Rebuild your rules after moving

Your imported transactions keep the categories they had in your old app, but your old app's rules stay behind. Recreate the ones you rely on as Pennyweight rules. From then on, they sort new transactions as they arrive, and your AI can apply them to the history you've already imported.

What carries over

Each imported row keeps its date, amount, payee, category text, currency and notes. Rules don't move from any app, and neither do tags, budgets or attachments. See the full list of what doesn't move.

Where to start

• After an import. When an import leaves recurring merchants uncategorized, your AI gets the most frequent ones as rule candidates. Ask it which merchants it would make rules for.
• From your old app's rules. QuickBooks Online can export its bank rules to an Excel file: go to Rules, open the New rule dropdown and choose Export rules, per QuickBooks' help center. Use that export as your list of rules to recreate. Pennyweight doesn't import rules files.
• From your own list. The vendors you pay every month are the best candidates: internet, phone, software, rent.

How to do it

1. Ask your AI to make a rule for each recurring vendor, naming the category every time. See create a rule for the ways to phrase one.
2. Before applying, ask how many transactions a rule would catch. Your AI can count matches without changing anything.
3. Ask your AI to apply the rules to what's already here, or to apply each rule as it creates it. Your AI can show you a preview before anything changes. See apply your rules to transactions you already have.
4. Let new transactions sort themselves. Your rules categorize imports, transactions your AI adds without a category, and new bank transactions as they're added.

What you'll see

For the first prompt, your AI creates two rules and applies them, sometimes after a preview it asks you to confirm. It reports how many transactions changed. The FiberNet Home charges move to Internet and the Daily Grind Coffee purchases move to Coffee.

For the second, your AI creates the rule and tests it without applying it. It tells you how many transactions match, with a sample of them. Nothing is recategorized.

Good to know

• New transactions get your rules as they come in. Bank transactions are added at your next session, when you open the web app or ask your AI something, so this isn't real time. Transactions already in your ledger change only when your AI applies your rules to them.
• Rules match the merchant only. They can't match on amount, date or account. Rules or a one-time cleanup helps you choose.
• Always name the category. Pennyweight won't save a rule without one, even when you describe the rule in a sentence.
• Applying replaces imported categories. A rule overwrites the category a row carried in from your old app. To leave older rows alone, ask your AI to apply your rules to a date range only.
• Rules made before an import change its categories too. If you create rules first and import your history afterwards, a matching rule replaces the old app's category as each row comes in. To keep your old categories, ask your AI to import with rules turned off.
• A category you set yourself wins. Rules skip transactions whose category you set by hand. See who wins: you, your rules, or the bank.
• When two rules match, the rule created first wins. To change one, see test, edit, turn off or delete a rule.
• Rules belong to one ledger. Ask your AI which ledger it is working in before you create them.