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Open Net Worth Docs

Categories

A category is a label on a transaction — “Groceries”, “Rent”, “Dining out”. It groups your spending for reports and the budget. It never changes a balance or your net worth, and a transaction is complete without one.

What a new book starts with

A new book comes with 11 spending categories, each with a matching budget envelope in three groups:

  • Bills — Rent/Mortgage, Phone & Internet, Utilities
  • Needs — Groceries, Medical expenses, Emergency fund
  • Wants — Subscriptions, Dining out, Entertainment, Vacation, Stuff I forgot to plan for

Rename, delete or add to them freely in Manage categories (from the Accounts header, or the ⋯ menu on Plan › Budget). See Categories and payees for the steps.

Each category has a kind — Expense, Inflow (income), Transfer or Investment — so income categories stay out of your spending reports.

Leaving it blank is fine

A transaction with no category shows as Uncategorized. That’s a normal, permanent state, not an error to fix. “Uncategorized” isn’t a category in your list — you can’t pick or rename it; it’s simply what a blank label looks like. Accounts, balances and net worth are complete without any categories at all.

On Plan › Budget, uncategorized spending appears under Outside envelopes until you label it — see Envelopes and budgeting.

How a category gets filled in

When a transaction is saved:

  1. The category you chose is used (or the one Lucius chose, or the import review suggested).
  2. If it’s still blank, the payee’s default category for that kind of transaction fills it in. Set one in Manage payees → Default category by kind — e.g. “Trader Joe’s” → Groceries — and you never categorize that payee by hand again. An expense default only applies to expenses, an income default only to income.
  3. Otherwise it stays blank.

An Automation that runs on new transactions can also set the category as each one arrives — useful for rules like “anything from GRAB under $20 is Transport”.

A category that doesn’t exist is refused, never invented

If a transaction names a category you don’t have — a typo, or a name Lucius guessed — the save is refused with “Unknown category ’…’” and a list of the closest matches. A misspelling never quietly becomes a new category. Create the category first (in Manage categories, or with + New category ”…” in the category picker), then save again.

Renaming is safe

Each category has a hidden, permanent ID behind its name. Rename “Dining” to “Restaurants” and every past transaction, budget and report follows — nothing is re-labelled one by one. You (and Lucius) always refer to a category by its name.

Categories and envelopes

A category is only a label; the money in your budget lives in envelopes. One or more categories link to an envelope, and their spending comes out of it — Coffee, Takeout and Restaurants can all draw on one “Dining out” envelope. A spending category that isn’t linked to any envelope shows Not budgeted in Manage categories. Link it with Add to envelope…. See Envelopes and budgeting.