How to Categorise Your Transactions in SimpliHome

A list of bank transactions is just noise. A list of categorised transactions is a budget.

Once you can see exactly how much you're spending on groceries, utilities, entertainment, and eating out, you can start making informed decisions about your household finances rather than guessing.

SimpliHome makes categorisation as painless as possible — with smart suggestions, automatic rules, and bulk tools that mean you don't have to manually label every single transaction.

#How Categories Work in SimpliHome

SimpliHome uses budget categories to organise transactions. These are the same categories used in your budget planning, so when you categorise a transaction, it automatically feeds into your budget tracking.

Category types:

• Income — salary, transfers in, freelance payments
• Housing — mortgage, rent, council tax, maintenance
• Utilities — energy, water, broadband, phone
• Food & Groceries — supermarkets, butchers, bakers
• Transport — fuel, insurance, public transport, parking
• Healthcare — pharmacy, dentist, optician, prescriptions
• Entertainment — streaming, cinema, concerts, activities
• Eating Out — restaurants, cafés, takeaways, coffee shops
• Shopping — clothing, electronics, household goods
• Childcare & Education — childcare, school trips, tutoring
• Savings & Investments — savings transfers, investment contributions
• Personal Care — haircuts, gym membership, beauty
• Miscellaneous — anything that doesn't fit elsewhere

SimpliHome comes with a set of default categories. Circle admins can add custom categories to better reflect how your household spends money.

#Part 1: Categorising Transactions Manually

#Accessing the Transactions View

1. Go to Finances → Transactions
2. You'll see a list of all transactions across your bank accounts, with filters at the top

#Reading the Transaction List

Each transaction shows:

• Date — when it occurred
• Description — the bank's transaction description
• Merchant — the merchant name (where detected)
• Amount — positive for income, negative for spending
• Account — which bank account it came from
• Category — assigned budget category (blank if uncategorised)
• Status — categorised or uncategorised

#Categorising a Single Transaction

1. Find the transaction in the list
2. Click the transaction or the Categorise button beside it
3. A category dropdown appears
4. Select the appropriate category from the list
5. Optionally add a note for future reference
6. Click Save

The transaction is now categorised and feeds into your budget tracking.

#Smart Suggestions

When you open a transaction to categorise it, SimpliHome automatically shows suggested categories based on:

1. Merchant mapping — if you've previously categorised this merchant, it suggests the same category with high confidence (95%)
2. Transaction rules — if you have a matching rule set up, it suggests the matched category (90% confidence)
3. Similar transactions — if other transactions from the same merchant or with similar descriptions have been categorised, it shows the most common category (75% confidence)

Using suggestions:

• If a suggestion looks right, click it to apply directly — no need to scroll through the category list
• If it's wrong, ignore the suggestion and choose the correct category manually

Teaching SimpliHome with merchant memory:

When you categorise a transaction, tick the "Remember this merchant" checkbox. This creates a merchant mapping, so next time a transaction from the same merchant arrives, it'll be automatically suggested (and can be auto-categorised via rules).

#Part 2: Setting Up Automatic Categorisation Rules

Rules are the most powerful way to keep transactions categorised without constant manual effort. Once set up, any new transaction that matches a rule gets categorised automatically.

#How Rules Work

A rule says: "If a transaction matches these conditions, assign this category."

Conditions you can match on:

• Merchant name contains — e.g., "Tesco" → matches "TESCO EXPRESS", "TESCO EXTRA BRISTOL"
• Description contains — matches text anywhere in the transaction description
• Amount equals — matches a specific amount (useful for regular payments)
• Amount is between — matches a range (e.g., £5–£15 for coffee shop visits)
• Transaction type — DEBIT or CREDIT

Rules are checked in priority order — if multiple rules match, the highest-priority rule wins.

#Creating a Categorisation Rule

1. Go to Finances → Transactions → Rules (or look for a Manage Rules button)
2. Click Add Rule
3. Give the rule a name (e.g., "All Tesco purchases → Groceries")
4. Set the conditions:
   • Merchant contains: Tesco
5. Set the category: Food & Groceries
6. Set the priority (higher number = checked first)
7. Toggle Active on
8. Save

From now on, any transaction with "Tesco" in the merchant name will automatically be categorised as Food & Groceries.

#Useful Rules to Set Up

Here are some common rules that work well for most households:

| Rule name | Condition | Category | |-----------|-----------|----------| | Tesco purchases | Merchant contains: Tesco | Food & Groceries | | Sainsbury's purchases | Merchant contains: Sainsbury | Food & Groceries | | ASDA purchases | Merchant contains: ASDA | Food & Groceries | | Spotify subscription | Merchant contains: Spotify | Entertainment | | Netflix subscription | Merchant contains: Netflix | Entertainment | | Amazon purchases | Merchant contains: Amazon | Shopping | | Coffee shops | Merchant contains: Costa, Starbucks, Pret | Eating Out | | Fuel stations | Merchant contains: Shell, BP, Esso | Transport | | Salary | Description contains: SALARY and type: CREDIT | Income | | Direct debits – utilities | Description contains: DIRECT DEBIT | Utilities |

You'll build up a set of rules over time that covers most of your regular spending automatically.

