Reviewing rules

Rules are only useful if you can check their work, and there are two honest ways to ask the question. Start from a transaction that looks wrong and ask what put it here. Or start from a rule and ask what is this actually catching. The app gives you a place for each.

From a transaction

Every transaction row — on the Transactions screen, in the uncategorized queue, inside a drilled month — carries two controls side by side in its category cell.

The category picker sets an override on that one transaction. Pick a category, clear it to hand the row back to the rules, or type a name that doesn't exist yet to create a category on the spot. It changes this row and nothing else.

The wand icon opens the rule editor inline, underneath the row. What it opens depends on where the row's category came from, and the label tells you which before you click:

• "Edit matching rule" — a rule is responsible for this row, and the editor loads that rule. You're editing the thing that caused what you're looking at. Save and every transaction it touches moves with it.
• "Create rule" — no rule matched, and the editor opens as a new rule prefilled from this transaction's description, escaped so it matches literally.

That distinction is the whole feature. When a charge is in the wrong category, "edit the rule that did this" and "write a new rule" are different repairs, and guessing which one you meant would be a good way to leave two contradictory rules behind.

One deliberate default: a new rule started from a transaction has its source set to Any, not to that transaction's bank. A rule scoped to one card silently stops matching the same merchant on another card, which is the opposite of what you usually want when you're categorizing a merchant you just met.

Below the editor is a live preview of what the rule matches — see Reading the preview.

From a rule

The Categories screen is the other direction. Pick a category on the left, and its rules are listed on the right: the pattern, the source, the debit and credit constraints, the rank, and the tags. Reading that list top to bottom is the fastest way to spot a rule that's broader than you remember writing.

Open a rule to edit it and the same editor appears, with the same preview underneath.

You can also select several rules with the checkboxes and delete them in one go — useful after a first-pass categorization has minted more merchant rules than you want to keep.

Deleting a rule (from the list, or from the Delete control inside the editor) asks for confirmation, and the confirmation tells you how many transactions that rule currently accounts for. They aren't deleted — they're recategorized by whatever rules remain, which for many of them means falling back to uncategorized.

Reading the preview

The preview under the editor is the part worth understanding properly, because it deliberately shows you two different things at two different moments.

Before you change anything, it shows the transactions currently categorized by this rule — read straight from what's recorded on those transactions. This is the rule's actual, materialized effect on your account: what it is doing right now, after rank and conflict resolution have had their say.

The moment you edit the rule, it switches to showing matches — every transaction the edited pattern would match, evaluated live against your transactions. The header label changes wording to say so.

The count usually moves at that transition, and it isn't a bug. A rule can match a transaction without being the rule that categorized it: another rule may have outranked it, or been more specific, or the transaction may carry an override. The matched set is a superset of the categorized set, so the number typically goes up on the first keystroke.

Each previewed transaction shows the category it has today, so you can see what you're about to move before you save.

Two limits: the preview lists 20 transactions, and the count stops at 100+. Both exist so that opening a broad rule doesn't drag your whole account through the browser.

The preview stays empty until the rule has at least one real criterion — a pattern, a source, or an amount range. A rule with only a category would match everything you own, and showing you "everything" the instant the editor opens would be a scare, not information.

After you save

Rule edits propagate on their own. The header capsule shows the re-check running, and totals settle when it lands. Nothing needs to be regenerated by hand, and there is no button that does so — see Categories and rules.

If a rule edit doesn't seem to have taken effect, the thing to check first is whether the transaction carries an override. An override beats every rule, so the transaction won't move no matter what you do to the rules — clear the override and it rejoins them.