Credit card

A credit card, an instalment plan, an overdraft — an account whose balance may be negative: that is not “minus in the wallet” but debt. On top of bookkeeping it has a “Payoff” tab: the interest-free-period timeline, the cost of credit and a calculator.

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How to create one

On the “Accounts” screen press + New account.
Type — “Credit card”.
Opening balance — the current debt with a “−” sign. Owe nothing? Leave it empty.
The credit limit and the rate outside the grace period. The limit draws the utilisation bar on the card; the rate is only used for the forecast — the actual interest arrives as transactions in the “Loan interest” category.
Choose the interest-free-period mechanic and fill in the cycle: statement day, grace length, payment deadline, minimum payment. The fields are optional — but without them the “Payoff” tab has nothing to work with. The statement day and the payment day are picked in a grid of days, as in a calendar, including “Last day”; “Clear” removes the choice.
Has the card been in use for a while? Switch on “Set when you started using the card” and pick a date — otherwise the period calculation will assume the card only appeared in your life today.

A new credit card: a 120,000 ₽ limit, a 49.9 % rate and the choice of interest-free-period mechanic. “A single deadline for the whole debt” hides the statement day and the payment date — that mechanic does not need them.

“Add account” → “Sber credit card” → “Credit card” → a 120,000 ₽ limit and 49.9 % rate → “How the interest-free period works” → “One deadline for the whole debt”: the statement fields disappear, only the period length is left — 100 days → “Create”.

A credit card entered as a regular card

A common story: a credit card is entered as a “Debit card” or a “Bank account”, with the debt simply written with a “−” sign. Bookkeeping works, but without “Debt”, the “Payoff” tab and payment reminders — all of that exists only for the “Credit card” type. So the app gives a hint:

in the account form — both when creating and when editing — a debit card or a bank account with a negative opening balance gets a “Below zero on the card?” notice under the field. The Make it a credit card button switches the type to “Credit card”: the name, the currency and the amount with its “−” sign stay, and the limit and interest-free-period fields appear;
the card of an account that is already below zero shows the same notice with a Change type button that opens the account form. The cross hides the notice for this account for good (on this device), and after the type change it goes away by itself.

The hint blocks nothing: a debit card below zero (an overdraft) is fine, and the account is saved as is. Only you change the type — the app never does it on its own. The transactions and the balance do not change with the type: a credit card's debt is exactly the negative balance.

“New account” as a “Debit card” with a balance of −12,500 ₽: “Below zero on the card?” appears under the field; “Make it a credit card” switches the type, leaving the limit to set before creating the account.

On the phone the same hint shows up in the new account form under the opening balance; “Make it a credit card” opens the limit and interest-free period fields.

The card appeared in the app later than in your life

The interest-free-period calculation only sees the account history that exists in the book: it starts when you created the account, or with its first transaction. For a card you have been using for years but only entered into Svodly yesterday that is wrong: the real statement and its deadline exist earlier, and until the first “own” statement the app answered, honestly but uselessly, “no statement debt”.

The credit account form — on the computer, on the web and on the phone — has a “Set when you started using the card” switch with a date:

the statement mechanic starts presenting statements from that date, together with their deadlines;
the “single deadline for the whole debt” mechanic counts the period from it when the start is not visible from the transactions;
a debt hanging over from a long-overdue statement is honestly shown as “the period has been missed”.

The date is optional: leave it out and everything is counted as before. It syncs between devices and is part of the book's portable format.

A savings account already had such a date — “Accrue from” on automatic interest accrual.

The credit card form: the “Set when you started using the card” switch and a date — the “Payoff” tab starts presenting statements from it rather than from the moment the account was created.

The same switch with a date in the credit account form on the phone — both when creating and when editing.

Debt on the last statement

A card's opening balance is its state on the day you created the account in the app. By then the bank had already billed part of that debt on a statement, while the rest you spent after it — and the two parts are indistinguishable by eye. So a statement older than the account creation was charged with the whole recorded debt, and “pay this much more to avoid interest” came out overstated (with even spending — roughly twice as large) on an otherwise correct deadline.

Next to the usage start date there is a “Debt on the last statement” field: how much of the recorded debt the bank has already billed. That part is due next; the rest is current-cycle spending and lands on the following statement.

The field appears when the “Set the card usage start” toggle is on and the “A new statement every month” mechanic is selected: with a single deadline for the whole debt there are no separate statements to split.
The value is optional: leave it empty and the whole debt counts as billed — the calculation is unchanged.
The easiest place to look the amount up is the last statement or your bank's app — it is the figure the bank asks you to pay by the due date.

The field is available on desktop, on the web and on the phone; it syncs between devices and is included in a book transfer.

A new credit card with a 40,000 ₽ balance owed: “Set when you started using the card”, a date — and “Debt on the last statement” appears. 25,000 ₽ of the debt is already on the statement, so the “Repayment” tab asks for 25,000 ₽, not the whole debt.

