Your first conversation with Pennyweight

Once your AI is connected, a short first session leaves your ledger in better shape. Your AI looks over your accounts, sorts out spending that has no category, and helps you set up a rule and a budget. If you haven't connected yet, start with Connect your AI. To test your AI on this kind of work first, see check whether your AI is ready.

How to do it

1. Ask your AI to look around. Ask it to review your accounts and recent transactions and suggest where to start. Reading your accounts and transactions doesn't change them.
2. Get your data in if your ledger is empty. Your AI may offer to link a bank first. Bank linking works with US banks only, and it finishes in your browser: your AI gives you a link to the web app. Outside the US, or for an account you'd rather not link, ask your AI to import a statement or CSV export instead. See Connect a US bank or card and Import a CSV export.
3. Sort out uncategorized transactions. Ask your AI to find transactions with no category and suggest one for each. Your AI gives a reason for every change it makes to a transaction, and each change is logged.
4. Turn a repeat merchant into a rule. If the same merchant keeps showing up without a category, ask your AI to make a rule for it and apply it to the transactions already there. See Create a categorization rule.
5. Set a first budget. Pick a category and an amount, and ask your AI to set it up. See Set a monthly budget.
6. Set an alert for large charges. Your AI may suggest this one. Pick an amount, and the alert goes off for any new transaction over that amount, money in or out. Transfers between your accounts don't count. Pennyweight checks alerts when new data reaches it, not in real time, and keeps a history of the ones that went off. See Set up an alert.
7. Tell your AI one thing to remember. For example, what a merchant really is or which account pays the bills. Your AI saves it as a note about that ledger and can read it in later conversations. See What your AI remembers.

What you'll see

For the first prompt, your AI lists your accounts, often with their balances, and suggests a few next steps. Typical suggestions are categorizing transactions that have no category, making rules for merchants that repeat and setting a budget. You choose which one to do.

For the second prompt, your AI describes things people tend to miss. Examples:

• Ask why a transaction got its category. Your AI can check the log of past changes.
• Link a reimbursement, or a PayPal or Venmo payment that also shows on your card, so reports count it once.
• Save a fact about your money, so your AI can use it in later conversations.
• Keep separate ledgers for separate businesses and ask your AI to switch between them.

For the bigger picture of how the AI and the web app split the work, see How Pennyweight works.

Good to know

• Rules keep working. After you make a rule, new transactions get its category as they're added: imports, transactions your AI adds without a category, and new bank transactions at your next session, when you open the web app or your AI calls Pennyweight. To cover transactions that were already there, see Apply your rules to transactions you already have.
• A budget needs a category or a tag. Tell your AI which one to track, along with a name and an amount.
• Your AI can't move money. It can't pay bills or start transfers. See Your AI can't move money.
• There's more. For the full list, see Everything your AI can do in Pennyweight.