Hey @Justneedhelp & @ScorpionCoatingPlus , I'm sorry to hear that the auto-categorization isn't working the way that it's supposed to for you. We typically recommend that you keep re-categorizing to the category that the transaction should be and eventually the autocat system will pick it up on its own. Can you give me specific examples of what it's categorizing to and what it should be categorizing as? I'd love to pass the feedback on to our Product team.
Thank you for the update. This happens on many things, but one prime example is I have income come in from the Stripe credit card processor. This shows up as uncategorized, even though I've manually recategorized it hundreds of times now over the past year as 'income' but it never 'learns' from this.
Its the only thing I've ever categorized it as. Is there anywhere I can specifically make my own rule that anything that comes from Stripe should be categorized as income? It takes a lot longer than it should to get caught up on transactions when I have to manually do hundreds of categorizations.
@AlexL said:
Hey @Justneedhelp & @ScorpionCoatingPlus , I'm sorry to hear that the auto-categorization isn't working the way that it's supposed to for you. We typically recommend that you keep re-categorizing to the category that the transaction should be and eventually the autocat system will pick it up on its own. Can you give me specific examples of what it's categorizing to and what it should be categorizing as? I'd love to pass the feedback on to our Product team.
Thanks for getting back to us. I order a bedliner product from Scorpion Protective Coatings, I categorize it as COG Scorpion and each time it wants to "auto" categorize it as shipping or something to that nature. Another one is Verizon Wireless Payment. I categorize it ias the obvious _telephone wireless but it likes to auto categorize it as owners investment/drawing.
I don't have hundreds of daily transactions, maybe a hundred a week so to me its not life or death, but it is just a tad bit annoying, however this is coming from someone who also still counts their money from an ATM withdrawal.
THanks for the response.
Hi Wave,
This "auto categorization" needs significant improvement. I spent considerable time "teaching the system" and correctly entering the cat. whenever it said "oh, found x transactions just like this". Of course, I paid attention that I only did so if it detected it properly, and did not do it for some wrong suggestion (that aspect is completely acceptable and unavoidable.
However, now that the system has started applying categories, it is way off to the extent that I suspect an underlying bug in the evalutation of the description. Specifically, in my case, all transactions with "ELECTRONIC/ACH DEBIT ..." are categorized as X. This is obviously wrong, as about half of my transactions start with that. For example "ELECTRONIC/ACH DEBIT SCANA ENERGY DRAFT..." should be Utilities, but "ELECTRONIC/ACH DEBIT GEICO ..." should be Insurance. All these transactions are now the same (arcane) category. And again, when the system proposed to learn, it properly differentiated between these - otherwise it would've asked to cat. all 1,000s of "ELECTRONIC/ACH DEBIT" transactions as the same, which I did not approve.
Given all the negative feedback, this feature should have a simple on/off switch in settings - implementing that would be a minor effort. Ideally, users should be able to review auto categorization rules, and be modify those that are wrong.
Thanks for your continued efforts to improve this platform.
As others have commented, the auto categorization is a total fail and something you need to fix. Your feeble response to my earlier query was frankly insulting, suggesting if I reconciled my accounts it would fix your systemic failure. The system does not learn. I correct and correct and correct the same mistakes every week and the next week there is still wrong auto categorization. How hard would it really be to just disable this feature, because clearly the system doesn't "learn" over time and pretending it does is really annoying. As a work around to the broken system, I "archived" a category because it was constantly coming up in error and it STILL appears in my transactions as auto categorization even though it's archived. I hope you start to take this problem seriously.
Thanks for reaching out about this and sharing some of your experiences with our auto cat feature. I'm sorry that it has been a miss in some instances, even after re-categorizing certain transactions on multiple occasions.
This feature has it perks but it's certainly not perfect and requires some tweaking. Once again, I appreciate you all for taking the time to share your feedback and experiences. I will flag this discussion for our accounting team.
To answer your question @Justneedhelp, I'm afraid that there isn't a feature that allows you to specifically make your own categorization rules for specific transactions like Stripe payments, etc. Sorry about this.
This feature has it perks but it's certainly not perfect and requires some tweaking. Once again, I appreciate you all for taking the time to share your feedback and experiences. I will flag this discussion for our accounting team.
Thanks, @JulianP !
When sharing with your colleagues, please point out that my notes include both a feature suggestion as well as an apparent "bug report".
I do believe that this tool is absolutely essential to have, and with a few tweaks and bug fixes, it could work great - it may not take much to make this shine!
