I know by definition AutoCat is meant to sort/rename on categories. So, I hope this question makes sense. I wish I had captured what was there before I ran these rules to provide a more accurate picture.
What I’m getting is very broad Full Description pulled in such as on B9 saying “Autopay” and the same on B12 and B15 so it puts AMEX Blue CC Payment wherever it sees “Autopay”. Same with the “Interest Charge on Purchases” and such. I tried adding the last 4 of each account number into the full description manually and rerunning but no change.
The Target CC is sort of the same issue. The Full Description is a little different on the original data feed. It said Target.com or Target San Antonio for purchases. With the rule I changed it to Target Purchases. But then even on B21 the payment to target got renamed to Target Purchases. I tried just using the “E-Payment” portion and adding a Amount Min to a positive 0.01 but it stayed as Target Purchase.
I’m not sure if it matters the order of the rules listed, if rerunning AutoCat with changes will overwrite/correct outcomes, etc.
I using Excel and not opposed to wiping out the transactions and rules and pulling them back in. If I do that, is there a best practice for clearing transactions from that sheet or just highlighting them all and clearing contents? There’s only 50 or Transactions so not a big deal.
So a couple things here, yes the order listed the the auto cat sheet does matter, basically the first rule to apply with be applied first, and then that transactions is either ignored or the other rules wouldn’t apply anymore as the hook has changed.
It’ll also ignore all categorized items, If you change auto cat setting in in the image below it’ll re-run through everything.
It’ll be a bit slower once you have a lot of data but useful for testing. Side caveat make sure you didn’t manually categorize it as well because it’ll ignore that well.
As for clearing everything I’m not as familiar with excel. but you’ll need to clear both the transaction listing as well as the balance listing so it knows to start from fresh. Best bet if you don’t have a lot of customization is to just create a new sheet.
@ctlee Thanks for the reply. I read your post a couple of times, I kind of get it. When a transaction meets the first rule, that transaction is done. But what if there’s another rule that applies to different fields of that transaction? Or what if I change the first rule and run it again, will the transaction apply the changes to the first rule?
What if I add a column to the Categories or Transaction sheet, can I add a matching column to the other that AutoCat will apply? Is there a hidden area that controls the adding of a column as described?
Are there hidden areas which control AutoCat?
If it matches the first rule it won’t apply changes to the Transaction again even if the changes would be for a different column so those rules need to be bundled into a single rule (e.g. a rule that both categorizes and changes the description or other column).
If you change the rule and want to re-run you can use the AutoCat run settings to run against “ALL” transactions vs just uncategorized transactions and run AutoCat again.
