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

Simon Jemani
Simon Jemani Member ✭✭
edited November 2023 in Feature Requests

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.

46 votes

Active · Last Updated

Comments

  • Coach Natalie
    Coach Natalie Administrator, Moderator admin
    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
    ghorton Member
    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
  • dbert721
    dbert721 Member
    edited December 2023

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

  • 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
    UrsulaA Superuser ✭✭✭✭

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

    Simplifi User Since Nov 2023

    Minter 2014-2023

    Questionable Excel before 2014 to present

  • MikeMc
    MikeMc Member

    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
    IzzyR Member

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

  • 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
    bling Member

    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?