Categories and rules
The Categories page (in the sidebar) is where the labels for your money live, and where you teach Wicker Money to apply them for you. It is part of the core app rather than a plugin: every plugin reads categories, so a fresh install with no plugins still needs a way to manage them.
Added in 0.1.0.
Setting up
A new account has no categories. The first time you sign in, a setup wizard asks which circumstances apply to you, in six short steps: Your home, Getting around, Who else is in the picture, Health and protection, Work and money and How closely do you want to track. Examples are owning a home, having a car payment, having pets, being self-employed, or paying down debt.
- Everyone gets the same base set of about 70 categories (housing, utilities, food, transport and so on). Each answer you tick adds the branches that only apply to some people, so the list stays short enough to read.
- A running total under the questions says how many categories, in how many groups, your answers would create. The last step's button is Create categories.
- Not now closes the wizard without recording anything, so it opens again next time. Whether setup is finished is kept on your account, not in the browser, so a new device doesn't ask again once you've finished.
Nothing is permanent. Categories can be added, renamed or deleted afterwards.
Running it again
The Starter categories panel at the top of the Categories page says which answers the setup was based on.
- Run setup again reopens the wizard with your previous answers ticked. Finishing adds only what is missing and touches nothing you have.
- Reset setup forgets the answers, and the wizard opens straight away. Categories are left alone, unless you tick On reset, also delete the starter categories first. That removes only categories from the starter set that nothing uses. Anything a transaction, split or rule points at is kept, named in the message, and so is any parent they pin. It is mostly useful for testing the wizard itself.
Managing categories
Categories are two levels deep: a top-level category and the categories under it. A parent's row opens and closes to show its children, with Expand all and Collapse all above the table.
Add category asks for a Name, what it goes Under (the top level, or one of the top-level categories) and what it Counts as. The name can be up to 100 characters. The page shows the slug it will be saved as, and a category whose slug you already have is refused.
Each row has three buttons:
- Edit changes the name, the parent and what it counts as, in the row. Enter saves, Escape cancels. A top-level category that has children can't be moved under another, and a parent has to be top-level.
- Disable (and Enable) hides a category from every picker and keeps everything already filed under it. A transaction under a disabled category still shows it, so the row can't look uncategorized by accident. Disabling a parent disables its children. Enabling one doesn't enable them again. Show N disabled categories above the table brings them back into view.
- Delete works only on a category that nothing uses. If a transaction, split, rule, recurring item, budget line or a child category still points at it, it's refused with a count, and the message suggests disabling instead.
The Slug column is the category's identifier, made from the name when you
create it. It is never editable, because the starter set matches on it: renaming
groceries would make the next setup run create a second Groceries.
What a category counts as
Every category counts as Spending, Income or Transfer.
| Counts as | Effect |
|---|---|
| Spending | Money out is spending. Money in against it, such as a refund, reduces what the category cost that month |
| Income | Money in is income |
| Transfer | Left out of both spending and income |
The reason is refunds and card payments. A $25 supermarket return is a positive amount against Groceries. Going by the sign alone would call it income. Going by the category keeps it a negative expense, which reduces the month's grocery spending. A credit-card payment or a deposit into savings that you entered by hand is money moving, not money earned or spent, so a Transfer category keeps it out of the charts.
The rule, in order:
- A real transfer is a transfer, whatever its category.
- Otherwise a category that counts as Transfer makes it one.
- Otherwise the category's setting decides.
- With no category, the sign decides, so a fresh import charts sensibly before you have sorted any of it.
Setting what a parent counts as sets it on its children too, so a "Transfers" parent can't hold children that are still counted as spending. The starter set has the right settings already: Income and its children count as income, and Transfers (with Between accounts, Credit card payment and, if you said you pay down debt, Loan payment (principal)) count as transfers.
Budgets offer lines only for categories that count as Spending, and the dashboard charts follow the same rule. See The dashboard.
Rules
A rule files transactions into a category for you, so you aren't sorting every statement by hand. Add rule opens a form:
| Field | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Category | Where matching transactions go. Disabled categories aren't offered |
| Priority | A whole number, 0 by default. A higher number wins |
| Condition | What must be true (below). + And another condition adds more |
The condition types:
| Condition | Matches when |
|---|---|
| Merchant contains | The merchant text includes your text |
| Merchant is exactly | The merchant text equals your text |
| Notes contain | The transaction's notes include your text. Never matches a transaction with no notes |
| Amount is exactly | The amount equals the figure, in the direction you choose |
| Amount is in a range | The amount is at least and/or at most a figure, in the direction you choose |
Text matching ignores case unless you tick Case-sensitive. Text can be up to
500 characters. For amounts you type a positive figure and choose Money out or
Money in, so 375.00 with Money out means a payment of 375.00. You don't
type a minus sign. A range needs a minimum, a maximum or both. A transaction of
exactly zero matches no amount condition.
Every condition on a rule must match. That's how "merchant contains CHECK and amount is exactly 375.00 out" stays separate from other cheques. There is no "or": write two rules.
Which rule wins
When more than one rule matches, the first of these decides:
- The higher priority.
- The rule with more conditions, since it's more specific.
- The rule written first.
Preview, then save
Preview counts what the rule would do, before it does anything: how many uncategorized transactions it would file, and, if you've ticked Also apply to transactions already recorded, how many already filed by an earlier rule it would move. Categories you set by hand aren't counted. They are out of scope entirely. The preview goes away when you change the rule.
Save rule then does it. Saving always files the uncategorized transactions it matches, and the confirmation says how many existing transactions changed. The extra box widens it to ones an earlier rule filed. A category you set by hand is never overwritten by a rule, and transfer rows are never touched.
Where rules apply
- When you add a transaction and leave the category on Auto (apply rules).
- On every row of a CSV import, as it's written.
- When you save a rule, to what's already there (above).
They don't run when you edit a transaction later. A transaction filed by a rule shows a rule tag in the Transactions table, and picking a category yourself makes it yours.
The Rules panel lists your rules grouped under their category, each group opening to a table of what it matches and its priority, with Expand all and Collapse all. Delete removes a rule; it leaves the transactions it already filed as they are. A rule can't be edited, so to change one, save the new version and delete the old. A category that a rule points at can't be deleted.
Working through what's left
Rules rarely cover everything. On the Transactions page, tick Only uncategorized to see what's left. Select rows and use Set N to to file them in one go, or choose a category on a single row. Transfer rows never appear in that list, because they never take a category, so an empty list means everything is filed.
Limits
- Two levels. There are no sub-subcategories.
- Rules can't be edited or reordered, only added and deleted, and there is no "or" inside a rule.
- Rules read the merchant, the notes and the amount. Not the account or the date.
- The slug can't be changed.
- One category per transaction in the web app. A transaction can be split across categories through the API, but the web app has no editor for it.
For the endpoints, see the categories area in the
API reference.