Mark a Bill Paid Even When It Wasn't From a Connected Account

Not every bill leaves a trail through a bank you have connected. You write a paper check for rent. You hand the landlord cash. Your cousin pays you back for the shared utility bill in twenties, and you use that to cover it. The payment happened, the bill is settled, but nothing about it flows into WIMM through Plaid. So how do you mark the bill paid without quietly under-counting what you actually spent?

That gap is exactly what WIMM's off-account payments feature closes. It shipped for everyone, free, and it lives right where you already manage bills.

A person writing a paper check at a kitchen table to pay a bill

The problem with a bill that "just" gets marked paid

Before this feature, marking an off-account bill paid recorded the fact but not the money. WIMM logged that the bill was handled and advanced the due date, which is what you want on the surface. But your Dashboard and your Reports build spending from the actual ledger of transactions. A payment with no transaction behind it never reached that ledger. The bill read "paid," yet the rent or the utility bill you covered in cash was missing from your monthly spending. Your totals looked lower than reality, and a budget you thought you were under was actually tighter than the numbers showed.

The honest fix is to put a real expense in the ledger, in an account that will not also import the same charge later. That is precisely what "Paid externally" does.

How to mark a bill paid externally

Open any bill and choose Mark Paid. The dialog asks a simple question: how was this paid? You get three choices.

From a connected account. Use this when the money left a bank WIMM syncs. WIMM matches the real transaction automatically when it imports, so there is nothing else to record.
Paid externally (cash, check, other). This is the one for off-account payments. Pick one of your manual accounts and WIMM writes a real expense to your ledger dated to the day you paid.
Just mark paid. Records the bill as handled without touching your spending, for the rare case where you genuinely do not want it counted.

One person handing cash across a table to another, like a roommate paying back a shared bill

The account you pick has to be a manual one, meaning an account you added yourself rather than a bank WIMM connects to through Plaid. That restriction is the whole trick. A connected bank would eventually import the real transaction on its own, and then the charge would appear twice. By recording the off-account expense only in a manual account, WIMM makes a double count impossible by design. If you do not have a manual account yet, the dialog links you straight to a place to create a simple cash account, which takes a few seconds.

Why your numbers stay honest everywhere

Because "Paid externally" creates a genuine expense in your ledger, every part of WIMM that reads the ledger picks it up at once. Your Dashboard spending reflects it. Your Reports include it. Any budget the bill's category feeds counts it. The rent check and the cash you covered the utility bill with are finally part of the picture instead of a blind spot.

At the same time it stays clearly separate from your connected-bank activity. It sits in its own manual account, so you can always tell what came through a linked bank and what you recorded by hand. You get complete spending totals without muddying the accounts that sync automatically.

Debt-linked bills tick down too

If a bill is tied to one of your debts, paying it off-account behaves just like a normal payment. WIMM lowers that debt's balance automatically, so your debt payoff plan stays accurate whether the money moved through a connected account or came out of your pocket in cash. You do not have to log the same payment twice, once as a bill and once as a debt payment. Marking the bill paid handles both.

It is right there on every bill

You no longer have to open a bill's detail screen to reach this. Mark Paid is available directly from every row in your Bills list, in both the table view and the card view. See a bill you settled in cash this morning? Mark it paid from the list in one tap, choose "Paid externally," and get on with your day.

Tip

Keep one simple manual account named something like "Cash" for exactly these payments. Every off-account bill you mark paid lands there, so you have a tidy running record of the money that never touched a connected bank.

Made a mistake? Undo is safe

If you mark a bill paid externally and then realize you got it wrong, unmarking it is clean. WIMM removes only the expense it created for that payment. It never deletes a real transaction that came from your bank, and it never touches a charge you matched or entered yourself. The reversal is limited to WIMM's own bookkeeping, so you can undo without worrying about wiping out real history.

Try it now

The live demo loads a sample household with bills already wired up. Open a bill, hit Mark Paid, and walk through the "Paid externally" option to see how an off-account payment lands in your spending: app.wimm.money/demo.