdraft limit, and an interest rate for your reference.
Closed account: An account marked This account is closed; it keeps its history but is treated as finished. Closed accounts are hidden until you choose Show closed accounts.
Read-only account: In the Free version, an account past the 3 you can edit. Everything in it is still there; only editing is off.
Net worth: The balance of every account added together, converted to your base currency when accounts use several currencies.
Currency and base currency: Each account has a currency; the Base currency in Settings ▸ Currency & Quotes is the one totals are converted into.
Exchange rate: The conversion between two currencies. Update exchange rates downloads today’s rates; a missing rate converts 1:1 and is marked with ≈.

The register

Register: The list of an account’s transactions, with a running balance. In AceMoney Classic it is the Account page.
Transaction: One money movement on a date: a Withdrawal, a Deposit or a Transfer.
Transfer: A transaction that moves money between two of your accounts; it appears in both registers as Transfer to and Transfer from.
Split (transaction): One transaction divided over several categories or accounts, each part a split line. Not to be confused with a bill split.
Status: Whether a transaction is Uncleared (entered by you), Cleared (seen on the bank’s side), Reconciled (matched to a statement) or Imported (arrived from a file or feed). Studio’s St column shows it, and Set status changes it. In AceMoney Classic the column is S.
Reconcile: Matching the register to a bank statement: enter the Statement ending balance, tick the transactions on the statement and Finalize when the difference is zero.
Running balance: The balance after each transaction in date order; the Balance column in Studio, the Total column in AceMoney Classic.
Hide reconciled: A register switch that hides reconciled rows.
Number: The check or reference number of a transaction, in Studio’s Number column.
Payee: Who you paid or who paid you. A payee can have a Default category that fills in automatically.
Category and subcategory: What a transaction was for, written as Parent:Child (for example Auto:Fuel). Each category is Expense or Income.
Tag: A colored label you can attach to any transaction and filter by, independent of categories.
Attachment: An image or PDF attached to a transaction, stored next to the document.
Duplicate detection: When importing, transactions that already exist are skipped and reported as duplicates.
Trash and Undo: Deleted accounts, categories, payees and schedules go to a trash you can restore from (View trash); a deleted transaction can be brought back only with Undo right after.

Scheduled transactions and budgets

Scheduled transaction: A bill or income that repeats. Studio’s Schedule page lists them with a Frequency, a next date and Post now.
Post: To write a scheduled transaction into the register. Post automatically on open does it without asking when the date arrives.
Reminder lead days: How many days before the due date Studio shows a system notification.
Budget: A spending limit on a category. In Studio, set the Budget amount in the category; in Receipts, budget gauges on the Home tab.
Budget period: How often a budget renews: the category’s Resets setting, such as Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly or Yearly.
Budget goals: The Home panel in Studio that shows progress against category budgets (free). Different from Goals.
Budget gauge: In Receipts, one of the three dials on the Home tab, each a category with a monthly amount; Detailed Budget Overview edits them.
Goal: In Studio, a Savings target or Debt payoff linked to an account, with progress shown on Home. One goal is free.

Reports, portfolios and investments

Report: One of Studio’s built-in reports: Account balances, Cash flow, Forecast, Last 30 days transactions, Transactions, Spending by category, Spending by subcategory, Category by month, Subcategory by month, Spending by payee, Payee by month, Budget by category, Budget by subcategory, Performance by investments and Realised gains (the last two need Investments). Each can be exported as CSV, HTML or TXT and printed.
Period: The date range a report or mileage summary covers, such as Current Month or Year To Date.
Include transfers: A report switch; off by default so money moved between your own accounts does not count as spending.
Portfolio (books): A separate set of books inside one Studio document, for example personal and business. Every document starts with one named Main; the Consolidated scope reports across all of them.
Portfolio page: Studio’s investments page, also labeled Portfolio in the navigation. Not the same as a portfolio of books.
Investment (holding): A stock, fund, bond or other asset you track by Symbol, with a Watchlist for ones you follow without owning.
Investment transaction: A buy, sell, dividend, reinvestment or similar event that posts its cash effect to the account you choose.
Quote: The current price of an investment. Update quotes fetches prices from your chosen Quote provider.
API key: A personal key some quote providers require; you get it free from the provider and it stays on your device.
Cost basis: What you paid for the shares you still hold, used to work out gains.

Documents, backups and safety (Studio)

Document: The file that holds everything in Studio: accounts, transactions, categories, schedules, investments. You can have several.
The default document: The built-in document Studio starts with, kept inside the app’s own folder. It cannot be encrypted.
Save a Copy As…: The File menu command that copies the whole document, including attachments, to a place you choose and switches to the copy. There is no Save: everything is saved automatically.
Backup: A complete snapshot of the document that Studio keeps on the same computer, taken automatically before risky operations and once a day on open, or with Back up now.
Restore: Replacing the current document with a backup from Settings ▸ Document ▸ Restore…. A backup of the current state is taken first.
Document password (encryption): An optional password that encrypts a document file so it cannot be read without it. Attachments are not covered.
Recovery code: The one-time code shown when you set a document password; the only way back in if you forget the password.
Document Doctor: The Check Document tool (Tools ▸ Check Document…) that finds and, where safe, repairs inconsistencies in a document.
Import: Bringing data in from an AceMoney Classic data file (.amj) or export (JSON or XML), or from a bank statement file (QIF, OFX, QFX, OFC, CSV). From version 1.2, Studio also imports Microsoft Money .mny files.
Match accounts: The import step that pairs each account in a file with an existing account or Add new account.
Lock: Studio’s refusal to open a document that is already open elsewhere, so two copies never edit the same file at once.
Sync: With AceMoney Cloud, keeping a document the same on each of your computers. Changes from other computers arrive by themselves; you send your own with Sync now.

