How can I permanently categorize a transaction so I don’t have to update it?

[Damon]

a) Login to your Mint account.
b) Click on the “Transactions” tab.
c) Locate the merchant you wish to always categorize & check the box. Now click on the categorize button.
d) Clicking on categorize opens up the most popular categories.
e) The top of the page shows a "Create a Rule" option. This will allow you to always categorize transactions from that merchant in the category you select.

[mlebarron]

There's actually no "Save" button on the category selection screen (at least from what I see on build ph238.7)

[Damon]

Ah, it looks like they changed it without telling me:) If you look at the top of the page, you will see a "create a rule" option.

[mlebarron]

very sneaky ;)

[so1o]

is there a place where i can see all the rules that i have created till now?

[pgogineni]

good question. I realized that I made some rules that really don't apply to all transactions and now I am having to go back and change the category on each one of them. Would like to be able to edit the rules all in one location and delete ones that are false.
thanks

[rednikon]

good question. I realized that I made some rules that really don't apply to all transactions and now I am having to go back and change the category on each one of them. Would like to be able to edit the rules all in one location and delete ones that are false.
thanks

Good suggestion. Like for example there is a choice that says <MALL NAME> <CITY> BUR and another that says <MALL NAME> <CITY> SPE. Now both of these are automatically updated in mint as Mall Name as the Merchant and under the Category Shopping. Though this isn't always the case. Looking at the example the first transaction actually took place at Burger King and would be considered Fast Food or Restaurant, where as the second would be Spencer's which would actually be considered Shopping but could be considered Entertainment.

Now if you could create rules based on the original posting from your account. Versus creating rules based on the Mint updated title like is currently in place, it would make it a lot easier on users. If you would like an example of this look at Wesabe, which has a rather robust tracking feature. Though I prefer Mint due to the Friendliness of your user interface. This is just one of the suggestions I would make.

[Damon]

Rules are most certainly something we're surfacing for a change...

[rednikon]

Rules are most certainly something we're surfacing for a change...

I would love to here about it once the change is in place. I am planning an article for my blog on free financial management web-apps. Currently Mint has the lead in looks, timeliness of updates to account information, and budget tools. However Mint is lacking in community support, tips to decrease spending and increase savings, and transaction management.

If the rules system was revised I am sure I would favor Mint even more. I will be keeping an eye on this thread, and if you want to send me a PM directing me to any other features I may be over looking please do. Either way keep up the great work here.

[mintfeedback]

Rules are most certainly something we're surfacing for a change...

Hi Damon,

I would like to 'undo' one of the rules I set. Is this possible? I set "Withdrawal Draft" to be a category of "Check" thinking this made sense. But then I went into each item and updated the category after cross-referencing the check number with my bank account. (A check for Property Taxes went to Taxes, a check for a magazine subscriptions went to Shopping:Books, etc). This is all fine and dandy, but when I move around the site and then come back to Spendning Trends or Transactions, it shows all "Withdrawal Draft" as "Check" again. My manual category changes were not saved.

Please help. "Check" is under "No Category" and is messing up the almighty Mint Pie Chart.

Thanks!
TallDave

[mkbrandt]

Hi,

I'm following the above directions, but my categorizations don't seem to "stick." That is, I'll check "create a rule" when I categorize something, but the next time Mint picks up another transaction of that type, it doesn't have my rule applied to it. I'm not sure if this is a bug, or just user error. Can anyone help?

Thanks much,
MK

[scrappinkelly]

Hi,

I'm following the above directions, but my categorizations don't seem to "stick." That is, I'll check "create a rule" when I categorize something, but the next time Mint picks up another transaction of that type, it doesn't have my rule applied to it. I'm not sure if this is a bug, or just user error. Can anyone help?

Thanks much,
MK

Same thing happens to me. I have created this rule for certain transactions for 3 months in a row and it never "sticks".

[sciondriver]

Same thing for me. Some of my rules for renaming and categorizing transactions don't stick. I wish there was a way to edit or delete rules and start all over.

