Merchant rules

Categorizing the same coffee shop every week is exactly the busywork an app should absorb. A merchant rule tells Thrift, once, how to handle a merchant — and from then on it does it for you.

What a rule does

A rule maps a merchant to a category, so a transaction from that merchant is sorted automatically. Set it up once — from a transaction you’re editing, or from the rules list under More — and Thrift remembers.

Where rules apply

The same rule works in three places, so a merchant is handled however the transaction arrives:

• New entries — type a known merchant and its category is pre-filled. Rules only fill an empty category; they never override a choice you’ve made.
• Imports — when a CSV leaves categories blank, rules fill them in as Thrift reads the rows, and you see it in the preview before saving.
• Across your history — run a retroactive sweep to apply a rule to past transactions, reviewing the matches and choosing which to include.

Matching

A rule can match a merchant name exactly or by a word it contains, and can carry aliases for the different ways a merchant shows up — a cryptic card descriptor versus its real name. When more than one rule could match, Thrift picks the most specific one, so a precise rule always beats a broad one.

Managing rules

Turn a rule off without deleting it, edit its category, or add aliases as you spot new spellings. Because categories only fill when empty and every sweep is previewed, rules speed things up without ever quietly changing something you meant to keep.