On the phone, the “Debt on the last statement” field appears in the credit card form after the usage start date.

The minimum-payment term — the way your bank puts it

Banks set the payment date in two different ways, and until recently Svodly understood only one of them. The account form now carries a “How the minimum-payment term is set” switch:

“Within a number of days after the statement” — “pay within 25 days of the statement date”. The payment date drifts along with the statement.
“By a fixed day of the month” — “pay by the 20th”. The payment date is pinned to a day and does not depend on the statement; 31 means the last day of the month, however short that month is.

Pick whichever variant matches the wording of your contract or your banking app — then the forecast and the warnings will line up with what the bank actually expects from you.

The term is visible right in the accounts list

You no longer have to open the card to find out when and how much to pay. Under the credit limit bar on the card in “Accounts” there is now a line like “12,400 ₽ by 20 Sep · 5d” — the minimum payment, the date and how many days are left. The closer the deadline, the more alarming its colour; an overdue payment is labelled “overdue” and one due today “today”.

Don't confuse it with the neighbouring interest-free-period line: that one answers “how not to pay interest”, this one “how not to fall into arrears”. Their deadlines differ, and that is normal.

Under the “T-Bank Platinum” limit bar is the line “1,417 ₽ by Oct 27”. In the account card, “How the minimum payment due date is set” → “By a fixed day of the month” → day 20 → “Save”: the line in the list turns into “… by Oct 20”.

On the phone the switch and the “Day of month” field live in the same account form, and the due line sits on the credit card in “Accounts”.

The interest-free period and the payoff

A credit card has a “Payoff” tab in the account card. Fill in the cycle parameters (they are optional fields of the account form), and the app computes:

The interest-free period — a timeline of the cycle “statement → today → deadline”: how much and by which date to pay in so as not to pay interest, a traffic-light of urgency and a Make a payment button. The statement's payoff amount is computed from the transactions.
The cost of credit — the minimum payment, the rate outside the grace period with an estimate “≈ N ₽/mo on the current debt” and “Paid to the bank” from the real transactions in the “Loan interest” category.
The payoff calculator — you set a payment and get the closing date, the overpayment and the debt-reduction chart; there are presets “make it interest-free” and “minimum only”. Or the other way round — set a term and get the payment (see Payoff plan).

In the card header such an account shows “Debt” instead of “Balance −”, and below the limit bar — a compact line of the period. When a week or less is left before the deadline, the reminder also appears on the Summary.

The payment in the transaction feed

A credit card payment is a transfer from your own account to the credit one; the Make a payment button opens it with the card already filled in. In the feed such a transfer reads as a repayment rather than a faceless “Transfer to”:

on the account you paid from — “Credit card payment «Alfa»” (for a loan with a schedule — “Loan payment «Mortgage»”);
in the feed of the credit card itself — “Payment from «T-Bank»”.

The opposite direction — money taken from the credit card to your own account — stays a “Transfer”. Only the label changes: the transaction is still a transfer, so the “Type” filter, the totals and the statistics count it as before. The label is the same in the transaction table and calendar, on the account cards and in “Recent transactions” of the business book and of the “Summary” — on the computer, on the web and on the phone.

The “Summary” hides ordinary transfers between your own accounts but shows a credit card or loan payment: as a single debit line from the account you paid from. It is not added to the day and month totals — the credit card purchases are already counted as expenses.

“Repayment” → “Make a payment”: the transfer to the card is prefilled, enter the amount from the heading — and the timeline shows “No statement debt”. In the card’s feed and on the Summary the payment is labelled as a credit card payment.

On the phone, “Make a payment” on the “Repayment” tab opens a transfer with the card already selected.

Two mechanics of the interest-free period

Banks count the grace period differently, and the app asks which one it is — with a switch in the credit account form:

“A new statement with its own deadline every month” (the default). That is how Sber's “120 days”, T-Bank and most cards work: on the statement day the current cycle closes and gets its own payment deadline. Several unclosed statements can be open at once.
“A single deadline for the whole debt” — the mechanic of VTB's “Karta vozmozhnostey” and Alfa's “100 days”: the period starts on the 1st of the month in which you made a purchase with a zero balance, and by its end the whole debt has to be repaid, including purchases from the following months. Paying it off in full opens a new period.

The choice changes both the arithmetic and the look of the “Payoff” tab. With a single deadline the statement day and the payment date are not needed — those fields are hidden in the form — and the tab shows one timeline “start → today → end” headed “Repay the whole debt of N by …”. The minimum payment is worked out from the current debt.

It is worth setting the mechanic straight away: on a card with a single deadline the monthly model would show an understated “pay by” amount — the debt of the oldest statement instead of the whole debt. That is the expensive direction to be wrong in.

The “Payoff” tab of a card with a single deadline: one “start → today → end” timeline headed “Repay the whole debt of N by …”. The mechanic itself is chosen in the account form — with the “A new statement every month” / “A single deadline for the whole debt” switch.

