Categorization rules: Teach it once. Every statement after obeys.
A rule matches a transaction's description on the words you include and refuses the ones you exclude, then sets its category, tag or contact. It runs on every statement you import from then on, and on the ones you already have.
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- Keywords typed in one line
- Money in, money out, or either
- Applied to past rows too
Keyword matching gets the easy ninety percent wrong in a new way.
The first categorization rule anyone writes is a keyword: anything containing AMAZON is Shopping. Then AWS arrives and is not shopping, the Amazon refund lands as spending, and a rule written for one bank's narrations misfires on another's. Plain keyword rules fail at the edges, and the edges are where the review time goes. What fixes that is not a cleverer model. It is rules that can say what they must not match, where they are allowed to run, and which rule wins when two of them agree on the text.
How it works
Anatomy of a rule
- 01
Open the thing it assigns
There is no separate rules screen. Choose Edit on a category or tag on the Categories page, or on a contact on the Contacts page. The same dialog creates and edits it, and its name already matches.
Every category with the rules that assign it, its transactions and its total. - 02
Say what it matches
Type the words under Description contains, separated by commas, such as amazon, amzn, amazon.in, and each becomes a chip. A rule fires when any of them appears. Click a chip to match it as a whole word or with its case; without either, matching ignores case, accents and punctuation.
- 03
Say what it must not match
Words under Except when it contains veto a match. AMAZON can be Shopping while AMAZON WEB SERVICES and AMAZON REFUND are refused, without writing three rules and hoping they run in the right order.
- 04
Say where it may run
Applies to limits it to money out, money in, or either. Advanced options, folded until you need them, limit it to certain accounts, to one payee, or to rows already in a category or carrying a tag, and set a subcategory. Words that need different conditions get a rule of their own on the category's, tag's or contact's Rules tab, each showing how many transactions it matches.
- 05
Let it reach backwards
Saving applies the rule to the existing transactions it matches straight away, and every future import runs through your rules before any AI is asked to categorize.
Rules that behave at the edges
One dialog
A category, tag or contact and the words that assign it are created and edited in the same place.
Exclusions
Negative words keep a broad rule from catching refunds, fees, or a similarly named vendor.
Scopes
Money in or out, accounts, payee, and current category or tag, so a rule only runs where it is right.
Conflict protection
Two rules with the same words cannot set different results in overlapping scopes. 'amazon prime' overrides 'amazon'; tags accumulate.
Retroactive by default
Rules apply to the transactions already imported, not only the next statement.
Your edits stay yours
A category you set by hand is protected from later automated passes, whether rule or AI.
FAQ
Common questions
Where do I manage rules?
On the thing they assign: a category's or tag's rules on the Categories page, a contact's on the Contacts page, each in the same dialog that creates and edits it. There is no separate rules screen to keep in sync.
What happens when two rules match the same transaction?
Identical words with conflicting results in overlapping scopes are refused when you save. When the words differ, the longer one wins for category and contact, and tags from compatible rules are combined.
Do rules run before or after AI categorization?
Before. Imported transactions are matched against your saved rules first; AI is only asked about transactions no rule covers.
Will a new rule change transactions I already fixed by hand?
No. Manually set categories are protected from later automated changes, including rules applied retroactively.
Can a rule apply to one bank only?
Yes. Under Advanced options, limit it to certain accounts. The same words can then carry different results in different accounts, because the scopes cannot overlap.
Are rules created automatically?
Every category, tag and contact gets a rule matching its own name, and contacts identified automatically get their words saved too. All of them can be edited like any rule you write.
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Write the rule your last statement needed.
Upload a statement, fix the category that was wrong, and add the words that would have caught it.