Categorizing transactions

Categorizing a transaction means filing it in an analytical category (“Rent”, “Fuel”, “Douala project”…) to see where your money goes. It creates no accounting entry: the category comes on top of posting, it does not replace it. By the end of this page, you will know how to categorize a transaction by hand, split it across several categories and let rules do it for you.

Before you start

You need at least one analytical family of type Treasury, with its money in and money out categories. It is created in Settings → Analytical groups. Without it, the transaction panel shows “No analytical family of type “Treasury” is configured” and the Set up your treasury categories link.

Categorizing from the “To categorize” queue

Cash & banking → To categorize lists every transaction without a category, with its date, label, account, amount and suggestions.

1. Open Cash & banking → To categorize.

2. For each line, read the suggestions. A suggestion comes either from a rule (“Rule ”…"") or from a past transaction with a similar label (“Similar to: …”).

3. Click the right suggestion. The category is applied at 100% and the line leaves the queue.

When the queue is empty, the screen shows Everything is categorized. After importing a statement, click Apply rules to handle the new lines in one go.

Splitting a transaction across several categories

A phone bill shared between two activities is split in percentages.

1. In Cash & banking → Transactions, open the transaction.

2. In the Analytical categories section, add a category, then a second one.

3. Enter each one’s percentage. The total must be 100%.

4. Click Save categories.

Automating with allocation rules

A rule categorizes similar transactions on its own: “if the label contains MTN MOMO, then Telecom charges”.

1. Open Analytics → Ventilation rules (or Rules center from the To categorize queue) and click New rule.

2. Give it a Rule name, for example MTN Mobile Money → Telecom charges.

3. Under If, add one or more conditions and choose how they combine (AND or OR):

   Condition	Example
   Label contains	MTN
   Label matches regex	^MTN.*MOMO
   Minimum / Maximum amount	50000
   Bank account	Your Orange Money account
   Third party	A specific supplier

4. Under Then, choose the Family, the Target category and the Percentage.

5. Read the Retroactive preview: it shows how many uncategorized transactions the rule would affect, and for what amount. Click Create.

Order matters

Rules apply in the order shown, and the first matching rule wins. Put precise rules (a third party, an amount) above broad ones (a word in the label) with the Move up and Move down arrows.

The Test button checks a rule against a sample label before you activate it. Apply to untagged applies every active rule to transactions without a category, on one fiscal year or on all transactions; a summary shows how many were processed, tagged and skipped.

What categorization feeds

• the dashboards and reports in Analytics;
• Budget tracking, where amounts without a category are shown separately;
• the Allocation rate, which measures the share of your transactions already categorized.

Further reading

• Validating entries in bulk →: the next step, validate everything that is ready at once.
• Posting a transaction →: the accounting step, independent of the category.
• Using analytical codes →: analytics on documents and entries.
• Importing a bank statement →: bring transactions in, then apply the rules.
• Cash flow forecast →: project your upcoming money in and out.