[larry91403]

I have yet to have a rule actually work.

[dburney@mac.com]

Ditto - I just went through a months worth of transactions last week, adding rules for renaming and categorizing. I check my transactions today and it appears all my new transactions have ignored my previous rules. ???

[Damon]

Some of the issues folks are experiencing may have to do with browsers (see below). If folks need rules removed, I did want to advise that we can do so if you use the contact us form (need the specific rule(s) and the account email address).




Internet Explorer 6 (Windows) Link (recommend upgrading to Internet Explorer 7 below)

Internet Explorer 7 (Windows) Link: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9ae91ebe-3385-447c-8a30-081805b2f90b&DisplayLang=en

Mozilla Firefox 2 (Windows) Link: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

Safari 2 OSX (Apple) Link: http://www.apple.com/downloads/

Note about Safari 3 for Mac: Safari 3 doesn't work well with the site right now & we would recommend trying the site with Firefox for Mac.

[johnhoye@hotmail.com]

Some of my transactions come in with unique transactions numbers in the merchant name (e.g. SAFEWAY DES ID xxx90172-8834) making it so that I cannot create a rule to automatically categorize the transactions from a praticular merchant. It's been a while since I used mint and I thought I fugured this out. Is there a way to do this?


thanks

[talldave]

I use Camino or Opera. So I tried Safari ver 2.0.4 but those categories didnt stick either. What now?

[mukid]

I've noticed that when I try to create a rule, if my mouse moves over other categories on its way to the "Create rule" checkbox, that the rule changes. The rule will be based on the last thing the mouse cursor touched. So if you try to make a rule that categorizes something as "Groceries," for example, and then slide your mouse up to the "Create a rule" checkbox, and pass by "Auto" along the way, that the rule you create will actually change your Trader Joe's rule so that Trader Joe's now gets classified as Auto. I don't know if this is related to the problem people are having or not - just thought I'd share.

[mkbrandt]

I'm not quite sure I get what you're trying to say about browsers. I'm using FF 2.0.0.11 on Win XP, which I believe is a supported configuration for Mint. However, my rules still are not remaining the way I set them. It's quite frustrating - I've followed your directions to ask to have those rules set by an admin (it's mostly grocery stuff that seems to be messed up for me - apparently buying groceries at a Co-op is similar to making a charitable donation, or so Mint believes ;)

Anyway, I would dearly love to see my custom rules - is there any chance that I could do that? It seems like it would solve so many problems, and then I could tell if I had inadvertently set a rule incorrectly, or what else might be happening with my account. Having so little transparency is making using Mint increasingly difficult for me, as I have more rules set up for my transactions.

Thanks,
MK

[sunsail]

I'm following the above directions, but my categorizations don't seem to "stick." That is, I'll check "create a rule" when I categorize something, but the next time Mint picks up another transaction of that type, it doesn't have my rule applied to it. I'm not sure if this is a bug, or just user error. Can anyone help?

Thanks much,
MK
Some of the issues folks are experiencing may have to do with browsers (see below). If folks need rules removed, I did want to advise that we can do so if you use the contact us form (need the specific rule(s) and the account email address).

Note about Safari 3 for Mac: Safari 3 doesn't work well with the site right now & we would recommend trying the site with Firefox for Mac.

Damon, I am experiencing the same problem as mkbrant,
and have been since i signed up for Mint. I don't need any rules removed, as per your suggestion. I just want the rules I have to work!!

Any suggestions? :confused:

Are you saying that rules may or may not "stick" depending on what browser we're using?

Can you tell me which browser TO use??? I'd gladly oblige. I think I'm pretty savvy, but perhaps it's an ID10T error... :p:

[talldave]

I think we lost Damon.

[thureen]

I see check box, but I don't see any "Categorize" button Transaction menu. In the "Category Column" you use drop box to select a category but nothing but creating a new rule shows up. Edit details doesn't do anything either.

