Putting an expense in the wrong Center is the most frequent thing in your first days — you're still figuring out where Home ends and Groceries & daily begins. Moving is trivial, and totals update by themselves.
Moving a single expense
Open the expense (click the row in the list or the dot in the calendar). In the edit form there's the Cost Center field. Change it, save.
The expense leaves the old Center, enters the new one, and:
- Totals in both Centers update in real time
- The calendar keeps the same dot on the same date, but the color changes (follows the new Center's color)
- The history of the expense is preserved (creation date, paid amount, confirmations)
No delete-and-recreate. It's a simple UPDATE expense.center_id.
Moving multiple expenses (batch via AI Helper)
For batch moves — when you realize 5 expenses you put in Home are actually Kids — the fastest path is asking the AI Helper:
"Move all daycare expenses from the Home Center to the Kids Center"
Helper finds the expenses (filtered by keyword or Center), shows them in a card with total and count, and asks for explicit confirmation before moving them.
Alternatively, from the list view you can move expenses one at a time (3 seconds each). A native multi-row selection in the app is on the roadmap.
What changes for calendar, heatmap, history
- Calendar — the expense stays on the same date, only the dot color changes
- Annual Map — the day's square changes shade only if the expense affects the day's total (usually unchanged)
- Monthly report — the expense leaves one Center's report and enters the other's, retroactively
The "history" is never deleted. If you want to see "this expense was in Home until March 15, then moved to Kids" — there's no dedicated view at the moment, but we know it's sometimes needed. Reach out if you need to reconstruct it.
What is NOT a move
- Renaming a Center doesn't move anything — expenses stay, only the label changes
- Archiving a Center doesn't auto-move expenses — you have to move them first (or leave them archived with the Center)
- Deleting a Center with expenses inside isn't allowed. FamSpend asks you to archive or move first
Tip: reorganize often in the first week
In the first days you're still calibrating the edges between Centers. It's normal to move 10-20 expenses while the IA in your head settles. By week 2 there's almost nothing to move.
If you find yourself frequently moving the same kind of expense (e.g. daycare you keep putting in Home out of habit), maybe you're missing a Center: see Creating a Cost Center.