How do you categorize

Flopbot

Simplifi's website says "Over 20 million better financial lives built, and counting" and I'm assuming there are 20 million answers to this question. With that said, I'm strangely interested in the idea of Category organization.

For my personal categories, I've choosen to get hyper detailed in an effort to (A) cut down on the need for notes and (B) stay consistent in how/where things get entered. This leads to doing a lot of splits, but I don’t mind.

However, for another account I maintain, I'm trying to minimize the time spent entering receipts. For that account, I want to effectively set-it-and-forget it. Instead of 226 individual categories, I'd love to cut that down to maybe a maximum of 30.

My question, what are some good ideas from the community about how to group your categories when your goal is to automate Simplifi and keep things - well - simple?

For example, if a person shops at these stores…

• Walmart = Groceries, Home Goods
• Kroger = Groceries
• Meyers = Groceries, Home Goods
• Target = Home Goods
• Walgreens = Pharmacy

How might you organize your categories so that you don't have to check each Walmart receipt to see what was purchased? What ideas do you like? What works well? What doesn't?

SRC54

I fear, Chris, that I don't keep things simple. When I go to Walmart, I buy food, coffee, home supplies, sundries so I end up splitting that into Essentials:Food, Essentials:Sundries, Extras:Coffee and Home:Supplies. And, of course, Concomitant:Surtax.

Splitting into categories is what I enjoy doing. I am hopelessly OC.😀

I still WANT to be able to split reminders!

UrsulaA

I admire the granularity of your categories. I prefer a broader category approach using notes or tags when needed.

Some examples:

I use shopping when the items are not food with some sub categories such as clothing

I use the Kids parent category for any children related expenses

For food I use the built in Groceries and Dining & Drinks parent categories with some sub-categories.

I do not go through my receipts item by item to categorize expenses. I just ensure that my expenses fall below my income with some planned spending parent categories (example groceries) and watchlists with target amounts.

I use tags for vacation expenses, health, and other non-monthly items. I also use the savings goals tags to track the contributions to savings goals with real transactions.

DannyB

I go with fewer, broader categories and have the same basic objective as @UrsulaA, "…ensure that my expenses fall below my income…."

In your examples:

• Walmart = General Expenses (If we shop at Walmart at all we don't by any groceries there… because I'm weird that way)
• Kroger Save Mart (A regional chain recently bought out by one of the conglomerates but not Kroger) = Groceries & Household (I don't separate or split out food from household goods but lump it all together)
• Myers
• Target = General Expenses (Even though we occasionally buy some groceries at Target, I don't bother splitting those out since it would only be a few items for convenience's sake - don't want to make one more stop at Save Mart for milk ☺️)
• Walgrens/CVS = General Expenses (We use Costco's pharmacy)
• Costco = Groceries & Household (If we make a major or significant non-grocery or household purchase (e.g. Christmas/birthday gifts, kayak, TV, etc.) I'll split these out or recategorize them.

I really only have one expense group I need to keep track of - Housing expenses as defined by the IRS since I need to justify my annual housing expenses for state and federal tax purposes due to how my pension is designated. Any other sorting and tracking are more along the lines of @SRC54 - kind of a hobby and for the enjoyment of it.

SRC54

Yeah, I use Tags for tennis trips, my car, my wife's car, etc.

My Broad Categories are Essentials (Food, Sundries, Apparel); Auto (Insurance, Gasoline, Licenses, Service); Medical(Clinics, Prescriptions, Hospitals, Health Plan); Extras (Coffee, Alcohol, Restaurants; Trips); Recreation (Tennis, Music, Video, Events); Professional (Classroom, Miscellaneous, Meals); Home (Utilities; Upkeep, Insurance, Durables, Supplies); Concomitant (Apps, Fees, Shipping and Postage, Presents, Sales Tax); Withholdings (Fed, State, SS, Medicare); Donations (Tithe, Charity).

I go back and forth with Coffee whether it should be Essentials or Extras. Since I buy the darn expensive k-cups, I put it in Extras. If I ever go back to making drip coffee, it would go back to Essentials.

These are just the expense categories.

UrsulaA

I am also using tags now for expenses corresponding to each family member when such info is known. Sometimes I spend money for both of my daughters but other times the funds go to one of them. Then, I can get a quick report to see how much I spend on a given person per year, month, etc.

