Auto-categorise transactions

When you connect to your bank feeds, Auto-categorise Transactions is enabled by default, however, you can change this at any time.

Our data providers provide us with rudimentary categories for each transaction imported from your bank. These provide a great starting point for many people!

However, as you get used to PocketSmith and set up your own categories, you may wish to turn this off. This will stop your transactions from being assigned to categories created by the bank feed. If you would prefer the bank feed to no longer create new categories for you automatically, follow the steps outlined here: Turning Auto-categorise off & on

When turning this feature off, consider setting up Category Rules and Filters to categorise future transactions the way that best suits you!

One of the largest factors contributing to the categories created is the country associated with your bank's data connection. Transactions occurring in the United States are categorised more accurately as most of Yodlee's connected banks are in the US.

The option to ‘Auto-categorise transactions’ is enabled by default when you first add your data connection. This results in new categories being made for you when new transactions are imported.

If you’d rather not use auto-categorise for all or some of your transactions, you can:

The categories provided by each of our data providers are different. If you want to match a category created by one data provider to a category created by another data provider, you can delete one of the categories and merge this with the category you'd like to keep. This will then create a category map so that when the next transaction with the deleted category is imported, it is assigned to the chosen category.

For more details about deleting and merging categories and category mapping, see the following guides:

There are a few options for overriding Auto-categorise:

Change the category name

Edit the auto-categorise category name to one of your choice, and PocketSmith will keep track of this name change. You can learn more about how PocketSmith remembers these changes here: Category mapping

Delete the category

You can delete the data provider-created category. This means any transactions that would have usually been automatically categorised to that category will be imported as uncategorised. You can learn more about how PocketSmith remembers these changes here: Category mapping

Create a new category rule or filter

If you create any Filters or Category Rules these will override categories applied automatically by the Auto-categorise.

One of the best ways to have control over your categorising is to use Category Rules. After applying a Category Rule to a transaction, that rule will apply to all matching uncategorised transactions as they are imported into PocketSmith, assigning categories for you and making categorising quick and easy!