Any help here? I think interface might have changed?

[Apolex]

Yes, I'm having the same problem. I can't find how to make it a rule to always categorize a specific transaction.

Apparently Mint has changed since the instructions earlier in this thread were written.

Any help?

[AgDawg]

I am having problems with the rules in both IE 7.0 and Firefox 3.0.3 It seems the rule is created on the first transaction after I login but the next transactions don't appear in the Edit Rules link. Also there is no create rules link.

[thureen]

This seems to be a browser problem Firefox 3.03 doesn't work. I tried Google Chrome, this worked.

There is new interface. You go the transaction your want (under transactions tab). Then Highlight it and click edit. Then change the category to the one your want. It will the show a "Rules" option. You can use that.

Again Firefox 3.03 doesn't seem to work. AgDawg mentioned IE 7 too. Might try out older browser or Chrome.

[telemykos]

a) Login to your Mint account.
b) Click on the “Transactions” tab.
c) Locate the merchant you wish to always categorize & check the box. Now click on the categorize button.
d) Clicking on categorize opens up the most popular categories.
e) The top of the page shows a "Create a Rule" option. This will allow you to always categorize transactions from that merchant in the category you select.

dude, i cannot find "Now click on the categorize button.". i can change a catory, or edit the transaction. but there is no place for creating a rule for this transaction or merchant.

[fluxxball]

Can we get an update on this problem? It is extremely annoying to constantly recategorize transactions. It really detracts from some of the more appealing functions of the service viz. budgets and trends.

Thanks in advance,
FB

[duplico]

It looks like the new way to do this is to open the "Edit Details" tab on the purchase and change the name and/or category manually; then, a checkbox should appear that says something like "Always change the name/category...".

[sheila527]

I agree with duplico. All you have to do is click on the transaction and there should be edit details under it and then click that. Type the description you want and change the category. Once your done, you'll notice the RULES (under DETAILS) where you can check the box to Always rename (old description) as (new description) and categorize as (new category). After you click I'm Done, it will tell you how many transactions you have that will change to the new Rules.

OR

Go to Transaction Tab, you should see Edit Multiple on a box and beside this, there should be a Link to Edit Rules. Just check the box on the left side of the transaction you want to change and then click that Edit Rules on top.

[peanutbuttertree]

I click the edit details tab for a transaction, but I don't see anything about rules listed there. There's a section for details, tags, notes and a box to check to say "this is a duplicate", then a "cancel" button and an "I'm done" button.

This is in firefox3, ie7 and chrome 1

I have existing rules I can change (though I'm not certain they work) or delete, but can't seem to find any way to make a new rule.

MINT where are you on this?

[mburdsall]

A line will asking to make a new rule will appear in the "Edit Detail section" once you make a change to the description or catagory fields of the transaction. Until you make a change the option to make it a new rule will not appear.

[jtloudon]

I'm also not seeing the "set rules option" in the Edit Details page even when I change the category. Is this not working or what am I doing wrong?

[mburdsall]

It seems to be working for me. When I go into the edit detail box a change either the description or catagory then a line appears below the dsrciption in the edit box asking if I wish to retain the rule. If it is a rule that already exists then it will cross out the rule and just show the question. I've never ad any problem with this.

[brettveenstra]

Is there a way to create a rule that remembers a SPLIT?

[mburdsall]

Currently there is no method that I'm aware that allows you to create a rule to remember a split. Today the rules only handle description and catagories for a single transaction. It would be nice if they included the tags as part of the rules as well.

[lucasman]

I might be an idiot, but I've spent the last 30 minutes reading through these forums trying to figure out how to make it so that it saves preferences I set for categories on particular merchants. (I believe this is what is referred to on this forum as a "rule.") It seems that the instructions at the top of this thread are no longer valid, and I can't believe that we have to spend all this time reading random thread posts to find out something so fundamental. I would greatly appreciate some help with that specific question and also any enlightenment as to how to learn this app without sorting through so many irrelevant posts.

