Payee Name wild cards for Transaction Rules [edited] (1 Merged Vote)

Simon Jemani

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.

Coach Natalie

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 Natalie

ghorton

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?

Thanks

avic11

hi @Coach Natalie - this feature from @ghorton was requested over an year ago, and I think it might have got mixed up with the earlier request related to 'tags'.

When we create a new Category Rule in Simplifi, we need to be able to specify IF PAYEE MATCHES DOORDASH* THEN CATEGORY FASTFOOD (notice the wildcard after the DOORDASH). We dont want to rename the Payee, just set the category.

Reposting in case it can be escalated with your developers because this is a valid and popular need…

dbert721

Are wildcard rules being worked on? It's by far my single biggest pain in the rear when using the application.

Just want to help

Lots of transactions start with the same phrase but then differ. Yet users want to pick up all transactions that start the same but change later when setting up a rule. For example, an account may send over numerous transactions that start with "Dividend Received…" that then go on to list a company name, etc. A user must now pick though each transaction with each company name to set up the rule. It would save so much time and frustration to be able to pick up anything that starts with Dividend Received by placing a wildcard "*" after Dividend Received*.

UrsulaA

Looks like your idea is similar to this one. Vote for it there.

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/1646#Comment_1646

MikeMc

Let's get wildcards supported in the Rules engine. Classifying inbound transactions via a string of characters only works for recurring transactions when that string of characters remains constant. I've seen countless examples in my own experience (and in this community thread) when payees embed dates or transaction IDs into these strings rendering Rules pretty useless without wildcards.

Do I need to vote for this or something?

IzzyR

Sometimes, keywords are too generic to use them for rules. Allow automatic payee rename based on a specific string value.

Patrick G.

One feature supported by competitors is: rules using "Contains" ; This is so simple and efficient, it makes a world of difference.

in the example above: Contains: Stop Andamp

bling

in case people didn't know, the rules as implemented today already simulate wildcard matching. when you create a rule, it asks to put in "keywords". however, it doesn't need to be word. you can enter a single letter, like "e", which would match basically half of all your transactions.

the biggest problem IMO with rules is that there's no way to control the order. let's say i had two rules; one for "check" and another for "checkers"; there's no way for me to know if the first or second rule would match against "checkers". what happens if multiple rules match? first wins? last wins?

salqadri

I came over to Simplifi from Mint. I tried to evaluate Simplifi, RocketMoney and Monarch all at once as I desperately needed something to replace Mint. Unfortunately this single feature would become the reason I may go with [removed]; otherwise Simplifi is really great. [removed] supports wildcards, which Simplifi does not. @bling I tried what you said but it doesn't show me all the existing transactions that would match that; it would just show 0.

Arock77

Make the rules able to be applied if certain words are contained in the payee name. Not the exact. I have transfers that get named and a date is in the name, so it never gets picked up by the rule, and is always miscategorized

joerobbi

Two years later… are we still begging for this?

trucnguyen

What is the ETA on this?

UrsulaA

To get updates on this request, bookmark the discussion by clicking the bookmark icon at the top. Any updates on ETA will be posted here by the Quicken team.