Most of the expenses that are children related go in the Kids parent category.

DannyB

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/40768#Comment_40768

Ah yes, an excellent idea! This way when the inevitable "You love my sister more than me" accusations fly you can run a report to prove… well, yes, I guess I do!

Just kidding… but I'd run that report and double check before presenting it for sure. 😁

UrsulaA

Now the report will be in favor of the older teenager. I got her a car last year, paying half of such cost. It is not the turn of the younger teenager yet.

Also, the younger teenager reimburses me for stuff spent on her behalf while the older one does not spend as much.

I can run a quick report on gifts to them and show they are even, I guess. Checking before presenting is wise 😁

SRC54

@DannyB I love that idea of tags for family members. Your remark reminds me of my students one of whom would invariably say "you took off more for my mistake than you did for X's". My stock reply was "well, I like X more than you." After a while, I didn't have to say anything; the whole class would say it to him or her!

Everyone would just laugh.

DannyB

@SRC54

We ended up with 5 kiddos and come the winter holiday gift giving extravaganza every year, my wife would make sure we had the same number of presents under the tree for each kiddo… so far so good… but then she'd be out running errands and find something she just had to get for one of the kids! She'd inevitably buy it which then started a whole new round of getting something for all the others! I have no idea if any of the kids EVER counted, or even thought to compare, how many gifts they each received. Of course, now we have the five kids, their spouses and significant others and 8 grandkids! Luckily, she has settled on 1.) Each individual has a set amount we will spend on them and 2.) She limits herself to two gifts per grandkid (one for at home with immediate family and one for the annual family holiday get together.) (We just give cash to our adult kids since we have no idea what to get them anymore.)

To make this rabbit hole tangent relevant to @Flopbot 's original enquiry: I have a subcategory for Birthday & Holiday Gifting as a subcategory of Miscellaneous and I track it in the Spending Plan as a Planned Spending category with rollover turned on - this is the only category I use the rollover feature at this time.

Flopbot

@DannyB ,

So, I've been using your "Groceries & Household [Goods]" grouping for awhile now and I'm really enjoying it! That one simple change to my categories has already saved multiple time spent splitting transactions at big box stores, etc. I like it!

As I envision it, "Groceries & Household Goods" would cover these sorts of things…

• Groceries
• Lightbulbs
• Dish Soap
• Cleaning Supplies
• Trashbags
• ??

If you don't mind me asking, how do you - or anyone else - handle things like these? Are they considered Household too? Or, do they warrant their own categories?

• Clothing
• Books
• Appliances
• Home Improvement
• Home Furnishings
• Haircare, Makeup, etc.

Thanks for saving me time!

SRC54

@Flopbot My way of doing it helps you not at all as most all of yours are home expenses for me. Groceries would be under Essentials with Apparel and Sundry Spending (including personal care such as soap and makeup). Home furnishings and Appliances are Home:Durables and aren't an expense but get a mirrored entry in Home Inventory as an asset. Unless it is a built in appliance like water heater or dishwasher, which goes with the House and is therefore Home:Upkeep.

Books are recreation along with video, tennis, chorus, events and trips. Glad that DannyB is helpful for you.

UrsulaA

For your question, I handle the categories listed as follows:

Clothing - Parent category is shopping

Books - Parent category is shopping

Home improvement - Parent category is home

Home Furnishings - I have it as furnishings, parent category is home

Haircare, Makeup, etc. - Parent category is personal care

I also use tags to allocate expenses to a specific person in the family if known (example daughter1 name) or purpose (Vacation, specific health procedure name, etc.)

DannyB

@Flopbot

We have been out and about experiencing Alaska the past couple of weeks and not giving any thought to much of anything else.

Here’s how I would sort out that second list of expense's:

• Clothing I included in Miscellaneous > General Expenses
• Books goes into its own special category Quality of Life > Books (we do a lot of reading!)
• Appliances I cover these with funds from our Surprise & Miscellaneous Savings Goal savings.
• Home Improvement These are typically planned expenses that we will save for. Right now we don’t have any improvements planned so not doing any savings.
• Home Furnishings Same as home improvement expenses.
• Haircare, Makeup These go under Miscellaneous > General Expenses.