Allow subscriptions to track transfers between asset accounts

[dominikconrads]

Support guidelines

• I've read the support guidelines
• My request is not listed as a very good idea, but unfortunately...
• I've used the search and this has not been requested before.

Use of AI

• I'm a real person and wrote this bug without assistance from AI.

Description

I use the subscriptions feature to keep track of recurring payments and to see which regular financial commitments have already been processed and which are still expected.

However, some recurring payments are not expenses but transfers between two of my own asset accounts.

A typical example would be a monthly transfer from my main bank account to a savings account. Other examples could include recurring transfers to an investment account or another account used for setting money aside.

Currently, it appears that subscriptions only recognize withdrawals/expenses. If I classify the same transaction as a withdrawal, it can be matched to the subscription, but when it is correctly recorded as a transfer between two asset accounts, it is not recognized.

From an accounting perspective, I understand that such a transaction is not an expense because the money remains within my own assets. However, from a financial planning perspective, recurring transfers can serve essentially the same purpose as other subscriptions: they are regular payments that I want to track and verify each month.

Solution

It would be useful if subscriptions could optionally support transfers in addition to withdrawals.

When creating or editing a subscription, there could for example be an option to specify whether the expected transaction is:

• a withdrawal,
• a transfer,
• or potentially either type.

For a transfer subscription, it could also be possible to define the expected source and destination asset accounts.

For example:

Main account -> Savings account: €250 monthly

Firefly III could then recognize the corresponding transfer and mark the subscription as paid for that period, just as it currently does for recurring expenses.

This would allow subscriptions to represent recurring financial commitments without requiring users to incorrectly classify transfers as expenses simply to make them compatible with the subscriptions feature.

Additional context

My main use case is recurring savings.

Every month, a fixed amount is transferred from my regular asset account to another asset account used for savings. I would like this transfer to appear alongside my other subscriptions so I can see whether the planned monthly transfer has already taken place.

The transaction should remain a transfer because that correctly represents what actually happened. Changing it to a withdrawal would make the subscription tracking work, but would incorrectly record money moved between my own accounts as an expense.

Supporting transfers in subscriptions would therefore make the feature useful not only for recurring expenses, but also for recurring savings and similar scheduled movements between a user’s own accounts.

[JC5]

Hey, thanks for opening an issue.

Sorry about the bot, it is a little misguided.

But no, this will remain as it is. Im aware that its not ideal and im working on a sustainable solution.

Cheers,
James

[dominikconrads]

Okay, that's too bad.
But if you already have a more sustainable solution in mind, I'm curious to see what features we can look forward to.