Recording money in and out

Logging income and expenses keeps your profit, your category totals, and your per-animal numbers accurate. The simple Add money form on your finance dashboard is built for speed: a handful of fields, no accounting knowledge required. Creatures keeps the bookkeeping details in the background.

Open the form

On your finance dashboard, select Add money, or scroll to the Add money section. The first time you save an entry, Creatures creates a default book for you automatically, so there is nothing to set up first. See Setting up your books for what that book is.

Money out or money in

The form opens with a direction toggle. This is the single most important choice, because it decides whether the entry is an expense or income and which categories you can pick.

• Money out: an expense. This is the default. The category list becomes your expense categories.
• Money in: income. The category list switches to your income categories.

Behind the scenes the entry is stored as type expense or income accordingly, and posted against your main checking account.

The fields

• Amount: what the entry is worth, in dollars and cents, for example 45 or 45.00. It is required and must be greater than zero. You enter the same positive amount whether it is money in or money out; the direction toggle, not a minus sign, decides the direction. Creatures stores the value to the cent.
• Date: when the money moved, defaulting to today. It is required and must be a real calendar date. The date determines which period the entry falls into on your dashboard, so an entry dated last month will not show under "This month."
• Category: the kind of money. The options depend on the direction:
• Money out (expenses): Feed, Vet/health, Supplies, Breeding fees paid, and Other.
• Money in (income): Animal sale, Stud/breeding service, Other service, and Other income.

Each category quietly maps to the right accounting and tax line, so picking "Feed" or "Animal sale" is all you need to do; Creatures handles the bookkeeping treatment. Picking the closest category keeps your category breakdown and your eventual tax schedules meaningful, which is why a real category beats leaving it on "Other."

• Note: optional free text, for example "spring hay order" or the buyer's name. The note is appended to the category label in your records ("Feed: spring hay order"), so it shows up in Recent activity and makes an entry recognizable later.

Select Save entry to post it. The entry immediately updates your Profit, Income, Expenses, category panels, and Recent activity for the matching period.

Connecting an entry to an animal

The simple form does not include an animal picker. To tie an entry to a specific animal, start from that animal instead:

• Open the animal's profile, go to its Finance tab, and use Add money there. The form opens with the animal already attached, and a line reads "This entry will be connected to [animal name]."
• Only animals you own or manage can be connected, and the whole amount posts to that one animal. Connected entries appear on that animal's Finance tab and in the per-animal table on your dashboard.

If you need to split one expense across several animals, or attach a receipt to an entry, use Advanced records (/finance/ledger); the simple form is intentionally kept to the essentials.

Sales recorded for you

When you sell through the Creatures marketplace, the income posts to your books automatically when the sale completes, and if the animal you sold has a recorded cost basis, the matching cost is posted at the same time so your profit is right. These entries appear in Recent activity labeled as a marketplace sale, so you do not enter them twice. Use the manual Add money form for anything that happens off Creatures.

This automatic posting depends on a completed marketplace purchase, so it is not something you trigger by hand; it simply shows up after a sale settles. For when a sale counts as settled and the proceeds are released, see How seller payout works.

Related information

• Understanding your finance dashboard
• Animal cost basis and starting values
• An animal's finances and ROI

Updated on: 23/06/2026