How transaction categories work

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Your transaction categories form the basis for how other features and widgets work throughout the app.

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Rule of thumb: Keeping transactions and merchants updated and categorised keeps your financial information accurate throughout the app.

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1. Groups, categories, and tags

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There are three levels:

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• Groups - parent folders that categories sit inside. For example, a Food group might hold Groceries, Eating out, and Snacks
• Categories - what you assign to transactions. A supermarket shop might go to Food & Drink, or any category that fits
• Tags - an extra layer of detail. That same shop could also get a tag like Christmas shop, which you can report on in Money Insights

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2. Groups

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Create groups in Settings under Create and edit categories. Tap New group, then drag existing categories into it or create new categories inside the group.

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3. Categories

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Within a group, tap New category to create one, or tap a category to edit it. Categories fall into three buckets:

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• Expense categories - for money going out. When you connect accounts, we automatically categorise most expense transactions with default categories. You can also create custom ones in Settings, when categorising, or when creating budgets
• Income categories - for money coming in. These are all custom. Create them when you set up an income budget, categorise a transaction, or from Settings
• One-off budget categories - created when you add a one-off budget. They appear when you categorise expense transactions so you can allocate that spend to the one-off

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On an expense category you can also turn on Savings category?. The category stays in your expense list and is included in leftover, but those amounts are not treated as spending in Money Insights or cashflow leftover. Read How savings categories work.

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4. Preset categories

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A few categories cannot be edited or removed:

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• Uncategorised - transactions we couldn't auto-categorise. You'll need to update these
• Transfer - internal moves between your own accounts. Use this for the matching credit when you transfer into savings
• Ignore - transactions you don't want counted
• One-off - one-off transactions that don't belong to a created one-off budget or regular spending

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When you transfer to KiwiSaver, a savings account, or investments, categorise only the everyday-account outflow as your savings category. Leave the matching credit as Transfer so the two sides do not cancel out.

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5. Default categories

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Default categories come from your connected account data. They're added when you connect accounts and assigned to most expense transactions. You can change the colour and emoji, but not delete them.

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Need the how-to for creating or deleting one? Read How to create, edit & delete categories.

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You're all ready to go 🎉

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Woohoo! You now know how categories, groups, tags, and savings categories work. If you run into any issues, feel free to get in touch with us at hello@budgetbuddie.co.nz

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