An introduction to categories in PocketSmith

Use our ready-to-go set of categories, turn on automatic categorization from the bank feed or create and tailor your own 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

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

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 colour

The category icons used for these examples have colour, as a colour has been assigned to the category, so the colour may differ from how you see them in your PocketSmith account.

To find out how to edit category colours, head to this guide: Steps to edit category details.

The reason some of your transactions may be getting assigned to the wrong category could be due to Automatic categorisation 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.