Transactions, categories and rules

Record what comes in and what goes out

Knowing how much you spend is useful, but knowing what you spend it on is what lets you decide. You need an account and a few transactions before you can sort anything, so if you're starting from scratch, create the account your everyday money moves through.

An income: your salary

To record a transaction on the web, open New in the top bar and choose New transaction. Mark this one as income, then enter the amount, a description and the account it goes into. It appears in the list as pending, like every new transaction, until you confirm it or match it against your bank statement.

An expense: the groceries

Next comes the most common expense of all, the supermarket shop. Mark it as expense, enter the amount and write a clear description that includes the supermarket's name. That name will come in handy later. Leave the category empty for now.

Bring order: categories and tags

With some transactions recorded, it's time to say what each one is. abacova gives you two tools, and they do different jobs.

Create a category

A category says what money was for: food, rent, transport. Categories are managed with the organization's lookup lists, in Parametrics. Add a category for your groceries. You can reorder the list by dragging, and every category picker shows it alphabetically.

Create a tag

A tag is a free label that groups transactions across categories, such as everything for the home, or a trip to Rome. Tags have their own screen. Create one there with a name you'll recognise. Tags can also be nested, and a parent tag rolls up everything filed under its children.

Categorise a transaction

Go back to Transactions and open the shop you recorded. In the form, the category comes first and the tags follow it. Choose your category, add your tag and save. You can also edit the category and tags cells directly in the list.

Let rules do the work

Categorising by hand every week gets tiring, and that's what rules are for. A rule watches for something recognisable about a transaction, typically its description or payee, and applies a category, tags or both. The free plan allows ten rules.

A rule that categorises for you

To see one working, first record another shop at the same supermarket and leave its category empty.

Then open the rules screen and create a new rule, with a name that explains what it does. For the condition, say that the description contains the supermarket's name. As you type, the editor shows how many of your existing transactions match. For the action, set the category to the one you created. Then save.

Past and future transactions

Saving a rule doesn't touch what's already recorded. To apply your rules to it, press Run rules on the rules screen. The shop you left empty now has its category. A rule only fills a category that is still empty, so it never replaces one you chose yourself.

From now on, your rules run on every way a transaction can enter abacova: typed by hand, imported from a file, scanned from a receipt or dictated. The next time you record a shop at that supermarket, the category takes care of itself.