Skip to content
Open Net Worth Docs

Categories and payees

Categories are what money is for — Groceries, Rent, Salary. Payees are who you paid or who paid you. Set them up well and imported transactions sort themselves: a payee can rename messy bank text (“GRAB* A-9BEIP3LGWFBJAV” becomes “Grab”) and fill in a category automatically.

A new book starts with a set of everyday spending categories. Change them freely.

Manage categories

Open Manage categories from any of these places:

  • Accounts — the header, next to Manage payees (on a narrow screen or phone, in the ⋯ menu).
  • Plan › Budget — the ⋯ beside the method button (on a phone, the ⋯ at the top of Plan).

Add a category

  1. In Manage categories, click + New category.
  2. Type the name and press Enter (Esc cancels).
  3. Set its Kind — Expense, Inflow (income), Transfer or Investment.

Quicker, while editing a transaction: type a new name in its category field and choose + New category ”…”, then pick the Type and save.

On the category’s row:

  • Rename — double-click the name (double-tap on a phone), or use the row’s menu.
  • Color — click the color dot.
  • Hide — the switch in the Hidden column (on a phone, Hide in the row’s menu). The category and its history are kept, but it’s removed from pickers. Switch it back to unhide.
  • Add to envelope… — a spending category shows Not budgeted until it’s linked to an envelope. Link it here to budget for it. See Budgeting.

Use the search box and the kind chips (on a narrow screen, the filter icon) to narrow the list.

Delete a category

  1. Row menu → Delete….
  2. If it has transactions, pick a category under Reassign activity to. Its transactions move there, and if both are budgeted, this month’s assigned money moves too.
  3. Or click Delete without reassigning — its transactions become Uncategorized.
  4. Click Delete category.

If you just want it out of the way, Hide it instead — deleting rewrites history.

Manage payees

Open Manage payees from the Accounts header (or ⋯ menu), or from the bottom of any transaction’s payee picker. Pick a payee on the left to edit it. Changes save automatically.

Fill in a category automatically

  1. Under Default category by kind, choose a category for Expense (and, if this payee ever pays you, Income, Transfer or Investment). An expense default never lands on income, and so on.
  2. Keep Apply default categories to new transactions ticked.
  3. To update past transactions too, click Apply defaults to existing transactions. This overwrites their current category, so it asks first.

New transactions from this payee are categorized from then on.

Clean up messy bank descriptions

Auto-matched descriptions lists bank text the app has already learned belongs to this payee (from past imports). Click × on any that were matched by mistake.

To catch new variations, add a renaming rule:

  1. Under Renaming rules, choose contains, is or regex.
  2. Type the pattern — e.g. contains grab — and add it.
  3. To fix past transactions, click Apply rules to existing transactions. Matching transactions are moved to this payee, so it asks first.

Apply rules to history (at the bottom of the payee list) re-runs every payee’s rules across all transactions. A payee you set by hand may be overwritten, so it asks first.

Merge, hide or delete a payee

  • Merge — in Danger zone, under Merge into another payee, pick the payee to keep (e.g. merge “AMZN Mktp” into “Amazon”). Its descriptions, rules and transactions move over and the merged payee is deleted. This can’t be undone.
  • Hide from payee suggestions — keeps the payee but stops offering it in the picker.
  • Delete payee — choose where its transactions go (Reassign transactions to…) before deleting.

What Lucius can do here

  • Create, rename, recolor, hide, merge or delete categories and payees.
  • Set a payee’s default category, add or remove renaming rules, and apply them to past transactions.
  • Suggest categories for uncategorized transactions based on how you’ve categorized similar ones before.

Troubleshooting

A transaction says “Uncategorized” — it has no category. That’s allowed; give it one when you’re ready. Uncategorized spending shows under Outside envelopes in the budget.

“Unknown category” when Lucius or an import uses a name — categories are matched by exact name, never guessed. Create the category first, or use the existing name. If a name matches more than one category, the message lists them all.

A payee’s default didn’t change old transactions — defaults apply to new transactions. Use Apply defaults to existing transactions for the old ones.

I can’t find “Split” — it’s used only inside split transactions and can’t be picked or hidden.