Categorising Transactions
How NivoaFlow assigns categories using rules, learned patterns, and machine learning, with full manual control.
Keep Your Spending Organised
Categorising transactions is essential for budgeting, reporting, and understanding your spending habits. NivoaFlow combines several methods so most transactions categorise themselves while you keep the final say.
The Three-Tier Waterfall
When a new transaction arrives, NivoaFlow walks through three tiers in order and stops at the first one that produces a category:
- Categorisation rules — explicit rules you have created. These always win when they match. See creating categorisation rules.
- Learned patterns — categories NivoaFlow has learned from how you have categorised the same merchant in the past. See learned patterns and smart categorisation.
- Machine learning suggestion — a model trained on common Canadian spending patterns. Available on Personal and Household tiers.
Whatever the system picks, you can always override the category by editing the transaction.
Manual Override
Every transaction can be edited at any time. Select a transaction and choose a category from the list. Manual corrections also feed the learning system, so the next time the same merchant arrives we are more likely to get it right automatically.
Category Groups
Every category belongs to one of four built-in groups:
- Income — paycheques, refunds, interest, and other money coming in
- Needs — essential spending like rent, groceries, utilities, and insurance
- Wants — non-essential spending like dining out, entertainment, and shopping
- Savings — contributions to savings, investments, and debt repayment
The Needs, Wants, and Savings groups power the 50/30/20 budget method and help you understand your spending at a high level. You can also create your own custom groups.
Custom Categories
The default category list covers most common spending patterns, but you can create your own categories too. Custom categories can be assigned to any group (Income, Needs, Wants, Savings, or one of your own) and work just like built-in ones.
Tips for Effective Categorisation
- Set up categorisation rules for merchants you visit regularly — rules sit at the top of the waterfall and always win
- Be consistent — use the same category for the same type of spending to keep reports accurate
- Review regularly — process "Needs Review" transactions weekly to stay on top of your finances
- Treat the suggested category as a starting point and adjust as needed; your corrections train the learned patterns system
Related articles
Creating Categorisation Rules
Set up pattern-matching rules to automatically categorise transactions based on merchant names and conditions.
Learned Patterns and Smart Categorisation
How NivoaFlow learns from your manual categorisations and auto-applies them to future transactions.
Understanding Transactions
An overview of transaction types, fields, and how transactions flow into NivoaFlow.