Creating, editing, and deleting categories

This page covers the mechanics of creating new categories, renaming groups, editing existing categories, and deleting them — especially the reassignment flow that kicks in when you try to delete a category that's still in use.

Creating a category

From the Categories page, click Create in the top-right. The form has three fields:

• Type — Expense (default), Income, or Investment.
• Group — the bucket this category lives under. Autocomplete shows existing groups as you type; pick one or enter a new one. 2–32 characters.
• Name — the specific category (2–64 characters).

Click Create and it appears in the list under its type heading.

You can also create a category on the fly from the transactions table — see Assigning a category to a transaction.

Editing a category

Each category row on the Categories page (in grouped view, at the item level) has a pencil icon. Click it to open the Edit Category form. You can change the Group (which moves the category into a different group) and the Name. You cannot change the Type — if you need to, create a new category with the right type and reassign transactions (see "Deleting a category in use" below).

Renaming a group

In grouped view, each group row has its own pencil icon next to the group heading. Click it to open the Rename Group form — a single field with the current group name. Changing it renames the group across every category inside it.

For example: if your group is Food & Dining and it has three categories (Groceries, Restaurants, Coffee), renaming the group to Food leaves the three individual names alone but puts them all under the new group.

Deleting an unused category

Click the trash icon next to a category. If no transactions or rules reference it, LedgerBear deletes it immediately after a confirmation prompt.

Deleting a category in use

If you try to delete a category that's referenced by transactions or rules, LedgerBear doesn't just cascade-delete those references — that would silently lose data. Instead, a second dialog opens titled Delete Category, telling you how many transactions and rules reference the category, and asks you to pick what to do with them:

• Reassign To — pick another category. Every transaction and rule that pointed at the one you're deleting is updated to point at the target instead, and then the original is deleted.
• Or pick No Category to un-categorize the affected transactions (and clear the category on affected rules) before deletion.

The search box at the top of the Reassign To dropdown lets you filter by group or name, which helps when you have a lot of categories.

Click Reassign & Delete to run it. The operation is atomic from your point of view — if anything goes wrong mid-way, the category stays put with its references intact.

A note on the default categories

New households are seeded with a starter set of common categories so you have something to work with right away. The defaults span groups like Auto & Transport, Bills & Utilities, Entertainment, Food & Dining, Health & Fitness, Home, Shopping, and Travel on the expense side, along with Income, Taxes, and a Transfer category used for moves between accounts.

Treat the starter set as a starting point, not a constraint. Rename, delete, or add to it freely — most people end up reshaping it over the first few imports to match how they actually spend.