Renaming transactions:

[mrplatts]

Hi,

I'm not sure if I'm missing something on how renaming works in Mint.

I buy groceries from Giant Eagle grocery store and occasionally gas from their chain of gas stations GetGo. The original transaction descriptions are different, but Mint lumps them both under the name Giant Eagle. Since Mint appears to take category labels only based on the renamed transaction all of my purchases from these stores are either gas or grocery transactions.

Example:

Giant Eagle:
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1312/1452825468_29e00a6cd4_m.jpg

Getgo:
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1012/1452825434_459792fe73_m.jpg

This is obviously not the way Mint is intended to work. It seems silly to rename transactions globally based on an already renamed transaction. Mint would be much more powerful if users had access to the original transaction data for renaming. (other similar, competing sites allow this)

All the flashy graphics and spending trends charts in the world won't help me if I can't use Mint to distinguish between gas & grocery purchases (two of the bigger categories in many budgets)

Am i misunderstanding this, or is it a flaw in the system.

[kly]

First I want to say this is a great application, and will be using it religiously. I have a background in software development, so hopefully my comments will be insightful enough to be useful :)

Today is also my first day using the app, and I tried to search/read through as much of the forum for this issue before posting, but I suppose it's possible I missed it.

I would like to second the parent.

Perhaps allowing wildcard matching in the renaming features would be nice. (*I'd* like regex, but I'm sure that would be too complex for the majority of users, and probably overkill).

The similar issue that I've been running into is that I can't edit rules. Now I have a problem with accidental consolidation of merchants. Example: I renamed "Palmers (Non-Pin)" to just "Palmers", and accidentally renamed "Jimmy Johns" to "Palmers". Now there is no way for me to reset the "Palmers" renaming rule, effectively trapping my "Jimmy Johns" as "Palmers".

Giving access to renaming original transaction data with wildcard renaming could possibly prevent this from happening.

Thanks.

[Damon]

This issue will get better in the near future (working with our vendor to improve the accuracy of what comes across).

[sucellus]

I whole heartedly agree with kly and mrplatts on this one, and I don't think its a data issue problem. It lists the original data, you just can't rename against it.

There are really two easy fixes which need to be implemented.
1. List and delete rename rules (and re-categorization too for that matter)
2. Rename based on original name as opposed to rename based on renamed name, or at least a choice in the matter