Works for some things, not others. After 2 years, I still have hundreds of "5/3 BANK..." transactions each month that I have to manually select and categorize. It is not assigning them a category automatically. I'd like to know how to configure it to do so.
Hey @ChrisCdoeshertax_3 , what was your question? I'd be more than happy to answer it for you.
Hi @EricP , can you give us some more info on these transactions that aren't categorizing? How are they being added to Wave? Are they income transactions or expense transactions? Let us know!
These are income (Credit) transactions named "5/3 BANK...." automatically added from my connected bank account. These are credits for card payments made by customers at our terminal in the store or through our online ordering website.
Wave seems to be categorizing bank payments (I'm connected to my bank) into two different types of income on the report page. The "Account Balances" section has payments categorized into two areas; sales and consulting income. I created the consulting income category but all the payments are categorized as "Payments for an invoice in Wave" on the transaction page. How can I get them all to be in the same category on the Account Balances report?
Thanks for the additional information. If these transactions import into Wave and remain uncategorized, I suggest applying the correct category to these transactions manually. Eventually overtime, our system should "learn" that these "5/3 BANK" transactions are associated with the category you assigned them manually and should begin applying the correct category to them automatically. However, as you may know from the previous posts above, this feature isn't perfect and can experience some issues from time-to-time, leaving some of your transactions uncategorized. If this the system doesn't "learn" the correct category for whatever reason, you'll have to manually categorize your transactions. Sorry about this.
If you want your transactions to fall under the same category on your Account Balances report, they will have to be recategorized to the account in question. However, if you have invoice payment transactions categorized as "Payment received for an invoice in Wave" you won't want to change this category since it will mark your invoice as "Unpaid" or "Overdue" on your Sales > Invoices page if you do. For invoice payments to fall under a different category on your Account Balances report, you will need to edit the income accounts linked to your products/services that are applied to your invoices. However, if you do this, you will need to delete your product/service item lines on your invoices and re-add them so they have the new income account linked to them. I hope this helps!
Responding to " If these transactions import into Wave and remain uncategorized, I suggest applying the correct category to these transactions manually.": I have been doing so for almost two years. Is it possible that I selected an option to always ignore these transactions? If so, can that option be changed?
hey @EricP Since this has been an on-going issue for a couple years now, it's definitely worth a closer look. Please submit an email to our support team through Mave (our chatbot) and we'd be happy to help by gathering relevant transaction IDs for further investigation.
To send us an email through Mave, click on the question mark icon on the bottom right hand corner of your Wave account.
@ktl - I'm sure it must be complex on the back end or the fix would have been done by now. But you know what's not a hard fix? Turning off this alert in the UI, or giving users the option to turn it off. It would be kind of a brutal hack, but at this point would be better than leaving this issue in place. It's just front end work and doesn't need to touch the back end.
This is absolutely untrue. Wave NEVER learns a corrected categorization!
It ALWAYS marks the wrong category even after manually changing
the category week after week. There is zero learning here.
Please add a function to delete remembered categorization or a manual
way to "not categorize as x, categorize as y".
Even if I manually change the category to "uncategorized" on several
matching transactions, the system doesn't recognize or ask if I'd like to
categorize the other "matching uncategorized" transactions. This is a bug
and should be fixed (not considered a feature).
Once you incorrectly categorize a transaction, it will ALWAYS use this
incorrect category. You will never be able to change it. Please fix!
Hi @EricP , can you try using a different browser? This should be showing up for you in the bottom right corner of your screen. If a different browser doesn't work, please try using Incognito Mode.
Hi everyone. Our accounting & machine learning team has taken all of your feedback into consideration and they've let us know that they'll be working on improvements to the way that the auto-categorization function works based on your insights. I don't have an ETA on exactly when this will be happening but we'll let you know as things are progressing.
Can we turn off the automatic categorization? I order a lot of things from Amazon and they are for many things but the automatic one always puts them in the wrong place so I have to double check everything, which takes a lot more time.
It would be great to be able to turn off auto-categorization altogether, and another option to turn off the popup that appears every time I categorize something.
It seems that none of my transactions are auto completed; specifically when i categorize one transaction identical transactions on different days are not auto categorizing like they did in the past. Why is this feature no longer available?
As others have mentioned - the very useful categorisation of "similar" transactions (when manually approving single transactions) seems to no longer be around. This was a great feature, shame that it's now missing.
