Hi, I am having trouble auto tagging certain transactions using AutoCat.
I read this topic:
Yet it does not quite address my issue.
There are certain transactions for which I do not have Autocat rules. These I usually categorize manually when I am doing my monthly reconciliation. So, after I manually set a category, the next time I run Autocat I would expect that if I have a rule that searches for “category equals XXX” then apply Y tag would work, but it is not.
Unless it is a brand new uncategorized transaction that happens to have an autocat rule that applies a category + tag, then I am not getting my rules working.
What is going on and how can I fix this?
Here is an example of txn I manually categorized as “Taxes”
And here is my AutoCat rule that should find these txns and tag them as “Bills”
Again, my hope (ideal scenario) is that auto cat rules that search for category names and apply a tag would always work, even if I manually set the category in the txn tab.
Tiller’s support documentation states that:
“If the transaction is already categorized or AutoCat has already made modifications (as indicated by a value being present in the “Categorized Date” column) by default AutoCat will not re-categorize or modify the transaction again.”
When I manually set a category for any transaction, that does not change or add any values to the “Categorized Date”, hence AutoCat should still process that transaction as long as it meets its criteria.
Furthermore, as per another community post about Tags and AutoCat:
“For a transaction to be processed in AutoCat, every non-blank filter column criteria must be met.”
This makes me believe that it is perfectly fine to create rules like the one I shared in my original post, where I can filter by existing category and apply the corresonding Tag. There is no need to add/set a Category in the first column.
Even the Advanced menu to create AutoCat rules allows me to do this without errors.
All your AutoCat rules will run, an AutoCat data filter won’t change that.
One thing to note is that AutoCat processes rules top-to-bottom and the first row to match wins, and so I suspect your rule is never reached and a previous rule for that transaction has already matched.
Thank you for taking the time to test it on your end.
I find it interesting that it worked for you.
As per Tiller’s own documentation (linked in my second message), Autocat should process any txn, as long as it matches its rules, that has nothing under the “Categorized Date”.
My example above (the txn manually categorized as Taxes) do not have anything under “Categorized Date” and there are no other rules in Autocat that could interfere.
So I wonder why it is not working for me!
I wonder if changing the setting to have AutoCat re-run ALL txn is what made a difference in your case. If so, why? It shouldn’t make a difference if my txn were never previously categorized by AutoCat.
Could you try once again with other transactions where you manually set the category and there is nothing under “Categorized Date”?
Could you please let me know if that works?
Thanks again
By default, AutoCat will only run on blank Category’s, which your rule expects to contain text.
It doesn’t matter how the Category was filled with text previously, AutoCat or otherwise.
And another option is to simply enter the Tags when you enter the Manual Transaction.
Would be ideal if AutoCat could run on any txn that matches its criteria and that has not been previously categorized by AutoCat. In other words, if I manually set a category it would not matter and AutoCat would still run. This way, rules like these would work without running the risk of re-applying rules that may alter manually modified transactions if I change the setting from new txn to ALL txns in AutoCat.
Good point. The answer is also easy. Because sometimes I do not know which Tag to use. It was not until I starte doing my end-of-year reconciliation that I decided I wanted to Tag certain categories in a certain way. When I manually was categorizing these transactions (months ago) I had no idea I would need/want another way to aggregate these txn in the future.
Of course, I could very well just go to the txn tab, filter by category and enter the Tag (which is what I did). But, it would also be nice if I could setup an AutoCat rule that will do that going forward, so I do not have to remember a year from now to do the same when I am doing 2025 reconciliation.
I still believe having AutoCat be able to categorize transactions as long as the transaction matches AutoCat rules AND there is nothing in the “Categorized Date” would be amazing.
This way I could confidently categorize any transaction knowing that Autocat will still catch it and apply the rule.
Also. Not that it makes a huge difference for my use-case, but just to clarify
I am not talking about manually “Adding” a transaction (like in your previous post). I am talking about manually “categorizing” ANY transaction. So these are txn imported by Tiller that do not have a AutoCat rule and that I have to manually categorized, based on the name of the merchant or whatever.
