Journal

The Journal (⌘5) lists every directive dated in the period, grouped by month, each month with its count. The subtitle says how many entries there are, or “128 of 640 entries” when the search or the type menu hide some.

It shows what is written, nothing more. Unlike the reports, there are no opening balances or summarising entries here.

Reading a row

Tue 3   ⇄   Mercadona  Weekly shop   #family                    84.20 EUR

Day · icon of the type · payee and description · tag and link chips · amount.

• The amount of a transaction is the net of its income and expense postings, per currency, with Beancount’s own sign: a purchase is positive, a refund negative, income negative — the same signs as the postings under it. A transaction with no such postings (a transfer between your accounts, a card payment, an investment bought at cost) shows what moved instead: the sum of its positive postings. Amounts you left empty in the file appear filled in, as Beancount balanced them.
• Each type has its own icon and colour (transactions blue, internal transfers purple, balances green, notes yellow…). Hover over the icon to see the type and flag.
• Orange and red are reserved for attention:
  • An orange ! marks a pending transaction (flag !). It counts like any other; to list only the pending ones, or to leave them out, use the Status filter.
  • A red seal marks a failed balance assertion, with “off by 12.30 EUR” under the amount.

Types

The Types menu (a checklist) chooses which kinds of entries are listed. Each one shows its count for the period.

Shown by default	One click away
Transactions · Internal Transfers · Balances · Pads · Notes · Documents · Events	Account Opens & Closes · Prices · Commodities · Custom · Queries

At the bottom of the menu, four quick choices: Show All Types, Only Transactions, Only Internal Transfers and Reset to Default. The menu’s title tells you what is active: Types (the default), All Types, 3 Types, or the name of the single one.

Internal transfers

An internal transfer is not a Beancount type. It is what the app calls a transaction whose postings are all asset accounts: money moving between your own accounts, neither income nor spending. Moving savings, topping up a wallet, withdrawing cash.

They get their own colour and their own entry in the Types menu, so you can hide them to read only real income and spending — or show only them to check that every transfer has both ends. A transfer with a fee posted to Expenses is an ordinary transaction.

Search

The search field of the toolbar narrows the list as you type.

• It looks in the payee, description, accounts (of every posting), text of notes and documents, date and metadata.
• All the words must appear, in any order. merca shop finds “Mercadona — Weekly shop”.
• Case and accents do not matter: cafe finds Café.
• #tra finds tags that start with “tra”; ^trip does the same for links.
• A date works too: 2026-03 finds March’s entries when you are looking at a whole year.

Search is for finding something in the Journal. To narrow Reports as well, use a filter.

If the search and types hide everything, the screen says how many entries are hidden and offers Show Everything.

View

The View menu (an eye):

Option	Effect
Postings	Show the postings of every transaction under it: account, amount, and cost {…} and price @ … for investments.
Metadata	Show metadata of entries and of postings. The values can be selected and copied.
Newest First / Oldest First	The order of the list.

With Postings off, the list is compact and a click on a transaction opens just that one. Click it again to close it.

What you can do with a row

Action	Result
Click	Open or close the postings of that transaction (when Postings is off).
Double-click a transaction	Edit it in the transaction dialog.
Double-click anything else	Reveal it in the editor, on its exact line.
Click a tag or link chip	Add it as a filter.

Right-click for the context menu:

Item	Notes
Edit…	Transactions only.
Reveal in Editor	Opens the file at the entry’s line.
Open Document	For document entries: opens the file in its default app. Relative paths are resolved from the file that declares them.
Filter by Payee “…”	Adds a payee filter.
Filter by key: value	One per metadata of the entry.
Filter by Status: Pending	Pending transactions (!) only.
Copy Description	Copies “Payee — description”.
Copy Account Name	For entries about an account: balance, open, pad, note…

Entries generated by a plugin have no line in any file, so Edit and Reveal are disabled for them.

Toolbar buttons

• + New Transaction (⌘N) — see Adding and editing transactions.
• Import Drafts from iPhone (⌥⌘I) — see Import drafts.

Empty states

• Nothing in This Period — no entries are dated in the period. Change it.
• No Matches — there are entries, but the search or the Types menu hide them all.