I’ve been working on automating my stuff with Autocat. Organizing by category has been working fine, but when I try to override the descriptions, Autocat almost never works. It might work a time or two, but it’s very sporadic and rare. I can’t figure out why this specific feature isn’t working. Anyone have a clue?
Usually the issue is the rule criteria not matching the transaction. Do you have any examples of transactions and their accompanying rules that aren’t having their description overridden as expected?
I eventually just copied the stuff in my Autocat, uninstalled it, reinstalled it, and pasted in my stuff with values only and it worked again. I’ve had to do this numerous times since when Autocat randomly stopped working; I think it’s a hang-up with Autocat itself.
That sounds strange, @caryupnorth. I wrote most of that code and there isn’t really any part of it that should work intermittently. I think @cculber2 is correct that the most likely cause is a flawed rule criteria. I’d add another possibility is a mismatch in the column name (e.g. Description with an added space either in Autocat or the Transactions sheet).
Randy
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Exactly my thought @randy. Stray punctuation and invisible control characters are my number one offender when it comes to pattern matching. 
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Good to know, @randy and @cculber2. Thank you for the help! I’ll keep an eye out for both those culprits in my Autocat.
Autocat and I are definitely having some getting-to-know-you issues 
I cleaned up my Autocat the other day and I ended up deleting some of the rules that I made, then I updated my accounts and re-ran Autocat, and I realized that some of the descriptions that I had changed earlier had reverted back to their original form. For example, I had changed “Cenex-farmers x-8341 Auto Fuel Dispenser” to just “Cenex,” but after cleaning up Autocat and re-running it, the description was now the original again. I honestly can’t remember if I had manually changed the description or if I had put it into Autocat and then later deleted the rule. Quite a few other descriptions went back to their original form as well. Would somebody mind explaining this to me so that Autocat and I can start getting along? 
Thank you!
This is odd. The only ways I could imaging this would happen are:
- You have an AutoCat rule that has the original description in the Description column in your AutoCat sheet and the Description Contains criteria in the AutoCat sheet was the new description
e.g. Description contains = Cenex and Description = Cenex-farmers x-8341 Auto Fuel Dispenser
-
You reverted your sheet to a previous version where the descriptions matched their originals
-
You started in a new sheet and filled the data again.
Hopefully that helps.
Heather
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Thank you for your help, Heather! I figured it out. As a newbie to Tiller, I feel like I’m trying out all the things you shouldn’t do I was trying to connect a new credit card to an account that was already linked to Tiller, but it wasn’t showing up, so I tried DELETING the entire account (including the other credit cards attached to it) and re-linking it. When I did that, unbeknownst to me that made duplicates show up in my transactions. I didn’t know they were duplicates, so to me it just looked like the changes I had made in the descriptions had reverted back to their original form. Once I looked closer at the transactions, though, and realized what had happened, I used the “Manage Duplicates” tool to clean it up (unfortunately, the tool doesn’t catch the duplicates where the descriptions have significantly changed between the two, so I had to comb through it manually and find those ones). At any rate, that was the problem.
(Also, just as a data point for other Tiller users who may have this question, the credit card that was missing showed up on Tiller after I PHYSICALLY received the card in the mail and confirmed with the CC company that I had received it. Many credit card companies will allow you to use a card number online while you’re waiting to receive the physical card in the mail, so I had linked my new card to my PayPal and had been using it online, so I thought it would show up in Tiller as well, but the account didn’t show up until I had received and confirmed the actual physical card.)
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I also had trouble with Autocat not updating transactions. I realized after messing with my rules that problems was my expectations.
Namely, I was expecting it to run on ALL transactions, but the AutoCat Run Setting for Run AutoCat Rules On was set to
Only Uncategorized Transactions. 
Maybe the AutoCat running status can also state “on [Categorized|Uncategorized] Transactions”…?
Seems like there are two use cases for running AutoCat: Auto Run On Update or On Demand. The transaction type setting is appropriately hidden with the Auto Run setting, but maybe lost and forgotten when run on demand?
Thanks for your feedback, @ThriftScout
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I am having the same issue. Had old rules that worked perfectly, replace several of the old rules with new rules. I used create and run. It took a very long time, but the program is not running my new rules, it reverts to my old rules. I used create and run. I also have turned run auto rules on and off, and it has not worked either way, and I was using all transactions.
Same Issue. Steps to recreate:
- Turn on AutoCat advanced
- Filter Criteria: Full Description - Contains - “TEXT” (section of text is directly copied from an entry on Full Description Line.
- Set Column Override: Description = New Text
- In settings make sure "Run AutoCat Rules On - All Transactions
- Create and Run.
Results, does not work on most of my criteria.
Is it that I am pulling a section of text from the middle of the full description? What function is used here?
@Machoo - can you try creating the rule and then running AutoCat manually using the run on ALL vs just uncategorized?
I’m wondering if the “create & run” does not look at the AutoCat run setting (all vs uncategorized) for some reason.