Rules remember how a payee should be categorized so imports stop needing hand-sorting.
Rules are created for you
Categorize a transaction by hand and Earmarkr saves a rule for that payee automatically. You'll see a quiet "Saved a rule for {payee}" confirmation.
Next time that payee appears, it's categorized on arrival. Most people never need to open the Rules screen at all.
Auto-apply vs suggest
| Rule kind | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| Exact payee, created by you | Applied automatically on import |
| Exact payee, learned | Applied automatically on import |
| Contains text | Suggests — one click to accept |
Text-contains rules only suggest because they're broader and easier to get wrong. A rule matching "AMAZON" might be shopping, groceries, or a gift.
Suggestions appear inline with an ✓ Accept chip.
Two things rules never do
- Overwrite a category you set. Rules only fill in transactions that have no category.
- Target a system category. Income and card payment categories are managed by Earmarkr.
So a rule can't quietly undo a decision you made.
Store numbers are handled
Exact matching strips trailing store and reference numbers, so a rule for "Trader Joe's" matches "TRADER JOE'S #455" and "TRADER JOE'S #182".
Text-contains rules check both the payee and the full bank description, so a short rule like SQ
matches "SQ *BLUE BOTTLE COFFEE".
Managing rules
Open Rules to see all of them. You can change a rule's category inline, toggle between auto-apply and suggest, enable or disable it, reorder priority, or delete it.
Priority decides ties. Higher priority wins; then a more specific rule (exact beats contains); then the older rule.
Applying rules to a backlog
After a first import you'll often have many uncategorized transactions.
Click Apply rules to uncategorized on the Rules screen. Every uncategorized transaction is checked against your auto-apply rules, and you get a count of how many were categorized out of how many scanned.
Safe to run repeatedly — it only ever fills empty categories.
Turning off automatic rule-saving
If you'd rather not have rules created as you categorize, change the setting on the Rules screen:
| Setting | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| Off | Never save rules automatically |
| Inline (default) | Save when you categorize one transaction |
| Inline and bulk | Also save when you bulk-categorize |
An explicit rule you created always wins over an automatically-learned one, so you can override a bad guess by creating the rule yourself.
When a rule gets it wrong
Open Rules, find the payee, and either change the category or delete the rule. Then fix any transactions it already miscategorized — search the payee and bulk-categorize them.