An introduction to categories in PocketSmith
Categories are used in PocketSmith to separate your income and expenses into meaningful areas and accurately reflect your earning and spending. Use our ready-to-go set of categories, turn on automatic categorization from the bank feed or create and tailor your own categories 🎉
In this user guide
Getting started with categories
When you first get started in PocketSmith and you've added your transactions with bank feeds or bank files, you'll then need to sort your transactions into categories.
There are a few different ways you can set up your categories:
Use automatic categorization of transactions from the bank feed
If you have the bank feed automatic categorization feature switched on, most of your transactions will be categorized in the background for you. However, this is optional and you can create and assign categories yourself
Use the Categories page
You can set up the bulk of your categories on the Categories page before you start categorizing your transactions or use our ready-to-go set of categories
Add-as-you-go
Add new categories as you go when categorizing your transactions on the Transactions page or the Categorize items page
Note
If you're not sure of the exact categories you'd like to add when you first get started in PocketSmith - don't worry! You can change, delete, edit or add new categories later 🌟
A quick look at the Categories page
Head to the Categories page (Manage > Categories) at any time to see your categories all in the one place, add new categories or delete and edit them
Category icons
The icons that appear on the left of each category name are used to help easily identify some details of the category! ✨
This icon means that your category is set up to be a scheduled bill or income category. You can read more about this category type here: Bill and scheduled income categories
This icon means that the category is a regular category but has no budgets, or just a one-off budget, set against it.
This icon means your category is set up to be a transfer category, this is where you should categorize your transfer transaction to. You can read more about transfer categories here: Dealing with transfers in PocketSmith
This icon means that your category has a repeating budget set up on that category. You can read more about repeating budgets here: Repeating budgets and how to delete or make changes to them
Icon color
The category icons used for these examples have color, as a color has been assigned to the category, so the color may differ from how you see them in your PocketSmith account. To find out how to edit category colors, head to this guide: Steps to edit category details.
FAQs
Why do categories that I've deleted keep reappearing?
The reason some of your transactions may be getting assigned to the wrong category could be due to Automatic categorization of your transactions from the Bank Feed.
Turning this feature off will stop your transactions from being assigned to categories created by the bank feed, or new categories appearing that you've not created.