Categories and Rules in Greenback
When your transactions are neatly organized, the rest of your financial life gets easier. Categories turn raw activity into a story you can understand; rules make that story write itself. Think of categories as your filing system and rules as the librarian who knows where everything belongs.
Understanding Categories
What are Categories?
Categories are labels you apply to transactions so you can make sense of where money goes and why. They’re the scaffolding for budgets, the backbone of spending analysis, and the secret sauce behind accurate reports. With consistent categories, trends reveal themselves and decisions get simpler.
Category Hierarchy
Greenback supports parent categories and subcategories. Use parents for broad themes like Food or Transportation, then introduce subcategories when you find recurring patterns (Restaurants vs Groceries is a classic). Create custom categories when your life doesn’t fit a template—because nobody’s spending profile is generic.
Built-in Category System
You don’t have to start from a blank page. Greenback ships with comprehensive defaults for both income and expenses—from everyday themes like Housing and Food to more nuanced areas like Investment Income and Gifts & Donations. Treat these as a foundation: keep what works, rename what doesn’t, and introduce custom categories when you need richer definition.
Creating Custom Categories
New category ideas often come from your own data—once you see a pattern, give it a home. In Settings → Categories & Rules, open Manage Categories and add what’s missing. Name it clearly, pick an icon and color you’ll recognize at a glance, and choose a parent when the new category belongs inside an existing theme. Over time, small refinements here make your analytics feel tailor‑made.
Transaction Rules (Automation)
If categories are your filing system, rules are the automation layer. They watch incoming transactions and file them for you based on the conditions you set—merchant names, amounts, accounts, and more. A good rule feels like magic the second time a transaction appears and lands perfectly, no taps required.
To create one, head to Settings → Categories & Rules → Manage Rules, add a rule, describe the conditions that should trigger it, and specify the action—usually assigning the right category or attaching a helpful tag. Use the built‑in tester to validate your logic before you switch it on.
What Rules Can Look For
Rules can evaluate merchant names and descriptions, match amounts or ranges, scope to specific accounts, and even apply within selective time windows. On match, they can assign categories, apply tags, or add short notes that make review easier later.
Advanced Rule Features
Order matters. Rules run top‑to‑bottom and the first match wins, so keep specific rules above broader catch‑alls. As your library grows, you’ll likely compose rules with multiple conditions, lean on pattern matching for messy merchant strings, and add exclusion rules to keep special cases out of generic buckets. A few well‑placed examples can help: a coffee‑shop matcher for your caffeine habit, a large‑purchase guardrail that flags anything over $500, or a recurring‑payment rule that corrals monthly subscriptions.
Managing and Optimizing Rules
A tidy ruleset is a fast ruleset. Review performance periodically, retire rules that no longer pull their weight, and update patterns when merchants change how they describe themselves. If two rules want the same transaction, remember the first one in the list will win—another reason to keep your most precise rules at the top.
Category-Based Insights
Once categories and rules are humming, the reports get interesting. You’ll see how spending shifts month to month, which categories drive the biggest swings, and where budgets hold—or crack. Comparative views help you spot trendlines; exports help you share or analyze the data elsewhere.
Best Practices
Start small and name things clearly. Put related categories together, avoid near‑duplicates, and don’t be afraid to merge when two categories tell the same story. Automate slowly and deliberately; a handful of high‑quality rules beats a labyrinth. And revisit your setup monthly—the system that fits you today should evolve with your habits.
Troubleshooting
If a transaction isn’t categorizing, it usually means no rule matches or the conditions are too strict. Loosen the pattern a bit or capture a more reliable part of the description. When a transaction lands in the wrong place, look for overlapping rules and move the more specific one higher. And if a rule doesn’t seem to run at all, confirm it’s enabled and test it against a real example.
Naming and Organization
Pick names that say what they mean. “Utilities: Electric” beats “Bill 1” every time. Keep visual cues consistent—colors and icons help your future self scan faster. And remember: the goal isn’t to have the most categories; it’s to have the most useful ones.
Power Tools
Tags add a flexible second dimension to your data—great for projects, trips, or tax lines that cut across categories. Bulk tools help you clean up history in a few decisive strokes. And if you ever want to take your system elsewhere, import/export has you covered.
Getting Help
If you get stuck, the rule tester is your best friend. And our support team is too—reach them anytime from Settings → Support. A little structure goes a long way here; the time you spend setting up categories and rules pays you back every single day you use Greenback.