Offers is where the wallet keeps anything that has been proposed but not yet completed. If something you were expecting has not arrived, this is the first place to look.
The three tabs
Incoming is what somebody has sent towards you and is waiting on your side. Some of these complete on their own. Others need you to approve them before the assets reach your wallet.
Outgoing is what you have sent that the other side has not completed yet.
Deposits covers assets arriving from a connected application rather than from a person.
Why something is sitting there
Nothing on Canton lands in your wallet by itself. An incoming transfer has to be accepted, and that acceptance is a transaction on the network.
If one-step transfers are turned on for that asset, the wallet handles the acceptance for you and you never see the item here. If they are off, or off for that particular issuer, the transfer waits in Incoming until you approve it by hand.
So an empty Incoming tab usually means everything is arriving as it should, not that nothing was sent.
What happens if an offer expires
If an incoming or outgoing offer is not claimed before it expires, the balance is automatically returned to the sender. This happens on the network itself, so nothing is lost.
You can verify this independently using Lighthouse: look up the sender's public wallet address and you will see the returned balance sitting there. If you sent a transfer that expired and are not sure it came back, check your own wallet's balance on Lighthouse using your own public address.
If you were expecting something and it has not arrived
Check Incoming first, before assuming it was lost. If it is sitting there, approve it and it will complete.
If Incoming is empty, check that the sender used the right address, and look at your History. If it still does not add up, message us with your public wallet address, what you were expecting, and roughly when it was sent. We can read the public record and tell you what happened.
Before you approve anything
Read what you are approving. Approving an incoming transfer of an asset you recognise is routine. Approving something you did not expect, from a source you do not know, is not.
An unknown token arriving is not a sign that your wallet is compromised, and you are under no obligation to accept it. If you would rather not receive a particular issuer's tokens at all, you can turn that issuer off in Settings.