I'm sorry to hear that the auto categorization feature isn't working smoothly for you. As mentioned in previous comments in this discussion, our auto categorization feature isn't perfect and can experience issues like the one you are describing. I understand that this is frustrating and can negatively impact your accounting workflow. Our accounting and machine learning teams have kept a keen eye on our customer feedback in this area and they will be rolling out an update to provide a better experience in the future. When more information is available on these changes, Wave will notify the Community forum.
@EricP said:
These are income (Credit) transactions named "5/3 BANK...." automatically added from my connected bank account. These are credits for card payments made by customers at our terminal in the store or through our online ordering website.
Tremain responded via email - income transactions are not automatically categorized, only expense transactions. Would be a nice feature to add in the future.
Any news on this?
I think I will have to move to a paid subscription to QuickBooks as the time
it takes to fix automatically assigned category is too time-consuming. I have
no easy way to identify incorrect items. This is a manual process and prone
to errors/missed entries.
Please turn off auto-categorization until it's fixed!
Wave is assigning it's own logic and it's wrong. It is causing way too much
work and too much room for errors in the accounting.
Please give us a way to delete ALL saved automation!!!!
Thanks for reaching out and sharing your feedback with us. At this time, there are no updates available around our auto categorization feature. As soon as we have updates available, we'll be sure to share them here in Wave's Community forum.
A helpful feature would be for me to be able to customize these rules, so that I can enter a rule that says that every transaction with X descriptor would automatically be categorized Y.
Comments
Hey @Justneedhelp & @ScorpionCoatingPlus , I'm sorry to hear that the auto-categorization isn't working the way that it's supposed to for you. We typically recommend that you keep re-categorizing to the category that the transaction should be and eventually the autocat system will pick it up on its own. Can you give me specific examples of what it's categorizing to and what it should be categorizing as? I'd love to pass the feedback on to our Product team.
Hi @TracyLAR , I believe that the steps you're looking for can be found in this Help Center article on transfers and paying off your credit card. If I got it wrong, please feel free to explain further.
Thank you for the update. This happens on many things, but one prime example is I have income come in from the Stripe credit card processor. This shows up as uncategorized, even though I've manually recategorized it hundreds of times now over the past year as 'income' but it never 'learns' from this.
Its the only thing I've ever categorized it as. Is there anywhere I can specifically make my own rule that anything that comes from Stripe should be categorized as income? It takes a lot longer than it should to get caught up on transactions when I have to manually do hundreds of categorizations.
Thanks for getting back to us. I order a bedliner product from Scorpion Protective Coatings, I categorize it as COG Scorpion and each time it wants to "auto" categorize it as shipping or something to that nature. Another one is Verizon Wireless Payment. I categorize it ias the obvious _telephone wireless but it likes to auto categorize it as owners investment/drawing.
I don't have hundreds of daily transactions, maybe a hundred a week so to me its not life or death, but it is just a tad bit annoying, however this is coming from someone who also still counts their money from an ATM withdrawal.
THanks for the response.
Hi Wave,
This "auto categorization" needs significant improvement. I spent considerable time "teaching the system" and correctly entering the cat. whenever it said "oh, found x transactions just like this". Of course, I paid attention that I only did so if it detected it properly, and did not do it for some wrong suggestion (that aspect is completely acceptable and unavoidable.
However, now that the system has started applying categories, it is way off to the extent that I suspect an underlying bug in the evalutation of the description. Specifically, in my case, all transactions with "ELECTRONIC/ACH DEBIT ..." are categorized as X. This is obviously wrong, as about half of my transactions start with that. For example "ELECTRONIC/ACH DEBIT SCANA ENERGY DRAFT..." should be Utilities, but "ELECTRONIC/ACH DEBIT GEICO ..." should be Insurance. All these transactions are now the same (arcane) category. And again, when the system proposed to learn, it properly differentiated between these - otherwise it would've asked to cat. all 1,000s of "ELECTRONIC/ACH DEBIT" transactions as the same, which I did not approve.
Given all the negative feedback, this feature should have a simple on/off switch in settings - implementing that would be a minor effort. Ideally, users should be able to review auto categorization rules, and be modify those that are wrong.
Thanks for your continued efforts to improve this platform.
As others have commented, the auto categorization is a total fail and something you need to fix. Your feeble response to my earlier query was frankly insulting, suggesting if I reconciled my accounts it would fix your systemic failure. The system does not learn. I correct and correct and correct the same mistakes every week and the next week there is still wrong auto categorization. How hard would it really be to just disable this feature, because clearly the system doesn't "learn" over time and pretending it does is really annoying. As a work around to the broken system, I "archived" a category because it was constantly coming up in error and it STILL appears in my transactions as auto categorization even though it's archived. I hope you start to take this problem seriously.
