Logging money

Every number anywhere in Pocketbird traces back to one small record. A transaction is an amount in baht, a direction — money out or money in — and, if you want one, a category. Everything else on the form is optional.

The form is built around that. On a new transaction the amount field is focused the moment it opens, so the shortest possible log is three moves: type the amount, tap a category, tap Save. The seven fields most people rarely need are folded away until you ask for them.

The same form does four jobs — adding, editing, duplicating, and confirming a receipt the app read for you — so everything below holds in all four.

• Amounts are stored positive — the Expense/Income direction carries the sign — and are rounded to two decimals (satang) as they are read.
• Money is always Thai baht, always written with ฿ before the number and no space — ฿1,234.56 — and a minus hugs the first digit, ฿−1,234.56, whether you use the app in Thai or English.
• A new transaction is dated now. You can change the date, but you have to open More details to reach it.
• Only your personal categories are offered here — shop and business categories can never be picked in this form — and anything you have deleted, whether a category, tag, account, pocket or trip, is never offered again.

Three ways in, all the same sheet: the "+" at the top right of the Transactions tab, the same "+" on Summary, and ⌘N if a keyboard is attached. The title reads "Add Transaction" / "เพิ่มรายการ".

1. 1Tap "+". The sheet opens with the amount field focused and the decimal number pad already up.
2. 2Type the amount.
3. 3Tap a category in the grid, or a chip in the "Recent" / "ล่าสุด" row above it.
4. 4Tap "Save" / "บันทึก" at the top right.

Every money field in the app is the same control, and it changes shape as you use it: a grouped, ฿-prefixed figure when you are not in it, a clean un-grouped number while you type, so the thousands separators never fight your cursor. It also hides a calculator.

1. 1Tap into the amount field. A small ±÷ icon appears beside it, named "Calculator" / "เครื่องคิดเลข".
2. 2Tap it. The system number pad drops away and an in-app calculator keypad takes its place.
3. 3Build the expression from the keys: digits, a decimal point, + − × ÷, brackets, %, and ⌫.
4. 4Tap "=". The result is written back into the field as a normal grouped amount.

• A dim line under the expression keeps a running total as you type, so you see the answer before you commit to it.
• If the expression cannot be evaluated, the keypad stays up with "Check the expression" / "ตรวจสอบสิ่งที่พิมพ์อีกครั้ง" and your typing is kept. Dividing by zero, unbalanced brackets and stray letters all produce no result and leave the field exactly as it was.
• × and ÷ bind tighter than + and −, brackets group, and a trailing operator is tolerated — "1200+" evaluates to 1200.
• The arithmetic is exact decimal, so 0.1 + 0.2 really is 0.30.
• You cannot type a minus sign — the pad has no key for one. The calculator can produce a negative ("3000−4000="), but the transaction form refuses to save an amount that is not above 0.
• Calculator mode is per field and is never remembered — the next field you tap starts as a plain number pad again.

The category grid is round coloured tiles — one tap selects, and the colour is the category's own, not decoration. Above it sits a "Recent" / "ล่าสุด" chip row of the categories you actually use, so most logs never need the grid at all.

• A tile with a small chevron has subcategories. Selecting it opens a panel below headed "Subcategories of %@" / "หมวดย่อยของ %@" — Pocketbird keeps one level of subcategory and no deeper.
• The "Recent" row is ranked by how often you have used each category for that type across your most recent 250 transactions, most-used first, and is capped at 6. A brand-new account sees no chip row at all.
• The grid only ever shows top-level categories of the current type. Flipping Expense↔Income clears a category that no longer fits — and when you are editing an existing row, flipping back restores the original.

Below the grid sits "Paid With" / "จ่ายด้วย". Pick an account instead and the two stop being separate questions: the account decides how you paid.

• Picking an account makes the Paid With control read-only and says why: "Set by the selected account — cash accounts pay in cash, credit cards in credit, and bank and e-wallet accounts pay digitally."
• Setting the account back to "None" / "ไม่ระบุ" hands the choice back to you, starting from the value that was showing.
• A fresh add seeds your default account once per sheet. Clear it and it stays cleared — the app never puts it back behind your back.
• Archived accounts are not offered for a new tag, but a transaction already tagged to one keeps it when you edit.

Seven optional fields live behind "More details" / "รายละเอียดเพิ่มเติม". They are hidden only on a fresh add — open a transaction to edit it, duplicate it, or confirm a scan and the block is already expanded, so nothing that was filled in for you is ever out of sight.

One photo per transaction, and it syncs — a slip you photograph on your phone opens on your iPad too. The photo is only committed when you save the transaction, so backing out of the form leaves nothing behind.

1. 1In "More details", tap "Attach Photo" / "แนบรูป".
2. 2Choose "Take Photo" / "ถ่ายรูป" or "Choose from Library" / "เลือกจากคลังรูป".
3. 3A thumbnail appears with an expand badge. Tap it to open the full-screen viewer.
4. 4Change your mind with "Replace Photo" / "เปลี่ยนรูป" or "Remove Photo" / "ลบรูป", then save.

