Find and fix duplicate transactions

A purchase can land in Pennyweight twice: entered by hand on two accounts, imported into the wrong account, or recorded by both a payment app and the card behind it. Your AI can look for these pairs, explain each one, suggest a fix, and change nothing until you say so. Transfers aren't spending explains the links some of these fixes use.

How to do it

1. Ask your AI to check for duplicates. Name a period if you want more than the last 60 days.
2. Read the pairs it finds. For each one, it can show both transactions, how confident the match is, and what it suggests.
3. Tell your AI which fix to apply to each pair, or to leave it alone.

What you'll see

For each pair, your AI gives the reason the two matched and one of these suggestions:

• Opposite signs on two accounts. The suggestion is to link them as a transfer. See link the two sides of a transfer.
• Same sign on two accounts. One purchase seen twice, such as a PayPal payment and the card charge that funded it. The suggestion is a pass-through link, which keeps one side in your spending. See a purchase shows twice.
• One bank row and one imported or hand-entered copy on the same account. The suggestion is to delete the copy and keep the bank's row.
• Two imported or hand-entered transactions on the same account. Often one purchase entered twice, sometimes two real purchases, so your AI asks you before deleting. When they came from two different imports, the suggestion is to delete the later copy, or to undo the import if a whole statement went in twice.
• A pending charge beside its posted version on the same account. The suggestion is to delete the pending one. See the same charge appears pending and posted.
• One bank transaction saved twice, at two dates. When both copies are from the last 60 days, a completed bank sync removes the older one.

A suggestion is a starting point. If a purchase went on the wrong account, deleting that copy fixes both your spending and the account's balance. A link fixes only spending, because links never change balances.

A deleted transaction can be restored for 30 days. See delete and restore a transaction.

How pairs are found

• Two transactions on different accounts are compared when they have the same amount in the same currency and are dated within 2 days of each other.
• Two transactions on the same account are compared when they have the same amount and sign and share a date. A bank row beside an imported or hand-entered copy, or two copies from different imports, can be a day apart. A pending charge and its posted version can be up to 3 days apart.
• In both cases, the merchant names must be the same or similar, except for a pending charge beside its posted version. A wallet prefix such as "AplPay" or "PayPal" is ignored in that comparison.
• The check covers every ledger in your workspace except demo ledgers, unless your AI limits it to one ledger or to specific accounts. With a demo ledger active, it covers only that demo.
• Deleted transactions are left out.

Good to know

• The default period is the last 60 days. You can ask for up to 365 days back, or for any date range up to a year long.
• A check reads up to 2,000 transactions, or up to 20,000 if your AI raises the limit. When it stops early, your AI is told the list may be incomplete.
• Pairs with unrelated names aren't reported by default, such as a card payment out of checking and the "Payment Received" credit on the card. Your AI can lower the match threshold to see them.
• Same-account pairs are included. You can ask your AI to leave them out. Pending and posted pairs, and a bank transaction saved twice, still come back.
• Everyday repeats aren't reported by default. Two of a purchase you make often on one account, such as a daily fare, on one day score below the default match threshold. So do two transactions your bank reported separately on one account. Your AI can lower the threshold to see them.
• Linked transfers are left out. Two transactions linked to each other never pair. Money out and money in where one side is already linked as a transfer don't pair either.
• Imports check on their own. The import preview skips a row matching a transaction already in that account by date, amount, currency and merchant, but doesn't look at other accounts. See reading an import preview.
• Deleting one side of a linked pair unlinks the other side, and restoring the deleted side removes its link too. Each then counts in spending unless its category is a transfer category. If the two belong together, ask your AI to link them again.