On the phone: for the “Alfa credit card” (one deadline) the “Payoff” tab says “Pay off the whole debt — … by …” and draws the period from start to end. The mechanism is picked in the account form — “How the interest-free period works”. “T-Bank Platinum” (a statement every month) shows the “Next statement — …” line.

The next statement and the open ones

On cards with a long grace period a new interest-free window opens every month, and a single line cannot tell you which cycle today's purchase falls into. So in the active phase of the timeline there is a line “Next statement — ⟨date⟩: new purchases will go into it”.

And when two or more statements are unclosed, an “Open statements” list appears under the timeline: the statement date → how much it added to the debt → the date to pay by. An overdue one is highlighted. The amounts in the list are incremental — they add up to the whole unclosed debt; a statement with no new spending adds no row.

The caption under the list is a reminder of the mechanic: a payment settles the oldest statement first — which is exactly why the nearest deadline matters more than the total.

Checking against your bank

Svodly calculates the minimum payment and the “to avoid interest” amount itself — from the cycle settings and the transactions. But every bank has its own rules for rounding, fees and what goes into a statement, so the figure may differ from the one your bank shows. Then you can correct it:

on the “Payoff” tab press Check against bank — on any day of the cycle;
or, on the statement day, answer the plate on the Summary ““…” statement: minimum payment — N by date, to avoid interest — M. Check against your bank”: Matches hides it until the next statement, Correct opens the form.

The form has two optional fields — “Minimum payment — left to pay” and “To avoid interest — left to pay”. Enter what your bank shows now, not the statement amount: that way the figure matches the bank's screen on any day. An empty field keeps Svodly's calculation; a hint under each field shows what the app displays now.

The correction lives for one cycle: payments made after it are subtracted from the bank's figures automatically, and with the next statement the calculation comes back (with a single deadline on the whole debt — after the minimum payment date). While it holds, the amounts are marked “per bank” wherever they appear: on the “Payoff” tab, in the line under the limit bar, in the due line in “Accounts” and in the Summary reminder. To undo it, press Use calculation on the “Payoff” tab.

If several statements are open, “to avoid interest” refers to the nearest one — the one whose deadline comes first; the rest are calculated as usual.

“Payoff” → “Check against bank”: the amounts from the bank’s app go into two fields → “Save”. The figures are marked “per bank”, and “Use calculation” removes the correction.

On the phone “Check against bank” sits under the timeline of the “Payoff” tab; the form opens as a sheet, and corrected amounts are marked “per bank” in the same way.

Payoff plan

The calculator answers the question from both sides. The switch above the “Debt” field:

“I know the payment” — set a monthly amount and get the month the debt is cleared;
“I know the term” — pick 3, 6 or 12 months (or your own number) and get the payment: “20,000 ₽/mo — debt cleared in December”. If the card has a rate, the payment includes interest — calculated by the same run as the first mode.

If the payment comes out below the minimum payment, the calculator warns you: a payoff plan does not replace the minimum payment, and paying less counts as a late payment at the bank.

The Save as plan button under the result stores the payment and the month on the account. A “Payoff plan” block appears above the calculator:

“20,000 ₽/mo · clear by December” — the plan itself;
“Paid in September: 12,000 of 20,000 ₽” with a bar — transfers to the credit card during the calendar month count; a purchase refund or cashback is not a payment;
a forecast from the current debt — “On track”, or, if the debt has grown, “At this pace — January, a month behind plan”.

New card purchases increase the debt and push the forecast back, but the plan itself stays the same. To recalculate it, press Edit — the calculator opens with the term up to the plan's month and shows how much to pay now; to drop the plan, press Remove plan. Once the debt is paid off, the block says “Debt cleared” and the plan is removed automatically.

A plan is a goal of the card, not a budget: it is not in “Budgets” and adds no reminders to the Summary. The minimum-payment and interest-free deadlines keep their own lines and plates.

The “Payoff” tab: the calculator in “I know the term” mode — “3 months” gives the monthly payment; “Save as plan”, and the “Payoff plan” block with the month’s progress appears above the calculator.

On the phone it is the same “Payoff” tab: “I know the term” → “3 months” → “Save as plan”, and the plan block settles above the calculator.

Footnotes under the calculations

The headings of the calculated blocks on the “Payoff” tab — “Interest-free period”, “Payoff plan”, “Cost of credit”, “Payoff calculator” — carry a ¹ mark. It points to a footnote at the very bottom of the tab: amounts, dates and interest are calculated from the rate, grace period and payments you entered, and your bank may calculate differently — with fees, penalties or changed terms — so check your statement before paying. The line below reminds you that the calculations are for reference only and are not an individual recommendation: you make your own decisions based on them (section 6 of the License Agreement). The footnotes cannot be dismissed and appear on every platform.

Where to go next

Summary — the reminder about the interest-free deadline.
Cashback — the rules are attached to an account.
Accounts — the general part: transfers, currencies, archiving.