Thanks...

[kelleigh2]

I finally found it - you can't just change the category - you have to choose "edit details" first, then change the category and then another line will appear in the box asking if you want to make it a permanent change. HTH...

[mburdsall]

Yes exactly. It is kind of hidden. Works nice but they need to include the option of setting the tag as part of the rule!!!

[AirBoss]

Also -- if you "edit details" -- it now gives a "Manage your rules" link that lets you delete any old rules (it also lists all your active rules).

[erincj]

Hi, all,

I can no longer create new rules. When I Edit Details for a transaction and change its category, the rules check box that used to pop up no longer pops up.

This is so bizarre because it was working just 30 minutes ago.

Anyone know what's going on?

EJ

_______________

Update: This post belongs in a report a bug thread, so I'm going to put it there.

[Justin Maxwell]

Hi, all,

I can no longer create new rules. When I Edit Details for a transaction and change its category, the rules check box that used to pop up no longer pops up.

This is so bizarre because it was working just 30 minutes ago.

Anyone know what's going on?

EJ

_______________

Update: This post belongs in a report a bug thread, so I'm going to put it there.

We've seen this in a few cases and are looking in to it. There's a bug filed.

Thanks,
Justin

[kruzer]

I am able to create and modify rules for my banking transactions, but the options don't appear with investment transactions. Any mutual fund purchases or sales show up as a transfer rather than a buy or sell (at least those with Vanguard; I don't have the opportunity to try with another investment house), which gets to be quite painful as dollar-cost investing with multiple mutual funds means lots of transactions to re-categorize. Is the lack of rules for these transactions by design or am I looking in the wrong place?

I'll leave out the question of the wisdom of investing much these days...

Thanks

[fixitben]

I hope this gets fixed. I found this post then got confused why mine didn't have the button. It is real hard getting over budget for something that should be in a different catagory.

Thanks for this great site.

[mburdsall]

It would be nice if they documented these lack of features. Not sure why they would not implement with investment transactions.

[Laughable]

I am picking on you because your signature indicates you may be responsible for UI decisions within Mint.

Let me just get something of my chest--cute only gets you so far. And right now mint is only Cute. Until rules/categories/transaction renaming work properly, Mint as a whole is stuck in the CUTE phase, not unlike the 18 month old that lives next door.

Cute and not very useful-- Having to continuously comb through transactions, determine Mint's assumptions, truncations, omissions, failures, and then trying to "fix the current situation" so that I can extract value.

Flashy "feature" addition while monsters like this are permitted to keep growing perniciously in the dark, smacks of irresponsibility. Irresponsibility is not something that goes well with a financial services application.

What do I recommend? Work. And More Work. Mostly for the development staff. Fix the entire engine responsible for Rules. It is essentially based on wrong-headed assumptions.
Your core renaming logic is POOR. You are not handling special characters appropriately. You are not collating all the user categorizations to make a better guess at what a specific transaction might "be". You are not isolating different classes of information from within the transaction description(institution/location/Merchant acct num.). You are not letting users TURN OFF YOUR BROKEN RENAMER/CATEGORIZER.

Regexxes are HARD. Developers and Dev Managers often give push back. Bull dog it. By that I mean lock your jaws around their neck until they either capitulate or die. This is for Mint's benefit. Without this feature...we're all off to Yodlee--as klunkity and slow as it might be.

Sincerely,

-R

[Tankeray]

Is it possible to set up a rule to look at merchant name and Amount of the charge?

Example:
I work for a clothing company, so when I shop there and spend, say $50, it should be classified as clothing, which it currently does automatically.

However, eating in the cafeteria there also categorizes it as "clothing", as it has the merchant name in the charge. I'd like to have the rule set up where if the charge is less than, say $15 or $20, it's "Food", otherwise, it's still "Clothing".
{If merchant = <clothing company> AND Amount > $20, = "Clothing", else "Food & Dining"}

[Justin Maxwell]

Is it possible to set up a rule to look at merchant name and Amount of the charge?

