Core Concepts

Before diving into features, it helps to understand the key building blocks that power Wambai. These concepts work together to give you a clear, accurate picture of your household finances.

Households

A Household is your shared financial space. Think of it as a private ledger that belongs to your family, couple, or just you. Everything in Wambai lives inside a household: your accounts, transactions, budgets, credits, and recurring payments.

Each household has:

• A name you choose (e.g., "Smith Family", "My Finances").
• A country that determines regional defaults.
• A primary currency used for reporting and totals.

You can be a member of multiple households. For example, one for personal finances and one shared with your partner.

Roles

Every household member has a role that controls what they can do:

The person who creates the household is automatically the Owner. Owners can invite others and assign roles.

Accounts (Chart of Accounts)

Wambai uses a structured chart of accounts to organize your finances. Every dollar flows through an account. There are five main types:

• Assets — What you own: cash, bank accounts, investments, property.
• Liabilities — What you owe: credit cards, loans, mortgages.
• Equity — Your net worth (assets minus liabilities).
• Revenue — Money coming in: salary, freelance income, rental income.
• Expenses — Money going out: groceries, rent, utilities, entertainment.

Accounts are organized in a hierarchy using numeric codes. You don't need to worry about the codes — Wambai sets up a complete chart of accounts for you during onboarding and shows friendly names throughout the app.

Documents and Items

In Wambai, every financial event is recorded as a Document. A document is like a receipt or voucher — it captures what happened, when, and who was involved.

Each document contains Items — the individual line entries that show which accounts were affected and by how much. This is where the double-entry magic happens.

Document Types

• Expense — Money spent (groceries, bills, subscriptions).
• Income — Money received (salary, payments, refunds).
• Transfer — Money moved between your own accounts.
• Credit Payment — A loan or credit card payment.
• Recurring — Automatically generated from a recurring rule.
• AI Generated — Created through the AI assistant.

Document Status

Documents move through a simple lifecycle:

1. Created — A draft that you can still edit.
2. Accounting — Finalized and locked. This is the official record.
3. Deleted — Soft-deleted, preserved for audit but no longer active.

Double-Entry Accounting (Simplified)

Wambai uses double-entry accounting under the hood, but you don't need to be an accountant to use it. Here's the simple version:

Every transaction has two sides. When you spend $50 on groceries:

• Your Groceries expense account increases by $50 (debit).
• Your Bank Account decreases by $50 (credit).

The total debits always equal the total credits. This keeps your books perfectly balanced and gives you an accurate picture of where your money is.

Quick Entry handles this automatically — you just enter the amount, pick the category, and Wambai creates the balanced journal entries behind the scenes. For advanced users, Journal Entry mode lets you create multi-line entries directly.

Persons (Payers and Payees)

A Person represents anyone you exchange money with: your employer, the grocery store, your landlord, a friend who owes you lunch. Persons help you track who you paid and who paid you.

Household members are automatically available as persons, and you can add external contacts at any time.

Multi-Currency

Wambai supports multiple currencies across your accounts and transactions. Each account has a primary currency, but you can record transactions in any currency. This is perfect for:

• International households.
• Freelancers paid in foreign currencies.
• Travel expenses in different currencies.
• Tracking investments denominated in other currencies.

The household's primary currency is used as the reporting currency for dashboards and totals.