Appearance
Anchors
Anchors are labels that represent people, places, accounts, or things in your system.
Use them to add context to your logs—like tagging a transaction with which bank account it came from, or marking an item with who owns it.
Examples: your checking account, a person you owe money to, a storage location, a business partner, a customer
What anchors are for
Anchors help you track relationships and context without cluttering your main data.
Instead of writing "Chase Checking" in a note every time, you create a "Chase Checking" anchor once and tag entries with it. Instead of storing location in every item, you create location anchors and link items to them.
This keeps your data cleaner and makes it easier to find all entries or items related to that anchor.
Common uses for anchors
For balanced logs
Use anchors to show where money comes from or goes to:
- Bank accounts — tag entries to show which account money moved through
- People — track who you paid or who paid you
- Merchants — tag spending by where you shopped
- Categories — mark entries by purpose (though child logs often work better for this)
Example: You record spending $45. You tag it with the "Whole Foods" anchor to show where you shopped.
For collection logs
Use anchors to show relationships between items and other things:
- Locations — where an item is stored
- People — who owns or is responsible for an item
- Projects — what project an item belongs to
- Vendors — where an item was purchased
Example: You have an item for "Office Chair." You link it to a "Home Office" location anchor to show where it is.
Storage anchors for balanced logs
Balanced logs can have a special storage anchor that represents where the value actually lives.
For example:
- A "Checking Account" log with a storage anchor for "Chase Bank"
- A "Savings Goal" log with a storage anchor for "High-Yield Savings Account"
This adds one more layer of context: the log tracks the value, and the storage anchor shows the real-world location.
How you work with anchors
Create anchors
You can create anchors anytime you need them.
When recording an entry or adding an item, you can create a new anchor on the fly. Just type a name and it gets created.
You can also create anchors in advance from the anchors page.
Tag entries and items
When you record an entry in a balanced log, you can tag it with an anchor:
- "Add $1,000 from Employer (anchor)"
- "Spend $45 at Whole Foods (anchor)"
- "Transfer to Chase Checking (anchor)"
When you add or edit an item in a collection log, you can link it to anchors through anchor fields defined in your template.
View by anchor
You can filter logs to see only entries or items tagged with a specific anchor.
This makes it easy to answer questions like:
- "How much have I spent at Whole Foods?"
- "Which items are in the garage?"
- "What did I pay Alex?"
Anchors vs other organizing tools
Anchorline gives you several ways to organize:
Anchors — labels for people, places, things
- Good for: adding context to individual entries/items
- Example: tagging an entry with "Starbucks" anchor
Child logs — subdividing a log into categories
- Good for: allocating value or organizing collections hierarchically
- Example: Budget log with "Groceries" and "Gas" children
Directories — folders for grouping logs
- Good for: organizing your list of logs
- Example: "Personal" and "Business" directories
Tags — simple labels on items
- Good for: quick categorization without creating anchors
- Example: tagging items with "urgent" or "archived"
Use anchors when you want to track a relationship that you will filter or search by.
Anchor fields in templates
When you create a template for collection logs, you can add anchor fields.
For example, a home inventory template might have:
- Location (anchor field) — where the item is stored
- Owner (anchor field) — who it belongs to
When you add items using this template, you can select anchors for these fields. This creates a structured relationship between items and anchors.
See Templates for more details.
Managing anchors
All your anchors are listed on the anchors page.
From there, you can:
- See all anchors you have created
- Edit anchor names
- Mark anchors as inactive if you no longer use them
- See which logs and items reference each anchor
Anchors are shared across all your logs. Once you create "Whole Foods" as an anchor, you can use it in any log.
When to use anchors
Use anchors when:
- You want to tag entries or items with people, places, or accounts
- You will filter or search by these tags
- The same person/place/thing appears multiple times
- You want to see all activity related to something
Skip anchors when:
- You only need a one-time note
- Tags or child logs would work better
- The context is obvious from the entry itself
Anchors and privacy
Anchors are part of your data, just like logs and items.
If you share a log with someone, they will see any anchors referenced in that log. If you mark a log as public, anchors used in that log become visible too.
Keep this in mind when naming anchors and deciding which logs to share.
Where to go next
- Create and manage your anchors in the Anchorline app
- Read Balanced Logs to see how anchors work with transactions
- Explore Collection Logs to see how items can be linked to anchors
- Learn about Templates to add anchor fields to your items