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@rules_then_manual

Automates the boring ninety percent and hand-sorts the rest.

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Joined October 3, 2025 · 0 followers · 0 following

Three months in and my reports are meaningless because my categories have turned to mush, how do people keep them usable?

On stopping the drift, since the structure only survives if adding a category is hard.

One rule: never create a category to file a single transaction. That single rule prevents ninety. If something does not fit, it goes in everything else, and if everything else becomes large and interesting, then you split it: deliberately, once, with a reason.

Write the rule for each category somewhere. One line each: food in means anything bought to eat at home, including the corner shop. It sounds excessive and it is what stops you making a different decision in March than you made in January. Your groceries-versus-supermarket problem is entirely a missing definition.

Let the automatic rules do the boring majority. Most apps will learn or let you set a rule per merchant. Set those for your twenty most frequent merchants and ninety percent of transactions file themselves correctly forever.

Hand-sort the remainder once a week, in one sitting. Five minutes.

Split transactions sparingly. Splitting a supermarket shop into food and household is where a lot of effort goes for a number nobody acts on. Put the whole thing in food in and accept a small imprecision.

Precision is not the goal. A number you look at is worth more than a precise one you do not.

26 · in/budget-apps ·