Managing your rules

The Rules page is a single table listing every rule in the household, with Edit and Delete icons in the Actions column. This page covers the day-to-day maintenance: browsing, editing, and cleaning up.

What the table shows

Each row displays:

• Account — the account this rule is scoped to, or All Accounts.
• Criteria — the operator (Begins With, Ends With, Contains, Equals).
• Memo — the pattern to match.
• Payee — the payee override, if any.
• Category — the target category, if any.

Rules aren't grouped or sorted by priority because the system doesn't expose a priority setting — first match wins, and the order is based on when each rule was created.

Editing a rule

Click the pencil icon on a rule to open the Edit Rule form. Every field from Create is editable, including the scope (Account) and the pattern. Save and the change takes effect on the next transaction that imports.

A common maintenance pattern is to tighten a rule over time: if it's matching too much, switch Begins With to Contains with a more specific pattern, or narrow the scope from All Accounts to a specific account.

Deleting a rule

Click the trash icon. LedgerBear asks to confirm ("Are you sure you wish to delete the rule matching transactions which contains 'X'?") and then removes it. There's no undo and no archive.

Deleting a rule doesn't touch the transactions it previously categorized — those keep their categories. It only stops the rule from firing on future imports.

When to clean up

Go through the Rules page every few months:

• Delete rules for merchants you no longer use. An outdated rule matching a closed subscription or moved-away merchant is harmless but adds noise.
• Consolidate near-duplicates. If two rules point at the same category with similar patterns, pick the broader one and delete the other. Having fewer rules is easier to reason about.
• Check for silent conflicts. If two rules could match the same transaction, only the first one fires. Tighten one or the other so the behavior is predictable.

If a rule stops working

Sometimes a bank subtly changes its memo format and a rule that used to catch everything suddenly misses. Symptoms:

• Transactions that used to auto-categorize are landing uncategorized after a new import.
• The transactions-table right-click menu shows Create Rule... on a row you know is already covered by a rule (meaning the existing rule didn't match).

Open the row's memo, compare against the rule's pattern, and adjust. A too-specific pattern is the usual culprit — shortening it often fixes things.