Help / Accounts

Deleting an account

Deleting an account is permanent and cascades. Before you pull the trigger, read this page and consider a rename instead.

What gets deleted

On the Accounts page, clicking the trash icon in an account's Actions column opens a confirmation dialog. If you confirm, LedgerBear removes all of the following:

  • Every transaction in the account.
  • Every reminder attached to the account, including any reminder that pointed at a different account and was linked to this one (those linked-account references are also cleared).
  • Every rule that was scoped specifically to this account. Rules scoped to "All Accounts" are left in place, since they apply across the household.

Data in other accounts isn't touched. The category list isn't touched either — the transactions go away, but the categories they used stay.

The confirmation dialog

Because the delete is irreversible, LedgerBear makes you jump through two hoops before it runs:

  1. A checkbox you have to tick acknowledging that the operation cannot be undone.
  2. A text field you have to type the exact account name into.

If the name you type doesn't match, the Delete button stays disabled. This is deliberate friction; don't try to work around it.

When to rename instead

If any of these apply, rename the account instead of deleting it:

  • You closed the real-world account but want to keep the historical data for reporting.
  • You might want to restore it later.
  • The account has more than a few months of transactions — once those are gone, they're gone.

A common convention is to prefix closed accounts with (closed). The account still appears in the sidebar but its name makes the status obvious.

When deleting makes sense

  • You created the account by mistake and haven't put anything real in it.
  • The account was a test account and you're cleaning up.
  • You're consolidating — for example, merging two accounts that represent the same real-world account. In that case, move the transactions to the surviving account first (bulk-edit their dates/amounts if needed, or re-import them into the survivor with the "Update" duplicate handling mode), then delete the leftover.