#TipTuesday: Categories vs. Tags

Coach Natalie

Categories are an integral part of using Simplifi and managing your transactions, as these not only tell you exactly what your money is going towards, but they are also a primary source of data for most other areas of the program, such as your Recurring Transactions, the Spending Plan, as well as Reports. Subcategories allow you to break down your data even further!

Tags are an additional way to "categorize" transactions, and are great for instances where you need to group related transactions together that are categorized differently. For example, you can use a 'Vacation' Tag on all of your vacation-related expenses, while still categorizing each individual transaction with its respective Category (such as 'Hotel', 'Restaurants', and 'Airfare'). You can then run a Spending Report or create a Watchlist using that Tag, allowing you to easily see and track all of those related expenses in one place!

Although Simplifi comes with some built-in Categories and Tags, you can easily customize and create your own! Please be sure to check out our Support Article here for more details on managing Categories and Subcategories in Simplifi, as well as our Support Article here for more details on managing Tags in Simplifi. 

Please tell us some tips and tricks that you've discovered when it comes to using Categories and Tags in Simplifi!

kscooley

I love having both!  One of the ways I use them together is for our kids.  We have three - two in college (20 & 18) and one a freshman in high school (14.) I use a main and sub categories with tags to keep track of who I'm spending what on.

KIDS

• Kids Activities
• Kids Groceries
• Kids School Fees
• Kids Supplies
• Student Loan

Tags are simply their names. 

Oh, and if I spend money on a new phone for the 14yo (his was several years old and dying), it's categorized as Electronics, but then I used his name tag, as well as my "New Technology (PC/Phone/Etc) tag.