Example:
I work for a clothing company, so when I shop there and spend, say $50, it should be classified as clothing, which it currently does automatically.

However, eating in the cafeteria there also categorizes it as "clothing", as it has the merchant name in the charge. I'd like to have the rule set up where if the charge is less than, say $15 or $20, it's "Food", otherwise, it's still "Clothing".
{If merchant = <clothing company> AND Amount > $20, = "Clothing", else "Food & Dining"}

No, that's not possible right now. We've considered advanced rules for a future release...many of us would love such a thing. Thanks for asking though.

[Justin Maxwell]

I am picking on you because your signature indicates you may be responsible for UI decisions within Mint.

Let me just get something of my chest--cute only gets you so far. And right now mint is only Cute. Until rules/categories/transaction renaming work properly, Mint as a whole is stuck in the CUTE phase, not unlike the 18 month old that lives next door.

Cute and not very useful-- Having to continuously comb through transactions, determine Mint's assumptions, truncations, omissions, failures, and then trying to "fix the current situation" so that I can extract value.

Flashy "feature" addition while monsters like this are permitted to keep growing perniciously in the dark, smacks of irresponsibility. Irresponsibility is not something that goes well with a financial services application.

What do I recommend? Work. And More Work. Mostly for the development staff. Fix the entire engine responsible for Rules. It is essentially based on wrong-headed assumptions.
Your core renaming logic is POOR. You are not handling special characters appropriately. You are not collating all the user categorizations to make a better guess at what a specific transaction might "be". You are not isolating different classes of information from within the transaction description(institution/location/Merchant acct num.). You are not letting users TURN OFF YOUR BROKEN RENAMER/CATEGORIZER.

Regexxes are HARD. Developers and Dev Managers often give push back. Bull dog it. By that I mean lock your jaws around their neck until they either capitulate or die. This is for Mint's benefit. Without this feature...we're all off to Yodlee--as klunkity and slow as it might be.

Sincerely,

-R

Hey R,

Thanks for the encouragement. As Mint is growing, we've added new members to our engineering team to focus on machine learning and help our renaming and categorization get even better. We have a few new tricks we plan to roll out in the next couple of versions...stuff that the customer should be completely unaware of, but we'll see the overall number of renaming errors reduced drastically.

I agree the renaming errors are frustrating, but I wouldn't call our core logic "poor." (You can, that's fine.) So, I'm responding to say your post isn't falling on deaf ears: we're aware of the renaming and miscategorization errors that can affect users, we're working to make the engine smarter daily. It's a foundation of what Mint.com offers, and something of great importance to us.

Thanks,
Justin

[mburdsall]

Good reply Justin. The product is one of the best on the market and I;m sure it will continue to evolve as time goes on.

It would be nice to know when updates occur and to become more involved in the process. I have an account with Yodlee as well. The thing about Yodlee that I like is that they bring the customer into the product development by leting all customer play with a beta site and provide feedback.

Does Mint ahve any plans to do this as well?

[Justin Maxwell]

Good reply Justin. The product is one of the best on the market and I;m sure it will continue to evolve as time goes on.

It would be nice to know when updates occur and to become more involved in the process. I have an account with Yodlee as well. The thing about Yodlee that I like is that they bring the customer into the product development by leting all customer play with a beta site and provide feedback.

Does Mint ahve any plans to do this as well?

We don't just have plans to do it, we do it already! Customer feedback and user research played a huge part of our implementation of custom categories and investments on Mint.com. The investments feature was a beta we rolled out to certain segments of users, and we invited a random selection of users to interact with early prototypes of custom categories.

Thanks,
Justin

[jesse.bilsten]

Just to affirm to the Mint team, I also do not have a "Add rule" link or button anywhere on my account. (Unless I'm still missing it after reading this thread and doing a search on the help/FAQ).

I have a few I can edit/delete but no way of adding new ones which I desperately need to do.

