I’m having an issue with an Autocat that I’m setting up for a series of very specific, daily transactions. I need to use the amount (all the same amount), but it doesn’t process when I add that amount ($5) to the rule. If I change it and use $4.99 in the minimum amount column and $5.01 in the maximum amount column, it processes just fine. It has to be something easy that I’m missing?
Hi @Gracy,
It sounds like there may be a rounding error somewhere, either on the transaction amounts themselves, or when the AutoCat Rule Builder creates the rule. Can you verify there are no extra decimal places on any of the amounts when you click on the cell that would round up in the display, something like 4.999999 or 5.00001?
[edit]
After reviewing the AutoCat documentation, I believe this is your answer. Can you give this a try?
Amount Ranges
Use the amount min and amount max columns to set the minimum and maximum for the amount that the rule should look for. Enter these as absolute values.
If you need an exact match, enter that amount into both the min and max columns. E.g. if you want to set up a rule for your mortgage check that’s consistent every month you can use the Description Contains “Check #” and then use the Amount range $1200 for both the min and max.
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Thank you - I will definitely give that a try today and report back. I’m not as familiar with Sheets as I am with Excel, so it takes a little bit more to poke around, but it sounds like it wasn’t something I did incorrectly. I had actually thought about using the exact amount in the min and max columns. I have more of those transactions to process and new ones come in each day, so it will be easy to test both ways.
I appreciate the help.
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UPDATED/SOLVED
I tried it again with another account that has the same type of daily transaction.
First I copied the exact same AutoCat rule with the min/max value since I knew it works, changing the particulars about the account. I then copied the format of the Max Value column to the Exact Value column, removed the amounts in the Min/Max columns and inserted the value only in the Exact Value column. It did not find any of the transactions with that method despite using the copied format for that column.
I then removed the Exact Value and put the exact amount ($5) in both the Min and Max Value columns and ran AutoCat and it captured all 96 outstanding transactions.
So as suspected there is something about that Exact Value column/formatting that is causing the error. Simply copying the format from the other columns did not resolve it. I don’t know enough about Sheets to figure it out, but the workaround is easy enough. Obviously, since they documented in the article they are aware and did attempt to resolve it and just decided that offering the workaround was a better option.
Either way, my problem is solved. Thank you.
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Glad to hear the min/max workaround solves the issue!
I’m glad you were able to figure this out, @cculber2 and @Gracy.
For the record, did you ever try creating an “Amount Equals” column? The documentation says this is for strings but I checked the code and it looks like it should work with numbers as well.
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Hi there. I have this problem, a simple autocat rule using the “Amount Equals” column doesn’t work. There are two previous threads which diagnosed this:
There is a thread here that suggests the problem is not having the column formatted for currency, but I do have it formatted that way.
Then this current thread (the one we’re in 
) It described a work-around back in 2022: use the same value in the Amount Min and Amount Max value columns. Which works. But I just wanted to point out that at this point (1/2025), the documentation does not even appear to mention the Amount Equals column, so I suspect it is no longer supported, and the work-around has become the correct / only way to do this. I am going to use the Min Max strategy and delete the “Amount Equals” column in a week or so if no-one cries foul. Thanks.
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Hi @michael303 !
There is currently a bug with the Amount Equals column. For now please enter the same amount in Amount Min and Amount Max as you were thinking to do .
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I had success yesterday using “Amount Contains” column in AutoCat.
In my testing, the value in autocat will match to negative or positive values that match it.
I found this by setting “amount equals” in the auto-cat rule builder, and it created the Amount Contains column in the autocat sheet.
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Thanks for that update @m00 !
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