Pending
A pending transaction is one the bank has seen but not yet finalized. The amount or merchant can still change — a restaurant tab settles higher after a tip, a gas hold settles to the real fill amount. On a linked account, pending transactions come in uncleared.Posted
A posted transaction is settled. The amount is final. When a previously pending transaction posts, Budget Bandit promotes the same row in place — it updates the date, amount, and merchant and marks it cleared, rather than adding a second row. That is why you do not end up with a pending copy and a posted copy of the same purchase.Because pending items can change, the final posted amount may differ from what
you first saw. The promoted row carries the bank’s final numbers.
What this means for your budget
- Pending transactions still affect the account’s working balance, so what you see reflects money already committed.
- Imported and synced transactions, pending or posted, land in To Review unapproved. Confirm and categorize them there.
- When you reconcile, you match against cleared (posted) transactions, the same set your bank statement shows.
Manual accounts
Pending and posted are bank-feed concepts. On a manual account, you decide when a transaction is cleared by toggling its cleared status yourself. See Add, edit, or delete.If a pending charge never posts
Sometimes a hold is released and the charge never finalizes. On the next sync, Budget Bandit removes the row to match the bank. This is expected and is not a lost transaction. More on gaps and doubles: Duplicate or missing transactions.Related
Connect a bank
Set up the feed that delivers pending and posted.
Reconcile an account
Match cleared transactions to a statement.
To Review
Confirm synced transactions.
Fix sync problems
A linked account that is not updating.