When you stop using an account, for example you closed it with your bank, paid off a loan or sold the asset, you can close it in Ambrook. Closing removes it from future reports and keeps all of its past transactions and reports.
Before you close: bring the balance to $0
Make sure the account's balance in Ambrook is $0 and matches your final statement. Closing an account with a balance left on it can throw off your balance sheet.
If the balance isn't $0, reconcile the account against your final statements to find what's missing, duplicated or tagged wrong. See How do I reconcile in Ambrook?.
We don't recommend using Adjust Balance to bring an account to $0. If you need an adjustment to make the numbers match, it usually means a transaction is missing, duplicated or tagged wrong. An adjustment can also put income or expenses on your books that didn't happen.
Bank and cash accounts
Reconcile through your final statement.
Tag the last transfer or withdrawal that emptied the account, for example as an Account Transfer to your new bank account.
Credit card accounts
Tag the final payment from your bank account as a Credit Card Payment.
Confirm that any last fees, interest or refunds are recorded.
Loan, mortgage and line of credit accounts
Verify that every payment is tagged correctly:
The principal part of each payment is tagged as a Liability Adjustment to the loan account.
The interest part is tagged to an interest expense category.
Paid off with insurance money, a new loan or a refinance? The payoff won't show up as a payment from your bank account, so the balance won't reach $0 on its own. Record the payoff first. See Recording Loan Payments That Didn't Come From Your Bank Account.
If the loan is paid off with your lender but Ambrook still shows a balance, work through the checklist in Troubleshooting Loan Balances. It covers the most common causes: payments tagged as expenses, principal and interest that weren't split, payments tagged to the wrong loan, Starting Balance errors, and missing or excluded transactions. For how to tag payments, see Tagging Loan Payments or Tagging Mortgage Payments.
Asset accounts (equipment, vehicles, buildings, land)
Record the sale, trade-in or disposal first so the asset and its accumulated depreciation come off your books. See Recording an Asset Sale or Disposal. Then close the account.
Close the account
Go to the Accounts page and click the account.
Scroll to the bottom of the account panel and click Remove Account.
Choose Close Account.
This works for both manual and connected accounts.
Close, Delete, Hide or Stop Sync?
Option | What it does | When to use it |
Close Account | Removes the account from future reports. Keeps all past transactions and reports. You can reopen it later. | You're done with the account. Recommended in most cases. |
Delete Account | Removes the account and all of its history. Can't be undone. | Only if the account was created by mistake. |
Stop Sync (connected accounts) | Stops new transactions from coming in. Keeps the account and the transactions already synced. | The account is still in use but you don't want it syncing, for example a loan you're tracking by hand. See Working with a Connected Loan Account. |
Hide (connected accounts) | Removes the account's data from your Ledger and reports. | The account shouldn't be in Ambrook at all, and nothing tagged to it needs to be kept. |
Reopening a closed account
Closed an account by mistake, or need to add or fix transactions on it? You can reopen it yourself. Closed accounts don't appear on the Accounts page, so you'll find it on your balance sheet instead.
Go to Reports → Balance Sheet.
Set the date range to a period when the account was still open, or choose "All Time". For example, if you closed the account in 2025, choose a 2025 date range. It won't appear if you're viewing "This Year."
Find the account on the balance sheet and click its name to open the account details.
Scroll to the bottom and click Reopen Closed Account, then click Reopen to confirm.
The account appears on your Accounts page again. If it was a connected account, it also starts syncing again. If you don't want new transactions to sync, choose Stop Sync after reopening.