tag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:/discussions/general-questions/108780-categoriesInfinite Kind: Discussion 2021-05-15T20:50:25Ztag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/490333152021-02-13T12:58:59Z2021-02-13T12:58:59Zcategories<div><p>Hi Scott,</p>
<p>I'm not from IK Support, but categories are assigned by the user during the confirmation process:</p>
<p><a href="https://infinitekind.tenderapp.com/kb/online-banking-and-bill-pay/confirm-downloaded-data">https://infinitekind.tenderapp.com/kb/online-banking-and-bill-pay/c...</a></p>
<p>Once you've downloaded transactions and confirmed each along with a category assignment, the program will remember the previously assigned category and offer options during the next download(s).</p>
<p>Transactions that are downloaded without a category assignment, will always show the default category.</p>
<p>Regards,</p>
<p>Tony</p></div>TonyRItag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/490333152021-02-13T13:21:26Z2021-02-13T13:21:26Zcategories<div><p>Thank you. That's very helpful.</p>
<p>It's still not clear to me how I "Tag" an expense. I don't want/need to Tag them all, but can't see in the "Confirm" window that I have that option.</p>
<hr>
<p>KSO</p></div>KSOtag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/490333152021-02-13T15:14:53Z2021-02-13T15:14:53Zcategories<div><p>I don't use tags, but here is the KB article:</p>
<p><a href="https://infinitekind.tenderapp.com/kb/register-and-transactions/tags">https://infinitekind.tenderapp.com/kb/register-and-transactions/tags</a></p></div>TonyRItag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/490333152021-02-13T15:43:58Z2021-02-13T15:43:58Zcategories<div><p>PS the Tags field is directly below the Category field in the Transaction within the register (Double click/ctrl click to enter).</p></div>TonyRItag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/490333152021-02-13T16:47:53Z2021-02-13T16:47:53Zcategories<div><p>just a user,</p>
<p>I've used MD for many years now, I never found a good use for tags because of the endless benefit to creating your own custom category structure. But this past year I stumbled into a significant benefit in using tags to enhance any report where the tag filter is available. I guess I'm a bit slow to catch on, but it works great. Sometimes you just want to see some specific Descriptions or Payees in a certain report, but they all use the same category and you can't filter by description on that report. Simply use MD search or the Find and Replace extension to find all those descriptions/payees, and then do a batch change to add a tag to all. Now you can run the report and filter by category and tags and only the transactions you are interested in are shown and totaled. Then if you don't want those tags anymore, just reverse the process and remove the tag. But no harm in leaving them set. Eventually you may end up creating another category for that purpose, but that feature is always there if you need it.</p></div>mhoggietag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/490333152021-02-13T20:42:25Z2021-02-13T20:42:25Zcategories<div><p>Just to add: the reason that there's a default category is that Moneydance is based on double entry bookkeeping. In short, every transactions needs to be associated with two accounts: the account the funds are in, and the account/category that the funds are coming from or moving to. Having a transaction without a second associated account or category is a violation of fundamental accounting principles.</p>
<p>One thing that some people do is set up a new category that is called something like 'to be categorized' or 'uncategorized' and make that the default category for their accounts, so transactions are not initially assigned to a nonsensical category. However, the program still presumes that after importing data, you will then go through and confirm your transactions to assign them to the proper category. The more transactions you confirm, the better the program will become at automatically assigning the correct categories from the start.</p>
<p>Please let me know if I can be of further assistance,</p>
<p>Ethan<br>
Infinite Kind Support</p></div>Ethan