Categories are what make budgets and spending reports mean anything. An uncategorized transaction is counted in your balance but is invisible to both.
The three types
Every category is Income, Expenses or Transfer. The type is fixed by the category, which is why one category cannot serve both an expense and a refund, and why the category option is disabled when you bulk edit a mixed selection.
Transfer matters more than it looks: money moving between your own accounts is not spending, so keeping those on a Transfer category stops them inflating your expenses.
What comes as standard
The default set is more specific than most people expect, which is deliberate: it keeps the names close to how you actually think about the spending.
Expenses. Groceries, Dining & Restaurants, Transportation, Housing & Rent, Utilities, Healthcare, Fitness & Health, Insurance, Education, Entertainment, Shopping, Travel, Subscriptions, Taxes, Loans & Credit, Investments, Bank Fees, Cash Withdrawal, Other Expenses.
Income. Salary, Interest Income, Refunds & Cashback, Other Income.
Transfer. Transfer.
There is also Uncategorized Expense and Uncategorized Income, which are real categories rather than an empty field, so nothing ever falls out of the system entirely.
How a transaction gets its category
Each category carries a keyword list, and Finthy matches those against the transaction description. Groceries carries GROCERY, SUPERMARKET, FOOD, MARKET and FRESH; Transportation carries FUEL, GAS, TAXI, RIDESHARE, PARKING, TOLL and PUBLIC TRANSPORT.
This is the important consequence: correcting a transaction teaches Finthy nothing. If a merchant keeps landing in the wrong category, open Category Management, open the category you want it in, and add the merchant’s name to its keywords. That fixes it for every future transaction at once. Keywords are entered separated by commas.
Your own categories
Add Custom Category creates one. Category Management separates Default Categories from Custom Categories, and a custom one takes the same name, type, keywords and colour as the built-in ones.
Subcategories
A category can sit under a parent, so Transportation can hold Car and Public Transport. Where that changes what you see is the Include Subcategories filter on the Transactions page: with it on, choosing the parent includes everything beneath it; with it off you get only what is filed directly on the parent.
Needs, Wants and Savings
Every category also carries a financial purpose: Needs, Wants, Savings or None. Rent and groceries are Needs, dining and travel are Wants, investments are Savings, and transfers and income are None.
This gives you a 50/30/20 style view without tagging anything yourself, and Financial Purpose is a filter on the Transactions page, so “what went on wants this month” is one question rather than a list of categories.
You can change a category’s purpose if you disagree. Whether a gym membership is a need is your call, not ours.
Deleting a category
You are asked to confirm. Consider editing the keywords instead if the category is only catching the wrong things, since deleting it leaves its transactions to be recategorized.