#Part 3: Bulk Categorising Transactions

When you've just imported a large batch of historical transactions, going through them one by one isn't practical. Use bulk categorisation to assign a category to multiple transactions at once.

#How to Bulk Categorise

1. Go to Finances → Transactions
2. Filter the list to show what you want to categorise:
   • Filter by Status: Uncategorised to see everything that needs attention
   • Filter by Search to find all transactions from a specific merchant
3. Select the transactions you want to categorise:
   • Tick the checkbox beside each transaction, OR
   • Select all transactions on the current page
4. Click Bulk Categorise (appears when transactions are selected)
5. Choose the category to apply
6. Confirm

All selected transactions will be assigned to the chosen category instantly.

#Smart Bulk Strategy

Start with your highest-volume merchants:

1. Filter by Search for "Tesco" — select all, categorise as Groceries
2. Filter for "Salary" — select all, categorise as Income
3. Filter for "Amazon" — select all, categorise as Shopping
4. Continue merchant by merchant

This approach means you categorise 80% of transactions in a handful of bulk operations, leaving only the unusual or ambiguous transactions to handle individually.

Work from largest uncategorised:

Another approach is to sort by amount (largest first) and categorise the big-ticket items first. This ensures your budget totals are accurate for the most significant spending even before you've finished categorising everything.

#Part 4: Filtering and Finding Transactions

The filter bar at the top of the Transactions view lets you narrow down what you're looking at.

#Available Filters

Date range — Show transactions between two dates. Good for monthly reviews.

Category — Filter by a specific budget category. Useful for seeing all your grocery spending, for example.

Account — Show only transactions from one bank account when you have multiple connected.

Status:

• All — show everything
• Categorised — show only categorised transactions
• Uncategorised — show only transactions that still need a category (the most useful filter when working through a backlog)
• Large — show high-value transactions (over £500 by default) that may need particular attention

Search — Find transactions by description or merchant name. Type "Tesco" to find all Tesco transactions at once.

#Monitoring Your Categorisation Progress

The Transactions page shows summary statistics at the top:

• Total transactions — all transactions in your Circle
• Uncategorised — how many still need a category
• This month — transactions added this month

Work towards getting your uncategorised count to zero. Once it is, your budget tracking will be accurate and meaningful.

#Part 5: Adding and Customising Categories

SimpliHome's default categories cover most household spending patterns, but every household is different. Circle admins can add custom categories.

#Adding a Custom Category

1. Go to Finances → Budget Categories
2. Click Add Category
3. Give it a name (e.g., "Dog Costs", "School Expenses", "Home Improvements")
4. Choose a type (Income or Expense)
5. Pick an icon and colour for easy identification
6. Save

The new category is immediately available when categorising transactions.

#What Not to Over-Engineer

Resist the temptation to create too many categories. The goal is meaningful insight, not accounting precision. A category like "Miscellaneous" is fine — it's better than having 30 hyper-specific categories that you can't remember which to use.

A practical set for most households:

• Income
• Groceries
• Eating Out & Takeaways
• Transport
• Utilities
• Entertainment & Subscriptions
• Shopping
• Health & Medical
• Childcare & Education
• Home & Garden
• Personal Care
• Savings
• Miscellaneous

Twelve to fifteen categories is plenty. You can always split a category later if you need more granularity.

#Part 6: Reading Your Categorised Data

Once transactions are categorised, they feed into SimpliHome's financial views.

#Spending by Category

The finances overview shows a breakdown of spending by category for any time period — monthly, quarterly, or custom. You can see at a glance where your household money goes.

#Budget vs Actual

If you've set budget amounts for each category, SimpliHome compares your actual spending against your targets. Green means under budget, red means over.

#Monthly Trends

See whether your grocery spend is creeping up month by month, or whether you're spending more on eating out in summer. Long-term trends are only visible once you have categorised historical data to compare.

#Tips for Staying on Top of Categorisation

Do a weekly 5-minute review. Set aside a few minutes each week to categorise any new uncategorised transactions. Doing it frequently keeps the backlog from building up.

Set up rules as you categorise. Every time you manually categorise a transaction from a regular merchant, tick "Remember this merchant". Within a month or two, the majority of your new transactions will categorise automatically.

Import regularly. If you're not using automatic bank feed sync, import your bank CSV weekly or monthly. Categorising smaller batches is less overwhelming than large historical imports.

Don't stress about perfect categorisation. A transaction assigned to "Miscellaneous" is better than no transaction at all. The goal is directionally accurate budgeting, not accounting precision.

The snowball effect. The more rules you set up and the more merchant mappings you create, the less manual work is needed over time. Within 3–6 months of regular use, most households find that 80–90% of new transactions categorise automatically.