Bank connections

Bank feed: Automatic download of transactions into Studio, either through AceMoney Cloud (US banks, Bank feeds (AceMoney Cloud)) or through a SimpleFIN provider (Bank feeds).
SimpleFIN: A way for a separate service to connect to your bank on your behalf. SimpleFIN Bridge and other SimpleFIN providers offer it, each with its own fee; you paste the provider’s SimpleFIN setup token into Studio.
Bank: In Studio, a record on the Banks page with a website and phone number that accounts can refer to; it does not connect to anything by itself.
Direct Connect: AceMoney Classic’s online bank download, set up in an account’s Online Setup, where your bank still offers it.
Import rule: In AceMoney Classic, a rule that sets the payee and category when imported text matches.

Receipts

Receipt: One purchase record in AceMoney Receipts: payee, amount, date, category, subcategory, account, comment, an optional image and an optional location.
Scan: Capturing a receipt with the camera. A multi-page scan keeps adding pages before saving.
Photo quality warning: The prompt that offers Retake when a scan looks blurry or has glare.
OCR: Optical character recognition: reading text from an image. The Receipts settings tab is called Capture & OCR.
Extract Item List: A Receipts Pro switch that writes the purchased items into the receipt’s Comment.
Voice Interaction: A Receipts Pro switch: the app reads back what it found and listens for “confirmed” or corrections.
Record Geolocation: The switch that saves where a receipt was captured; Open Map and Delete Location act on it.
Receipt Snapshot: The stored image of a receipt, opened from View Receipt Snapshot.
Sort by Created Date: A Receipts setting that orders the list by when you saved receipts instead of the receipt date.
Guest: A Receipts account created with Continue as Guest, with no e-mail. Signing out deletes its data unless you Link Account first.
User ID: The identifier shown by Show User ID; support or the deletion form may ask for it.
Biometric Authentication: The Receipts lock that asks for Face ID, Touch ID or a fingerprint when the app returns to the foreground.
AceMoney Filing Cabinet: Coming in AceMoney Receipts 2.0: Receipts’ document scanner and organizer for contracts, IDs and warranties, with folders, tags and searchable text. Documents stay on the phone; with AceMoney Cloud they can also sync with AceMoney Studio.
Pairing: Linking AceMoney Receipts to AceMoney Classic with an 8-digit code so receipts flow to the computer and names flow back. See Pair AceMoney Classic with AceMoney Receipts.
Sync code: The 8-digit pairing code, valid for 30 seconds, typed into AceMoney Classic’s Cloud Settings….
Mobile Sync: The AceMoney Classic switch that uploads account, payee and category names and chart summaries to the paired phone when the file is saved.
Synced icon: The small computer icon on a receipt that AceMoney Classic has recorded.

Mileage

Mileage tracking in AceMoney Receipts is coming in AceMoney Receipts 2.0. AceMoney Studio on a computer has its own Mileage page today.

Trip: One drive with a distance, a start and end time, an optional vehicle and purpose, and a classification.
Automatic drive detection: Recording drives in the background from location and motion, with Always location access. The Track mileage in this app switch decides which app on the phone does it.
Start trip: Recording a single drive on demand from the app; such trips are never counted against the free cap.
Manual trip: A trip you type in with Add trip; free and unlimited.
Classification: Marking a trip Business, Personal or Unclassified. One-swipe classify means swiping a trip right for Business or left for Personal.
Confidence: High, Medium or Low on a detected trip: how sure the detection was that it was a real drive.
Locked trip: A detected trip over the free monthly cap; it is kept but cannot be classified until you buy the Mileage plan.
Vehicle: A car you attribute trips to, with an optional plate and starting odometer. The Default vehicle is pre-selected on new trips.
Odometer camera: Receipts’ camera mode that reads the digits on your odometer into a trip.
Rate: In Studio, a standard mileage rate for a Jurisdiction, year and category, per mile or per kilometer. Studio ships no rates; you enter the current one.
Rule: In Studio, an automatic classification for future trips: Near a place, A specific route or Commute (excluded).
Deduction: Distance multiplied by the rate, shown on Studio’s Mileage Reports tab for business trips.
Tax pack (CSV): Studio’s export of business trips with their deductions for a period; needs the Mileage plan or AceMoney Cloud.
Post as expense: Turning a business trip into a transaction in an account, in the category Vehicle:Mileage.
Battery usage: The detection mode on the phone: Battery saver, Balanced or High accuracy.

Bill splitting

Bill splitting in AceMoney Receipts is coming in AceMoney Receipts 2.0. AceMoney Studio has its own Splits page today.

Bill split (a split): A shared expense recorded in Studio’s Splits page or the Receipts Splits tab: what it was for, the total, who shares it and who paid. Different from a split transaction.
Method: How a split is divided: Equal, Shares, %, Exact or by Items, with optional Tax and Tip.
Paid by: The person who paid the bill.
Balances: Who owes whom across all splits, shown as “Alice owes you” or “You owe Bob”.
Settle and Record payment: Recording that money changed hands; the app never moves money itself.

Support

Support portal: The request site at support.mechcad.net, where you open a request by choosing a request type such as Technical support or Request a refund.
Request type: The category of a support request; it routes your question to the right place.