Home → General Questions →

How to change the default category for a specific Description.

• Edit

Sal

11 Oct, 2023 03:48 AM

I am new to MoneDance. Hoping your experience and expertise will ease my use of the product.
Currently, my default Category for my account name is ATM Withdrawal. I can set it to something else easily.
Is there a way to change the default category for a specific Description that is imported?
Without the ability to change the default for a specific category, I am only left with the option to manually adjust each and every item with the same description. This will take hours.

Thanks.

1. 1 Posted by Sal on 11 Oct, 2023 03:54 AM

   

   In other words, is there a way to change the Category for all the items that have the same description? Eg. Interest or Salary

   • Edit

2. 2 Posted by dwg on 11 Oct, 2023 04:03 AM

   

   There is only one default category for an account, there are no hard links between description and category.

   What Moneydance does do is over time the software "learns" a correlation between description and category from previous transactions so it starts to suggest the correct category.

   If you imported the data from another financial program the categories should have come over. With data downloaded from financial institutions it learns the correlations from confirmed transactions.

   • Edit

3. 3 Posted by mag_djg on 04 Dec, 2023 02:34 AM

   

   This comment was split into a new private discussion: How to change the default category for a specific Description.

   I have the same question. What the software has learned is incorrect. I am constantly changing the category for one of my description entry. How do I make the category for an item description default to the correct description? Can I make moneydance unlearn a category for an item description?

   • Edit

4. 4 Posted by dwg on 04 Dec, 2023 03:12 AM

   

   I'm a fellow user.

   How Moneydance works is when you enter a description the software looks at previous confirmed transactions to determine what category it will offer for the current transaction. it is not looking at an internal list or anything along those lines it is doing this lookup when you are entering the transaction.

   The only way to influence the category that is offered for a specific description is by changing existing transactions, so there must be one or more transactions with this category and for some reason they are getting to the top of the selection algorithm.

   Tools like Find and Replace as well as Batch Change can bulk change transactions.

   • Edit

5. 5 Posted by dtd on 04 Dec, 2023 03:15 AM

   

   Actually, you are stuck for the accounts you have already created. As you create a new account, it grabs the first category in alphabetical order. For you, obviously, that is ATM Withdrawal.

   I sort of figured that out early on (lucky I guess) and created a category called Anything - first in my category list. So as I imported or created accounts the default was Anything - which worked for me, as it was a catch all category I could look at and reallocate.

   As you seem to know already, you edit the account to change the default category.

   For already created accounts, yes - it's by hand... and however much work that takes.

   • Edit

6. 6 Posted by dtd on 04 Dec, 2023 03:16 AM

   

   @mag_djg - your question is different from the original poster, and @dwg has answered it.

   • Edit

7. 7 Posted by Sal Ponzo on 04 Dec, 2023 04:28 PM

   

   thank you.

       On Sunday, December 3, 2023 at 10:16:55 p.m. EST, dtd <[email blocked]> wrote:

    #yiv8594666345 pre {width:92%;margin:10px 2%;padding:5px 2%;background:#efefef;border:1px solid #d6d6d6;}#yiv8594666345 blockquote {margin-left:0;padding-left:1em;border-left:5px solid #ccc;}
   |

   • Edit

8. Maddy closed this discussion on 04 Dec, 2023 04:34 PM.