[Bug]: split transaction stays invisibly tied to original payee
#7721 opened on May 5, 2026
Description
What happened?
When splitting a transaction, the parent transaction keeps having a payee even though semantically only the child ones have.
How can we reproduce the issue?
Say you have a transaction with payee Foo and amount $123. You split it and get:
Account payee amount
AccountName Foo $123
Foo $100
Foo $ 23
Note that here, the payee of the parent transaction is italicised in the UI since the UI actually displays a comma-separated list of the children's payees. At this point the parent transaction doesn't really have a payee anymore, semantically; its children do.
Next, you change the first child's payee:
Account payee amount
AccountName Foo, Bar $123
Foo $100
Bar $ 23
then the second's:
Account payee amount
AccountName Bar $123
Bar $100
Bar $ 23
Note that now the UI displays Bar as payee for the parent, since that's what the children have.
However, if you look at the payee list, "Foo" still exists and isn't marked as unused. If you search with a filter of "Foo", it displays our three transactions, but "Foo" appears nowhere on the screen. Indeed the parent transaction still has a payee of "Foo" but this isn't really relevant. Splitting the transaction should set the parent's payee to null.
Where are you hosting Actual?
None
What browsers are you seeing the problem on?
No response
Operating System
None