Smart Features
The automation that fills things in for you, and the switches that turn it off.
Updated
How a Transaction Gets Categorised
Every transaction that arrives - synced, imported or typed - runs through the same sequence, and the first step that produces an answer wins:
- What you have taught it. If you have corrected this merchant before, your category is used.
- Its own merchant and keyword patterns. A built-in list that recognises the common ones and puts them in Groceries, Coffee & Cafes, Transit & Rideshare and the rest.
- What your bank or your file said. The category that came with a synced transaction, or the category column of a CSV if you mapped one.
Once a category is settled, the transaction is linked to whichever budget has that category attached. That is why linking categories when you create a budget matters more than assigning transactions one by one - see Budgets.
Category Learning
Correct a category and Cadence records that you preferred it for that merchant. Do the same thing two or three times and it stops asking: future transactions from that merchant go straight to your category.
Learning is per merchant, not per keyword, and it is yours alone - nothing is shared between accounts. It is also the reason a fresh account feels less accurate than one you have used for a few months.
You cannot write a rule
Cadence has no rules engine, so there is no “if the name contains X, use category Y” to author. Correcting a couple of transactions is how you get the same outcome, and it applies to future imports as well as future syncs.
Transaction Name Suggestions
Start typing a name on a manual transaction and Cadence offers names you have used before. Take one with Enter, move through them with the arrow keys, or dismiss them with Esc.
Consistent names are worth more than the keystrokes they save: search, category learning and recurring detection all key off the name, so three spellings of the same merchant look like three merchants.
Convert to Recurring
When a charge turns out to be a subscription, you do not have to retype it. Open the transaction and choose Create Recurring Bill - or Create Income Source on a deposit - and the name, amount and category are carried across for you to confirm.
Cadence also spots these on its own and offers them as suggested bills. See Recurring Detection.
Turning It Off, or Starting Over
Everything here lives under Settings → Suggestions. The Transaction Behaviour card holds the two automation switches:
- Smart categories - whether Cadence categorises a new transaction for you at all.
- Name suggestions - whether it offers names as you type.
The same screen has Clear Learning, which wipes every merchant preference Cadence has picked up from your corrections.
Clear Learning cannot be undone
It removes every learned preference at once, not one merchant, and there is no way to restore them. Cadence starts again from its built-in patterns and relearns as you correct things. Use it when your categorisation has drifted somewhere you cannot untangle, not to fix a single wrong merchant - correcting that merchant twice fixes it faster.
What Is Not Automatic
Worth knowing so you are not waiting on something that will not come:
- Cadence never moves money, never pays a bill, and never changes an amount you entered.
- A suggested expected income amount is offered, never applied - see Tracking Income.
- Transfers are recognised as transfers so they do not read as spending, but a transfer pair you record by hand still needs both sides. See Transfers & Payments.