Categories and Rules

Organize spending, income, transfers, savings, and cleanup rules without overfitting reports.

Categories turn raw transactions into readable financial stories. Rules help repeated transaction patterns land in the right category without editing the same merchant over and over.

Use categories for the main reporting bucket. Use tags for secondary labels. Use rules only when the pattern is repeated enough to be worth automating.

Where to manage categories

Manage workspace categories from Settings > Organization > Categories & tags.

There you can:

Create a category.
Rename a category.
Choose a color.
Choose an emoji.
Set a parent category.
Delete a category from the active list.

Deleting a category removes it from the category list. Existing transactions keep their stored category data, so deletion should be used to clean up the active list, not to rewrite history.

Where to categorize transactions

Open Transactions and click the category cell on a transaction row.

From the category picker you can:

Use the source category.
Choose one of your workspace categories.
Create a new workspace category.
Replace a previous manual category override.

After you change a category, Tablewealth may suggest a rule for similar future transactions. Choose Create rule if the pattern is stable enough to automate.

Category sources

A transaction category can come from several places:

Source category: the provider or imported source category.
Rule category: a Tablewealth categorization rule matched the transaction.
Manual category override: a user manually chose a category.
Workspace category: one of your organization categories.
Uncategorized: no useful category is available yet.

The category shown in reports is the current best category for the transaction. When you manually choose a workspace category, that choice takes priority over the source suggestion.

Keep categories simple

Start with categories you will actually use in dashboards, spreadsheet views, or exports. Too many narrow categories make reporting harder to read and rules harder to maintain.

Useful top-level categories often include:

Income.
Housing.
Utilities.
Food.
Transportation.
Shopping.
Health.
Travel.
Taxes.
Transfers.
Savings.
Investments.
Debt payments.

Use parent categories when you want a report to show both a broad group and more specific child categories. For example, Food can contain Groceries and Dining.

Categories vs. tags

Use categories when a transaction should belong to one primary reporting bucket.

Use tags when a transaction may need multiple labels or a temporary review marker. For example, a transaction can be Dining as its category and also have tags for Vacation and Reimbursable.

Good tag uses:

Reimbursable.
Tax review.
Subscription.
One-time.
Needs receipt.
Business.
Family trip.

Transfers should not usually count as income or spending. A credit card payment, savings transfer, brokerage cash movement, or loan payment can look like spending from one account and income in another.

Use the transaction's Internal transfer setting when money moved between your own accounts. This keeps cash flow more honest than forcing every transfer into a normal expense category.

How categorization rules are created

Rules are created from the Transactions table.

The usual flow is:

Open Transactions.
Change a transaction category.
When Tablewealth suggests remembering the pattern, choose Create rule.
Review the rule builder.
Preview nearby transactions.
Save the rule.
Manage the saved rule from Settings > Organization > Categories & tags.

The rule builder is intentionally tied to a real transaction so you can see the exact merchant, statement text, category, amount, and nearby matches before saving.

What rules match

The rule builder can match text fields from the transaction:

Merchant: the cleaned merchant name when the source provides one.
Transaction name: the transaction display name.
Original statement: the raw statement description when available.
Source group: the provider or source's broad category.
Source category: the provider or source's detailed category.

Rules can also add optional amount and direction constraints:

Amount range: match only transactions within a minimum and/or maximum absolute amount.
Debits only: match spending/outflow transactions.
Credits only: match income/inflow transactions.
Either debits or credits: do not limit by direction.

Amount range uses the absolute amount. If you set a range of 20 to 30 and leave direction as either, both a $25 debit and a $25 credit can match. Add Debits only or Credits only when direction matters.

Match operators

Each text condition has a match operator:

Is exactly: the normalized field must equal the rule text.
Contains: the field can contain the rule text anywhere.
Starts with: the field must begin with the rule text.
Ends with: the field must end with the rule text.

Saved rule matching is case-insensitive and normalizes text so casing, accents, and common punctuation differences are less likely to break a match.

Use exact matches for stable merchant names. Use starts with when the statement text has a stable prefix followed by changing dates, store numbers, or reference IDs. Use contains when the useful word is not always at the beginning.

Multiple conditions

The rule builder uses "all of these are true." If you add more than one condition, every condition must match.

For example:

Merchant contains "Amazon" is broad.
Merchant contains "Amazon" plus Amount max 25 is narrower.
Merchant contains "Amazon" plus Account contains "Business" is narrower in a different way.
Original statement starts with "Payroll" plus Credits only is better for recurring income.

Keep rules as narrow as the pattern requires. A broad rule can make a dashboard look clean while quietly misclassifying unrelated transactions.

Preview before saving

The rule modal shows nearby transactions and marks whether each one would match. Use the preview to catch rules that are too broad or too narrow.

Before saving, ask:

Does the selected transaction match?
Do similar transactions match?
Do unrelated transactions avoid matching?
Is the amount range necessary?
Should the rule be limited to debits or credits?
Is the source field stable enough to rely on?

If the preview looks surprising, adjust the field, operator, text, amount range, or direction before creating the rule.

What happens after saving a rule

Saved rules are active by default. They are used by Tablewealth categorization during transaction sync and cleanup flows. The current create-rule flow is designed for future matching; it is not a bulk historical rewrite button.

If you need to clean existing transactions, edit those transactions directly first. Then create a rule so similar future transactions land correctly.

Managing saved rules

Manage saved categorization rules from Settings > Organization > Categories & tags.

Each rule shows:

Name: a generated summary of what the rule does.
Status: enabled or paused.
If: the match summary.
Then: the action summary.

From the rule menu you can:

Pause a rule.
Enable a paused rule.
Delete a rule.

If you need to change the match logic, create a better replacement rule from a transaction, then pause or delete the old rule.

App rules vs. spreadsheet rules

Tablewealth has app-side categorization rules and the Comprehensive Sheet has spreadsheet-side rules.

App-side rules affect transactions in Tablewealth and downstream product workflows. Create them from the Transactions table and manage them in Settings > Organization > Categories & tags.

Spreadsheet-side rules live in the Rules tab of the Tablewealth Comprehensive Sheet. They affect the workbook's helper category columns. They do not create app-side rules or rewrite Tablewealth transaction records.

Use app rules when the category should matter everywhere in Tablewealth. Use spreadsheet rules when the category is only for that workbook's model.

Category cleanup routine

Use this before monthly reports, spreadsheet syncs, or dashboard reviews:

Filter Transactions to the review date range.
Review uncategorized transactions.
Mark internal transfers.
Review the largest spending and income transactions.
Look for the same merchant split across multiple categories.
Create rules only for repeated, stable patterns.
Pause or delete rules that are too broad.
Review the Categories & tags settings page for stale categories.
Reopen dashboards or rerun spreadsheet sync after cleanup.