Help / Rules

What rules do

After a few months of using LedgerBear, you'll notice the same payees coming through every import — the same coffee shop, the same utility company, the same subscription. Categorizing those by hand every time gets tedious. Rules automate it.

A rule says:

"When a transaction's memo matches this pattern, set its category to Food & Dining > Groceries (and optionally fill in Trader Joe's as the payee)."

That's the whole idea. You write the rule once, and every future import applies it automatically.

When rules run

Rules fire in two situations:

  • During CSV import — as each transaction is processed, it's run through your rules. This is by far the most common case. See How rules apply during import for the ordering and details.
  • When you add a transaction by hand — if you right-click the transactions table and add a new row, rules apply as you fill in the memo.

Rules do not run retroactively on transactions already in your account. If you add a rule today, it won't categorize anything that came in last month. To apply a new rule to old data, re-import the original CSV with Update existing transactions enabled, which sends the old rows back through the rules engine, or categorize the historical ones by hand.

What a rule can set

A rule can set up to two fields on a matching transaction:

  • Payee (optional) — filled in only if the incoming transaction doesn't already have one. Useful for turning a raw bank memo like SQ *AMY'S BREAKFAST BOULDER CO into a clean Amy's Breakfast.
  • Category (optional, but usually the whole point) — filled in only if the incoming transaction doesn't already have one.

Neither is overwritten if the transaction already has a value. Rules supplement the data; they don't fight with it.

What a rule can match on

A rule matches on the transaction's memo (not payee, not amount, not date). You pick an operator and a pattern:

  • Begins With — memo starts with the pattern.
  • Ends With — memo ends with the pattern.
  • Contains — memo contains the pattern anywhere.
  • Equals — memo exactly equals the pattern.

Matching is case-insensitive and trims leading/trailing whitespace from both sides, so TRADER JOE'S and trader joe's are treated as the same text.

Scope: one account or all of them

Every rule has an Account setting:

  • All Accounts — the rule applies to every account in the household.
  • A specific account — the rule only runs when you import to that account.

Most rules are best as All Accounts, since the same merchant shows up across cards. Use account-specific scoping when you have accounts with conflicting patterns — e.g., a joint household account where the same memo should be categorized differently than on your personal card.

Active flag

Rules have an active flag under the hood (always true for rules you create in the current UI). There's no toggle to disable a rule without deleting it — if you want to turn one off temporarily, the easiest thing is to delete it and recreate it later.