Add a wildcard to transaction name/search function (edited)

cconrado90

So there's alot of transaction that start the same but change slightly everytime. So you can assign a category. Anything can be done?

jeffzacharias

Searching for transactions is terrible. You can’t expect people to have to type things like “&03/02/2020,03312020”. You need a complete UI based search feature.

Coach Paco

@jaffzacharias We appreciate the feedback and so does our product development team!

Coach Tappan

@cconrado90 Let me look into that. Could you give me an example so I have a better idea what you want to do?

bcrossman

This is a great suggestion, if I understand it correctly, but it predicated on the ability to set transaction rules, which is currently missing from Simplifi.

In Mint, for example, one can set a rule to always categorize expenses from a certain payee, like Target, as “Shopping” for example. The problem is that sometimes the payee will have numbers or other information appended to it, which changes all the time, so it is not recognized as the payee from the transaction rule. Adding a wildcard fixes the problem and applying the rule to any matching transaction, regardless of what is appended to the end.

Coach Tappan

@bcrossman That's helpful. You're right that we haven't implemented transaction rules in Simplifi yet, but they are coming. The wildcard option would the user a bit more control upfront in creating a template for the matching algorithms to follow. The only wrinkle I can foresee is deciding how to distinguish transactions from different locations of the same merchant, like a pharmacy, gas station, or fast food place, since there's often a unit number at the front of the string. Great idea, though.

cconrado90

An example is hulu. It always starts with Hluhulu but has a different number every time after. So makes it impossible to give it the right category unless we can set Hluhulu **.

Coach Tappan

@cconrado Thanks for the example. I've turned this discussion into an "Idea," to give other users a chance to vote on it.

smrtrich

Could we get wildcard searches for transactions? example "Transfer * 7676" . For example the transactions might be imported from bank as:
Transfer from account 7676
Transfer to account 7676

Transfer * 7676 would find both at same time.

Thanks,
Richard

Coach Tappan

@smrtrich That's an excellent suggestion! It just came up in another Community discussion, so I'm going to merge this one with it, to keep all of the comments in one place. Thanks!

jorder

This issue is expertly solved in your competitor app Copilot, which allows for partial matching. Would be great to have this in Simplifi, which has a much better UI than that app. Have your techs look at how the others are tackling this.

Coach Tappan

@jorder Thanks for those additional insights. Be sure to add your vote to the tally in the first post, to move this option up our priority list.

efurban

Here is my example

AchaarLonache

Folks, this is really needed. It's insane that we have to manually classify transactions like the ones several people here have listed - where the payee varies by a few digits or characters.

Totally insane that this has not been implemented.

jfrylove

Yes. Rules need more flexibility.

If the transaction matches the following Merchant Name (exact match, starts with or contains)

Then: Rename merchant to: xxx and/or Recategorize, and/or Add Tag

BlueHouse

Wildcards for payees are needed to allow auto-categorization to be tuned correctly. I don't know what other people's spending looks like, but I would estimate that nearly half of my transactions are incorrectly categorized.

Frustrated406

I guess it's important not to hold your breath when you ask for a feature request from Simplifi that many users deem critical. This request just celebrated it's four-year birthday. Happy Birthday, wildcard feature request!

RobWilk

21 votes over four years is about five votes/year. There were other higher-priority ideas, which I believe had over 400 votes. Higher vote-getting ideas get higher priority, @Frustrated406

RobWilk

But you got my vote, now that I read it.

ajbopp

I'm having difficulty understanding what is being asked for here that isn't already provided.

For instance, if I create a rule like this:

and then view the transactions that will be affected

It seems pretty clear that wildcards are used by default. No matter where in the Payee string that "nord" appears, the rule flags it.

RobWilk

@ajbopp For some odd reason, that same rename rule does not work for me:

Note that "Found 0"

Meanwhile:

Though that may be because through paypal it comes on statement as either "PAYPAL PURCHASE" (1 tx) or "PAYPAL *LAGOSEC" (2 tx).

UrsulaA

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/comment/5441#Comment_5441

Agree, Simplifi does not allow characters like a period or asterisk in the rules. Also, I would like a wild card for a payee as sometimes transactions come down with a payee and random numbers after (example CHWY1233424). When I create a rule for CHWY, the rule does not work to rename the payee.