Payee Name wild cards for Payee Rules [edited] (1 Merged Vote)
Simon Jemani
Member ✭
Classifying transactions with rules for Tags as well as using wildcards to define rules would increase the sophistication already built into Simplify. Please consider the following suggestions.
I love the fact that transactions can be categorized automatically with rules and I use this or rely on it tremendously. Major time saver in classifying transactions. However, over time I have started to rely even more heavily on Tags in addition to Categories and I would love to be able to set rules for classifying transactions not only by Category but also by Tag for each Payee. For example, let's say Ralph's Supermarket is classified by a Category rule as Groceries, it would be even nicer if I could set a rule for a tag for Ralph's on that same rule record to set Tag of Food since I use Tags as a super-category to track a bunch of food-related Categories like Groceries, Eating Out, etc. A bigger reason for this is Tags make it easy to export transactions to Excel and analyze them with Pivot tables. Keeping classifications with just Categories would create a mess in Pivot tables since there are so many categories used. Using Tags allows for top-level or super-category leaving Categories and their subcategories for 2nd and 3rd layer classifications (I know, TMI here).
Furthermore, I notice that many transactions have slight variations in the name of the same Payee. For example, United Airlines ticket purchases come in as United followed by a much of random numbers, like United 0167709377471 and United 0169972088414, etc. I would love to be able to configure rules with wildcards. For example, any Payee name that has United in the Payee name, change to United Airlines along with Category and Tag settings. I can show many examples of this if needed. A more sophisticated system would be a rule that says United with 13 random numbers would be classified in a certain way, like "United #############" rather than "United*" as the latter would misclassify another payee called United Valet or a payee name such as "...Travelagenunited State....".
Another issue I have noticed with Payees is sometimes there is a "Tst*" prefix added to the name and I'm not sure why this happens when previous or subsequent purchases with the same Payee exclude that prefix. Here again, the wildcard in the Payee Naming rule would help keep things in order and automate classifications further.
Anyway, so far Simplify is great. I hope you get to consider this suggestion important enough to put on the roadmap. Thanks.
I love the fact that transactions can be categorized automatically with rules and I use this or rely on it tremendously. Major time saver in classifying transactions. However, over time I have started to rely even more heavily on Tags in addition to Categories and I would love to be able to set rules for classifying transactions not only by Category but also by Tag for each Payee. For example, let's say Ralph's Supermarket is classified by a Category rule as Groceries, it would be even nicer if I could set a rule for a tag for Ralph's on that same rule record to set Tag of Food since I use Tags as a super-category to track a bunch of food-related Categories like Groceries, Eating Out, etc. A bigger reason for this is Tags make it easy to export transactions to Excel and analyze them with Pivot tables. Keeping classifications with just Categories would create a mess in Pivot tables since there are so many categories used. Using Tags allows for top-level or super-category leaving Categories and their subcategories for 2nd and 3rd layer classifications (I know, TMI here).
Furthermore, I notice that many transactions have slight variations in the name of the same Payee. For example, United Airlines ticket purchases come in as United followed by a much of random numbers, like United 0167709377471 and United 0169972088414, etc. I would love to be able to configure rules with wildcards. For example, any Payee name that has United in the Payee name, change to United Airlines along with Category and Tag settings. I can show many examples of this if needed. A more sophisticated system would be a rule that says United with 13 random numbers would be classified in a certain way, like "United #############" rather than "United*" as the latter would misclassify another payee called United Valet or a payee name such as "...Travelagenunited State....".
Another issue I have noticed with Payees is sometimes there is a "Tst*" prefix added to the name and I'm not sure why this happens when previous or subsequent purchases with the same Payee exclude that prefix. Here again, the wildcard in the Payee Naming rule would help keep things in order and automate classifications further.
Anyway, so far Simplify is great. I hope you get to consider this suggestion important enough to put on the roadmap. Thanks.
Tagged:
6
Comments
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Hello @Simon Jemani,
Thanks for posting your suggestion to the Community!
Since an Idea post requesting Transaction Rules for Tags already exists, you'll want to be sure to add your vote and feedback there for that part of your request.
https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/104/dynamic-tagging#latest
With that said, I did go ahead and turn this Idea post into a request for allowing wild cards in the Payee name for Payee Rules only.
Please let us know if you have any questions!
-Coach Natalie0 -
Hi. I just started using Simplifi and have spent a lot of time on the app to get things looking good, and they do. I am using the Rules feature to map categories to transaction strings. In one case, the transactions from my local supermarket will not have the exact same string, so there are about 20 different labels associated with them. That make it painful to map all of them th the Groceries category.
I use Stop & Shop for these groceries. The strings in the transactions look something like "Stop Andamp; Shop 0470 Sandwich M Pos Debit", but they often have different numbers in them. These might be store numbers but it seems like way to many for that ( I might use 3 different stores but there are way more strings than that).
It would be great if I could use a wildcard like "*" (asterisk) to define something like "Stop Andamp*" as a string and map the Groceries category to anything with that present.
Could this be possible?
Thanks0
