Auto-Categorization: Cannot "unlearn"
W10. MD 2024.4 (5253)
No matter what I do I cannot unlearn/teach MD *not* to auto-populate the category for a specific vender (Amazon) in a particular account (Capital One credit card). (This behavior only happens with AMZ charges on Cap1.)
Is there anyway I can dig-in and cease this behavior?
Many thanks in advance!
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1 Posted by dwg on 06 Feb, 2026 06:17 AM
For imported/downloaded transactions, Moneydance suggests categories based on previous confirmed transactions.
For manually entered transactions, it will pick them from previous entered transactions.
So what Moneydance suggests is based on what transactions you already have in the register, so to change the behaviour you need to change previous transactions.
Support Staff 2 Posted by Jenny on 06 Feb, 2026 08:50 AM
Hi,
Have the Amazon transactions been downloaded from your bank (rather than transactions that you have manually entered)?
If so, do you go through the confirmation process to categorise these downloaded transactions?
As DWG has advised, Moneydance uses previously 'confirmed' transactions in your account to determine which category should be used.
If you start to confirm these transactions with the correct category assigned, Moneydance will eventually begin to suggest the correct category. How long this takes will depend on how many older transactions from Amazon use different categories.
You can use the search box at the top right of the account register to search for and view the Amazon transactions in your account. This will allow to to see which categories have been assigned to your older Amazon transactions, and you can change them if necessary.
--
Jenny, Infinite Kind Support
3 Posted by fj58 on 09 Feb, 2026 04:22 AM
Thank you @DWG, @JENNY
The categories assigned to an "Amazon" charge on that card ranges from clothing, make-up, and pet supplies to groceries, business expenses, and streaming movies. In other words, there is no "correct" category for any one transaction -- everything must be manually categorized.
[And yes, these are downloaded transactions and yes, I have tried to game the system by "confirming" transactions that are incorrectly auto-categorized.]
Is there an "off" button or procedure to stop auto-categorization? It would be no burden on my processes if this behavior was globally disabled.
Thanks again
4 Posted by dwg on 09 Feb, 2026 04:49 AM
I know of no way of disabling the feature.
5 Posted by Milo C on 06 Mar, 2026 06:24 PM
I have a similar problem. For one particular vendor in one specific account, the auto-categorization always chooses "X", and I keep overriding it to "Y". I've been doing this for months.
The vast majority of these transactions are downloaded from the bank via Moneydance+, and go through the standard confirmation process.
There are maybe 1% of the transactions where the correct category is actually "X", but 99% of the time it should be "Y", and yet MD isn't learning this, for this particular combination of vendor/account.
Is there anything else I can try?
Running MD 2024.4 (5253) on MacOS Sequoia 15.7.4
6 Posted by -Kevin N. on 06 Mar, 2026 09:40 PM
@fj58, Milo C,
Q. Are you offered the desired payee / category combination from the 'Similar Payees' sidebar?
-Kevin N. (not a member of Moneydance support)
7 Posted by Milo C on 07 Mar, 2026 05:11 PM
@Kevin,
Yes, the correct payee/category combination is offered in the "Similar Payees" sidebar, but it is never selected by default.
Milo
8 Posted by dwg on 08 Mar, 2026 12:10 AM
Moneydance uses a weighted algorithm to determine potentially matching transactions and similar payees. It is also using the data that is in the download i.e. institution provided data.
There is possibly something in this data that causes Moneydance to pick one transaction over another.
I doubt there is much you can do about this.
9 Posted by Milo C on 08 Mar, 2026 12:16 AM
It's quite frustrating, because this is a transaction that appears multiple times every month. The behavior is contrary to the documentation, i.e. it is not "learning" in any obvious way. For that reason, this feels like a bug.