• Every photo you pick is downscaled to a 2048 px long edge and re-encoded as JPEG, then hard-capped at about 2 MB. Anything still over the cap is not attached, and the field says so: "That photo was too large to attach." / "รูปนี้ใหญ่เกินไป แนบไม่ได้"
• "Take Photo" is hidden entirely — not greyed out — on a device with no camera. And it is a plain camera snapshot, not the document scanner, so it asks for camera permission only and never touches your photo library.
• Replacing a photo deletes the old one and stores a new one, so there is exactly one live photo per transaction — and deleting the transaction deletes its photo with it.
• A row with a photo shows a paperclip in the ledger. A photo that arrived from another device downloads the first time you open it; offline you get a placeholder rather than an error.

Save sits at the top right and reads "Save" / "บันทึก" — except when you arrived from a scan, where it reads "Confirm" / "ยืนยัน", because there you are approving something the app filled in rather than writing it yourself.

• Cleared for the next entry: amount, note, category, tags, the person and the receipt photo.
• Kept for the next entry: type, date, payment source, account, pocket and trip — the things that stay the same across a stack of receipts from one afternoon.
• Saving fires a short success haptic and syncs immediately when you are signed in.
• If the save fails, the sheet stays open and shows "Couldn't Save" / "บันทึกไม่สำเร็จ" with an "OK" / "ตกลง" button — your typing is never thrown away.

Tap any row in the ledger and the edit form morphs open out of it. It is the same form, pre-filled, with every optional field already expanded.

• In edit mode "Save" / "บันทึก" stays greyed out until something actually changes, so a no-op save is impossible. Attaching or removing a photo counts as a change.
• A transaction created by recording a debt payment is partly locked: Amount, Type and Category are disabled, with the banner "This is a debt payment. To change the amount, delete it and record a new one from the debt." The date, the note and everything else stay editable.
• Change the amount or the type on an expense that triggered a round-up and the old spare change is taken back out of the pocket and recomputed in the same save.
• Correcting a category teaches Pocketbird which category you mean for that merchant, so the next capture with the same name arrives pre-filled. That memory lives on this device only and is erased when you sign out.

• A duplicate opens as a new, unsaved form — the original is untouched, and the copy only exists once you tap Save.
• What comes across: amount, type, note, payment source, account, pocket, trip, your share, tags, the person, the instalment term — and its own independent copy of the receipt photo.
• What does not: the date resets to today, a deleted category is dropped so the copy opens uncategorized, the link to a debt is dropped so the copy never posts to that debt, and a photo that has not downloaded to this device yet is simply left out.
• Duplicating from inside the edit form swaps the sheet rather than stacking a second one on top, and unsaved edits in the form you were in are deliberately not carried into the copy.

Some things you buy the same way every week, and for those the form is more ceremony than it is worth. Pocketbird has shorter routes: one inside the app, and several that never open it at all.

Inside the app, a strip of chips sits above the search bar on the Transactions tab. Tap one and the expense is logged on the spot: the same category, amount, type, note, payment source and account as the original, dated today.

• A chip only appears for a category-and-amount pair you have logged at least twice, and only the four most frequent are shown, most frequent first.
• Only expenses with a live category qualify. Delete the category and the chip goes with it.
• The chip's amount keeps its satang, because that is the exact figure it will log.

• Siri and Shortcuts: say "Add an expense in Pocketbird" / "เพิ่มรายจ่ายใน Pocketbird" and it logs without opening the app, answering "Added a %@ expense" / "เพิ่มรายจ่าย %@ แล้ว". You have to be signed in and to have accepted the privacy terms first, and the amount must be greater than 0.
• The "Pocketbird Quick Add" / "Pocketbird เพิ่มด่วน" Home Screen widget has three preset buttons — ฿20, ฿60 and ฿100 out of the box. Long-press the widget and choose Edit Widget to change them. A tap is queued and written the next time you open the app, not the instant you press it.
• Control Center, the Lock Screen and the Action button can carry "Quick Add" / "เพิ่มอย่างรวดเร็ว", which opens the form, and "Scan Receipt" / "สแกนใบเสร็จ", which opens it with the document scanner already running.
• Share a slip image or a payment SMS to Pocketbird from any app: an image is read and handed to the confirm form with the photo already attached, text goes to Smart Paste, and when both are shared the image wins.

Two settings change what happens every time you log, and both live outside this screen.

• More → Tags → "Automation Rules" / "กฎอัตโนมัติ" adds a tag automatically to every new transaction matching one condition: "Note contains" / "โน้ตมีคำว่า", "Category is" / "หมวดหมู่คือ", or "Amount at least" / "ยอดตั้งแต่". The row only appears once you have at least one tag. Rules only ever add tags — they never replace the ones you picked — they run on capture only, so editing an old transaction never re-runs them, and they are stored on this device: they do not sync.
• More → Settings → "Round-Up Savings" / "ออมเงินปัดเศษ" is off until you turn it on. With it on, every expense you log is rounded up to the nearest ฿5, ฿10, ฿20 or ฿50 — ฿10 by default — and the difference is moved into a savings pocket you choose. There is no Save button on that screen; changes apply as you make them.