Is there a timeline for this feature to be fixed or is my account just special in its dilapidated state?

[mburdsall]

I would love to be part of the beta team if possible. better yet are there any plans to allow the beta site to open to all users similar to what Yodlee allows for its users. It would be a great source of feedback and you would probably have better acceptance to the changes.

[Stephen]

I would love to be part of the beta team if possible. better yet are there any plans to allow the beta site to open to all users similar to what Yodlee allows for its users. It would be a great source of feedback and you would probably have better acceptance to the changes.

mburdsall,

We don't have any current public Beta projects running but I will definitely have you included on the next one if and when we run one. You've been the most active user on the forums lately so I would certainly include you :) . We had an Investments Beta running this past summer which helped fine tune our version release in mid October. Thanks for all your great feedback!

[bill.childs]

I also don't see anything about creating rules anywhere on my account. It would be a lovely feature; I'm really liking everything else...

[jasonian.]

Laughable, great post; you note everything I'd say.

Mint.com: Is there some public statement about the timing of fixes and improvements to the rules system? I'm finding it inscrutable at best.

For example, "AMAZON DIGITAL SVCS" give me the option to "rename Amazon". Well, I don't want to rename "Amazon". I want to rename "AMAZON DIGITAL SVCS". But I'm not provided that option.

And if I change the entry to "Amazon MP3 Downloads", then I can only create rules based on "Amazon MP3 Downloads"; there's no apparent way to go back to the "default".

Why not, and when will these be resolved? It's currently the biggest frustration I'm having in my less-than-two-months trial of Mint.com

[mburdsall]

I also don't see anything about creating rules anywhere on my account. It would be a lovely feature; I'm really liking everything else...

To set-up a rule, go into the transactions tab. You will see the first transaction highlighted. Click on edit details and a box will appear. If you change the description or category a line will appear in the box with a checkbox that defines the new rule. Click onthe check box if you wish to keep the rule. The rule will then be applied with future transactions.

[yoshaino]

None of this works. No "edit rules" or "add rules" button ever shows up and a checkbox to add rules inside the "edit details" box also never appears. All my transactions come in with original name and uncategorized. I have to manually rename every transaction.

[jkantor]

It worked for me a couple of times yesterday - but it's not working today - in either FireFox or IE. No Rules box.

Just fix the programming.

[cinco]

I haven't verified that this will consistently work, but here's how you do this.

Suppose you have a transaction with description "ABC Company" and the category is "Uncategorized" but you want to always categorize a transaction with this description as "Fastfood".

What you have to do is:
1) Go to Transactions
2) Select the transaction you wish to categorize
3) Click on the "Edit Details" tab which should have appeared right below the description "ABC Company" when you selected that row. A details box should appear.
4) Now, just simply edit the category, by selecting the pull-down and categorizing as "Fastfood" or whatever category you wish.
5) A check box will appear in the details box under a "RULES" heading that says "Always rename ABC Company as ABC Company and categorize as Fastfood".
6) Check the check box.
7) You're good to go!

Like I said, I haven't verified that in the future this rule will be applied correctly, but at least the rule was created.

[dmpatierno]

This works great for regular transactions, but the option to create a new rule is not available for accounts that fall under the "investment" category.

I specifically want to "Exclude from Mint" every transaction in my Lending Club account because of the incorrect way Mint handles them, but it looks like this is currently impossible.

Is there any chance in implementing transaction rules for investment accounts?

[lennis40]

a) Login to your Mint account.
b) Click on the “Transactions” tab.
c) Locate the merchant you wish to always categorize & check the box. Now click on the categorize button.
d) Clicking on categorize opens up the most popular categories.
e) The top of the page shows a "Create a Rule" option. This will allow you to always categorize transactions from that merchant in the category you select.


Looks like this is a rather old topic, but I just signed up for Mint.com, and I don't see any option allowing me to "create a rule" Is this done automatically now when I set the category for a transaction? I would appreciate the help on how to set categories that stick with the transaction. Thanks