The credit-card closing day
When you create or edit a credit card account, LedgerBear asks for a Statement Closing Day of Month. This is the day your card's statement closes each month — the date your issuer cuts off the month's charges and tallies them into a bill.
You'll find this date on any statement from your card. It's also sometimes called the "statement date" or "cycle closing date." Some issuers let you change it; most don't.
What LedgerBear uses it for
The closing day drives every "month" boundary that's specific to a credit card:
- The Spending tab shows daily charges against the current statement cycle — i.e., everything you've charged since the last closing day. The chart resets to zero each closing day, so you can see how your spending is tracking before the next bill posts.
- The History tab bucketizes past transactions into statement cycles instead of calendar months, and compares them against each other. If your closing day is the 15th, the "April" bar covers roughly March 16 – April 15.
- Linked-account reminders use the closing day to decide when the monthly payoff happens in the forecast of the account that pays the card. The payoff lands a few days after the closing day, matching how real credit-card due dates work.
Picking a day 1–28
The field only accepts values 1 through 28, not 29–31. This is on purpose: not every month has a 29th, 30th, or 31st, and LedgerBear doesn't try to guess what "the 31st" means in February.
If your real closing day is near the end of the month (29th, 30th, or 31st), pick 28. The cycles end up one to three days short some months, but the totals still roll up correctly and the Spending tab still resets at the right general time.
Changing the closing day later
You can change the closing day from the Edit Account dialog (pencil icon on the Accounts page). The change is retroactive — all the historical Spending and History charts re-bin around the new date the next time they render. No transactions move; only the boundaries between cycles shift.
If you've just switched issuers or had your closing day changed, updating it here keeps the forecast's payoff date aligned with your real due date.