The three states
Planned
A prediction. It comes from something you set up — a recurring rule, a credit card's monthly budget, a payment on a debt schedule — and Jasper is showing you that it is coming. It is not in your ledger yet. Nothing about it is stored, which is why it is drawn faded with an empty dashed marker.
Recorded
Press a planned entry and it becomes a recorded one. That press is you saying "yes, this one is real" — Jasper writes it into your ledger as an entry of your own. A drag handle appears, and from that moment you can change the amount, the label and the date, or delete it if it turned out not to happen.
Your balance still has not moved. A recorded entry is something you expect, written down — not something that happened.
Locked
The money moved. Locking is the only thing in Jasper that changes a balance — the moment you lock an entry, your account goes up or down by that amount. That is why it is marked in the accent colour and stands out down the page: at a glance you can see what has really happened and what is still expected.
A locked entry cannot be edited or reordered, because it is no longer a plan — it is a record. If you locked it by mistake, press it and unlock it; the balance moves back.
How an entry travels
Press to record it · lock it when the money moves · close the month when everything in it is settled. Closing is permanent — a closed month can never be changed again, which is what makes it worth something.
Why it works this way
A forecast is only useful if you can tell a prediction from a fact. If typing a number immediately counted, then every month ahead would be a mixture of things that happened and things you hoped, with no way to separate them — and the balance at the end would mean nothing in particular.
Keeping them apart costs you one press. In exchange, the balance Jasper shows is always explained by entries you personally confirmed, and the months ahead are honestly labelled as what they are.
Common questions
I added a transaction and my balance did not change.
It is recorded, not locked. Press it and lock it, and the balance will move. This is the single most common surprise for new users, and it is deliberate.
Why can I not drag this entry?
Only recorded entries reorder. A planned one has nothing stored to move — press it first. A locked one is a record of something that happened, and its position is not yours to rearrange.
Some entries look faded.
Those are planned. They come from your recurring rules and schedules, and they will keep appearing every period until you press them.
I see three identical entries in one half.
That will be a weekly rule firing several times inside the same fortnight. Jasper shows the date beside each one — Acorns 11/16, Acorns 11/23 — so you can tell them apart.
Can I get a closed month back?
No. Closing is permanent by design: it is the point at which you and your bank agreed, and a record that can be reopened is not really a record. Lock everything and check the figures before you close.