When you pay your credit card, Beacon treats it as money moving between two of your own accounts, not as new spending. Nothing new leaves your budget. The money was already set aside while you were spending.
A quick recap of the spend side
As you spend on your card, Beacon sets that money aside in that card’s credit card bucket. It pulls from a matching bucket when one exists, or from Free-to-Spend when nothing matches. By the time the bill is due, the cash to cover it is already reserved. For the full spend-side walkthrough, see set up credit card integration.
This guide picks up where that one leaves off. What happens when you actually pay the card.
One payment, two transactions
Almost everything else here follows from this one fact.
Paying your card is a single event that your bank reports twice. Your credit card reports a credit, because its balance went down. Your checking account reports a debit, because money left. Both rows are real and both will show up. They are two halves of the same payment.
Beacon matches those two halves and then shows them differently.
- On the card, the payment reads as a Transfer called “Payment to {card name}”. There is no Spending From picker, because a credit on your card is not spending.
- In checking, the withdrawal names that card’s credit card bucket in Spending From, in that bucket’s own color, already selected. The picker is still there if you need it.
The checking side is a label. No money moves there. It already moved on the card side, and the label is telling you where it went.
If the label looks wrong
Beacon matches the two halves by amount and timing, so once in a while it pairs the wrong two transactions. If a payment names a bucket that does not look right, pick the right one. Your choice is saved, and it wins over anything Beacon worked out.
What happens to your credit card bucket
When the payment settles, Beacon brings that card’s credit card bucket down by the payment amount. You reserved that money as you spent. Now you have handed it to the card, so the reservation is no longer needed.
The credit card bucket can never drop below zero. If you pay more than the bucket holds, it stops at zero rather than going negative, and Beacon tells you on the payment how much came from the bucket and how much came from Free-to-Spend.
A payment from start to finish
Numbers make this much clearer than words do. Say you have a Visa with a $300 statement, and credit card integration has been setting money aside as you spent.
Starting balances:
- Free-to-Spend: $500
- Visa bucket: $300
- Checking: $2,000
Day 1. You pay the card. Your Visa reports the payment first, which is the usual order.
Beacon does not touch the bucket yet. It opens a hold and waits. The payment reads “Waiting for this payment to leave your checking account,” with a line telling you what is pending.
Your Visa bucket comes down by $300.00 when the withdrawal shows up, or on March 12.
Balances are unchanged. Free-to-Spend $500, Visa bucket $300, checking $2,000.
Day 2. The $300 leaves your checking account. Now both halves have landed, so the hold releases and two things happen at once.
- Checking drops to $1,700, which pulls Free-to-Spend down by $300.
- The Visa bucket comes down to $0, which pushes Free-to-Spend up by $300.
New balances:
- Free-to-Spend: $500 (no change)
- Visa bucket: $0 (-$300)
- Checking: $1,700 (-$300)
Free-to-Spend did not move. That is the point of the whole feature. You set that money aside weeks ago as you spent it, so paying the bill is handing over money that was already spoken for. Beacon waits so the two sides land together rather than a day apart.
Why the payment waits before the bucket moves
A card payment affects Free-to-Spend in two places, and the two halves can land on different days.
- Bringing the credit card bucket down raises Free-to-Spend.
- The withdrawal leaving your checking account lowers Free-to-Spend.
If Beacon applied the bucket side the moment it saw the payment, Free-to-Spend would jump up by the payment amount, then drop back down a day or two later when the withdrawal cleared. On a $300 payment that is a $300 swing up and a $300 swing down, for a payment that should not change the number at all.
So Beacon holds the bucket reduction until the matching withdrawal shows up. We would rather your Free-to-Spend sit a day behind than swing twice for one payment.
The order does not matter. Sometimes checking posts first and the card reports a day later. Beacon pairs them either way, and the label appears once it has seen both halves.
What if the withdrawal never shows up
This happens when you pay the card from a bank you have not linked. Beacon never sees the money leave, so the hold has nothing to match against.
Until something clears it, the Visa bucket is still holding $300 for a bill you already paid, and your Free-to-Spend reads $300 lower than it really is.
The hold gives up on its own after about 3 days and brings the bucket down then, with the same reduction it would have made if the withdrawal had arrived. Tapping Release now does it immediately.
What Release now actually does
It stops the waiting and brings the bucket down now, instead of when the withdrawal arrives.
On that $300 payment, the Visa bucket goes to $0 and Free-to-Spend goes up $300. Your checking balance does not change, because the money left an account Beacon cannot see. Nothing is sent to your bank.
Only use it when you paid from an account Beacon cannot see. If the paying account is linked, leave the hold alone and the withdrawal will settle it within a day or two.
If you tap it by mistake, the bucket comes down early and Free-to-Spend goes up early. The withdrawal brings it back down when it lands, so you end up in the same place.
What if I paid from a different account
If the account you paid from is connected to Beacon, it does not matter which one it is. Beacon looks across every connected account in your budget for the matching withdrawal, not just your main checking account, so paying from a savings account or a second bank works the same way and needs nothing from you.
The one case that needs your help is the unlinked account above.
Why Free-to-Spend goes UP when a payment settles
This one surprises people. It is correct, and it is only ever half the story.
Your credit card bucket is money reserved out of Free-to-Spend. Bringing the bucket down releases that reservation, so Free-to-Spend goes up. The withdrawal leaving checking brings it back down by the same amount, which is why a settled payment leaves your Free-to-Spend where it started.
If you only see the up half, the withdrawal has not landed yet. Give it a day. If you paid from an account Beacon cannot see, it is never going to land, and the section above on Release now is what you want.
What about refunds
A refund on your card reverses the original purchase. The money goes back to the bucket it came from, and the credit card bucket comes down to match. In the common case you do not have to touch anything.
When Beacon cannot confidently tie a refund to one original purchase, for example two identical charges at the same merchant and amount, the refund goes to Free-to-Spend instead. That is deliberate. Beacon would rather hand the money back somewhere obvious than guess at a bucket and quietly put it in the wrong one. You can reassign it with the Spending From picker. The refund FAQ in set up credit card integration covers this in more detail.
Why doesn’t my credit card bucket match my statement?
A few ordinary reasons your credit card bucket and your statement balance can differ.
- A payment is still on hold, so the bucket has not come down yet. This is the most common one, and it sorts itself out within a day or two.
- There was debt on the card from before you linked it, which was never bucketed.
- You set up extra paydown on top of the statement amount.
The matching section in set up credit card integration walks through each of these.