Categories
What a transaction was, and where you are counting it. Two different fields.
Updated
The Two Systems
| Category | Budget | |
|---|---|---|
| Answers | What was this? | Where am I counting it? |
| Who defines it | Cadence Money - a fixed list of around fifty | You - name and shape your own |
| How many per transaction | One | One, or several if you split it |
| Set by | Cadence Money on sync, or you on entry | The categories linked to the budget |
Categories are a built-in list covering everything from Groceries and Coffee & Cafes to Transfer and Uncategorized. You cannot add your own, and you do not need to: budgets are the part you name, and one budget can draw from as many categories as you like.
Changing a Transaction's Category
- Tap the transaction to open it.
- Tap Edit.
- Open the Category picker and choose the right one.
- Tap Save.
There is no shortcut around the edit form. The detail view shows you the category, but the row is read-only - Edit is the only way to change it. If a Rule row sits under the category, a Transaction Rule of yours chose it; you can still change this one transaction, but the rule keeps deciding the rest. See Transaction Rules.
Applying a Correction to a Whole Merchant
If you have other transactions on file from the same merchant, saving is interrupted by a prompt titled Edit Other Transactions?. It lists every transaction it would rewrite - up to a hundred of them, in a scrolling list rather than a handful and a count - so you can see exactly what you are agreeing to before you agree to it.
It offers two separate decisions, and both start unticked:
- A checkbox starting Also update, followed by the count it would change - it rewrites the ones in the list. This is about the past.
- Make a Rule - turns your correction into a standing Transaction Rule, so transactions like this land in your category from now on without you correcting them. This is about the future. See Transaction Rules.
Neither is ticked for you at any count. Leave both alone and only the transaction in front of you changes.
It only asks when there are at least two others to change, so a one-off correction saves straight through. Transactions already carrying the category you picked do not count towards that, which is why correcting one stray charge from a merchant you sorted out long ago never prompts.
A sweep has no undo
Ticking the first box rewrites every transaction in that list at once, and the only way back is re-editing each row. Read the list before you tick it. If more matches were found than the sweep will touch, the prompt says so above the list.
If a rule of yours already decided the category, the prompt says which rule and offers to open it instead of offering to make a second one.
Assigning a Transaction to a Budget
A transaction’s budget is a separate field on the same edit form. Open the transaction, tap Edit, and pick from the Budget list, or choose Unbudgeted to leave it out of your spending totals.
Most of the time you will not have to. Linking categories to a budget when you create it is what puts transactions there automatically; this field is for the exceptions.
When the Budget Field Is Missing
It disappears on anything that is not spending:
- A Transfer or Investments transaction.
- An income category such as Income, Bonus or Tax Refund.
Reimbursement and Refund are the exceptions among the income categories. On the edit form they keep the field, because money coming back to you can offset what a budget already spent. See Reimbursements & Refunds.
A bulk change to those two clears the budget
The exception applies when you edit one transaction at a time. A bulk category change treats Reimbursement and Refund like every other income category and clears the budget on every transaction you selected, which is not what the single-row form does with the same categories. It is a genuine inconsistency in the app, not a rule with a reason behind it.
So if you are moving transactions onto Reimbursement or Refund and you want them offsetting a budget, do it one at a time, or reassign the budget afterwards. See Bulk Editing.
It also disappears while WorryFree is switched on, since that mode replaces your monthly budgets with a single allowance. Annual and out-of-pocket budgets survive WorryFree, so the field comes back if you have one of those to assign to.
How Cadence Money Learns From Your Corrections
Correct a category on a synced transaction and Cadence Money records your preference for that merchant. One correction is enough - it applies your category to future transactions from that merchant from then on. Correcting the same merchant again only makes the preference harder to outweigh. The preference covers money going the same way only, so a refund from that merchant is not filed under the category you chose for its purchases.
Correcting is the quiet mechanism. If you would rather state the outcome outright than wait for Cadence Money to infer it, write a Transaction Rule - rules are checked before anything the app has learned. See also Smart Features, which covers the whole order and how to wipe what it has learned.
Tip
To recategorise a lot at once, filter the list down to the merchant first and then select all. See Bulk Editing.