Link an expense to a commitment

Sometimes a charge lands in your expenses and Surrah doesn't realise it paid a commitment — a different card, an unfamiliar merchant name, a transfer that looks like any other. You can file it yourself: open the expense and tell Surrah which commitment it paid.

Linking a charge

1. Open the expense from your expenses list.
2. Tap the ⋯ menu and choose Pays a commitment.
3. Pick the commitment the charge paid.
4. Confirm.

The charge becomes a payment on that commitment straight away. It appears in the commitment's History section as Linked expense, any overdue flag clears, and a loan, credit card or instalment balance drops by the amount paid.

The due date moves once per cycle

If the charge pays the cycle the commitment is currently waiting on, the due date moves to the next one.

If it doesn't — you already paid this month, or you're filing a payment from back in April — the payment is still recorded and the balance still drops, but the date stays where it is.

That rule holds everywhere in Surrah, not just here: a cycle is closed once. Two charges in the same month move the date one month, not two.

No second expense is created. Linking files a charge you already have — it never adds a new one, so your spending totals don't move. It's the same reasoning that keeps Also record as expense switched off by default when you mark a commitment paid.

What you can link to

The picker lists your own commitments that are waiting for a payment — active or overdue. It leaves out:

• Savings goals. Goals are funded, not paid — use Add funds.
• Paused commitments. Resume it first.
• Anything already finished. Cancelled and completed commitments take no more payments. Reopen one first if it should still be live.

One expense pays one commitment. If it's already linked, unlink it before linking it somewhere else.

If the amount doesn't match

Surrah warns you before you confirm when the charge is smaller than the payment the commitment expects — 100 against an expected 300, say. Go ahead and it records the 100 you actually paid: a loan, credit card or instalment balance drops by 100, and, if this is the cycle the commitment was waiting on, the due date moves to the next one.

There is no half-paid state in Surrah. A cycle is either closed or it isn't, and recording a payment closes it — exactly what Mark paid has always done when you type in a smaller amount. What you still owe isn't lost: on a loan, credit card or instalment plan it stays in the remaining balance, the number that tracks the debt. It simply won't come back as arrears on the next cycle. Pay the rest later in the same cycle and that charge is recorded too — the balance drops again, and the date stays put.

Undoing it

Once linked, the expense's menu names the commitment it pays and offers Unlink.

Unlinking always puts the money back: the balance returns to what it was. The due date goes back only if this link was what moved it. A link that closed a cycle returns the commitment to exactly the date it had before; a link that only recorded a payment leaves the date alone, because it never touched it.

The expense itself is untouched either way — nothing leaves your spending.

Undo doesn't stay open forever. As soon as something else moves that commitment on — you record another payment, or its next cycle comes round — the link sits under newer history, and Surrah tells you it can no longer be undone. In practice you have about one payment cycle to change your mind. After that, work from the commitment itself.

Surrah asks before it links

Most of the time you won't need to link anything yourself. When a bank message arrives from a merchant tied to one of your commitments, Surrah asks you: "Is this your … payment?" The question shows on the commitment, on the expense and in a notification, and answering Yes links the charge exactly as described above. If that commitment's payment is recorded From bank messages (Surrah+), it links without asking, and those payments read Auto-matched from SMS in the history.

It also knows when to stay out of the way. A second charge from the same merchant in a cycle you've already paid — an extra top-up, a usage bill on top of the subscription — stays an ordinary expense. It isn't attached to the commitment at all, so your due date doesn't drift a month further out. If it really was a payment, link it by hand: it gets recorded, and the date stays where it is.

Linking by hand is for the ones Surrah missed, or a Not this you want to take back — and Unlink works on an automatic match too, if it picked the wrong commitment.

One exception: a payment you recorded through Mark paid is managed from the commitment, not from the expense. Surrah will say so if you try.