Hey there @Justneedhelp, @ScorpionCoatingPlus, @wave_us3r and @PeterF !
Thanks for reaching out about this and sharing some of your experiences with our auto cat feature. I'm sorry that it has been a miss in some instances, even after re-categorizing certain transactions on multiple occasions.
This feature has it perks but it's certainly not perfect and requires some tweaking. Once again, I appreciate you all for taking the time to share your feedback and experiences. I will flag this discussion for our accounting team.
To answer your question @Justneedhelp, I'm afraid that there isn't a feature that allows you to specifically make your own categorization rules for specific transactions like Stripe payments, etc. Sorry about this.
Thanks, @JulianP !
When sharing with your colleagues, please point out that my notes include both a feature suggestion as well as an apparent "bug report".
I do believe that this tool is absolutely essential to have, and with a few tweaks and bug fixes, it could work great - it may not take much to make this shine!
Thanks!
it did not answer my question
Works for some things, not others. After 2 years, I still have hundreds of "5/3 BANK..." transactions each month that I have to manually select and categorize. It is not assigning them a category automatically. I'd like to know how to configure it to do so.
Hey @ChrisCdoeshertax_3 , what was your question? I'd be more than happy to answer it for you.
Hi @EricP , can you give us some more info on these transactions that aren't categorizing? How are they being added to Wave? Are they income transactions or expense transactions? Let us know!
Wave seems to be categorizing bank payments (I'm connected to my bank) into two different types of income on the report page. The "Account Balances" section has payments categorized into two areas; sales and consulting income. I created the consulting income category but all the payments are categorized as "Payments for an invoice in Wave" on the transaction page. How can I get them all to be in the same category on the Account Balances report?
Hey @EricP !
Thanks for the additional information. If these transactions import into Wave and remain uncategorized, I suggest applying the correct category to these transactions manually. Eventually overtime, our system should "learn" that these "5/3 BANK" transactions are associated with the category you assigned them manually and should begin applying the correct category to them automatically. However, as you may know from the previous posts above, this feature isn't perfect and can experience some issues from time-to-time, leaving some of your transactions uncategorized. If this the system doesn't "learn" the correct category for whatever reason, you'll have to manually categorize your transactions. Sorry about this.
Hello @OHGEJ !
If you want your transactions to fall under the same category on your Account Balances report, they will have to be recategorized to the account in question. However, if you have invoice payment transactions categorized as "Payment received for an invoice in Wave" you won't want to change this category since it will mark your invoice as "Unpaid" or "Overdue" on your Sales > Invoices page if you do. For invoice payments to fall under a different category on your Account Balances report, you will need to edit the income accounts linked to your products/services that are applied to your invoices. However, if you do this, you will need to delete your product/service item lines on your invoices and re-add them so they have the new income account linked to them. I hope this helps!
Responding to " If these transactions import into Wave and remain uncategorized, I suggest applying the correct category to these transactions manually.": I have been doing so for almost two years. Is it possible that I selected an option to always ignore these transactions? If so, can that option be changed?
hey @EricP Since this has been an on-going issue for a couple years now, it's definitely worth a closer look. Please submit an email to our support team through Mave (our chatbot) and we'd be happy to help by gathering relevant transaction IDs for further investigation.
To send us an email through Mave, click on the question mark icon on the bottom right hand corner of your Wave account.
Looked all over, I don't see a question mark icon on the bottom right hand corner.
@ktl - I'm sure it must be complex on the back end or the fix would have been done by now. But you know what's not a hard fix? Turning off this alert in the UI, or giving users the option to turn it off. It would be kind of a brutal hack, but at this point would be better than leaving this issue in place. It's just front end work and doesn't need to touch the back end.
This is absolutely untrue. Wave NEVER learns a corrected categorization!
It ALWAYS marks the wrong category even after manually changing
the category week after week. There is zero learning here.
Please add a function to delete remembered categorization or a manual
way to "not categorize as x, categorize as y".
Even if I manually change the category to "uncategorized" on several
matching transactions, the system doesn't recognize or ask if I'd like to
categorize the other "matching uncategorized" transactions. This is a bug
and should be fixed (not considered a feature).
Once you incorrectly categorize a transaction, it will ALWAYS use this
incorrect category. You will never be able to change it. Please fix!
Hi @EricP , can you try using a different browser? This should be showing up for you in the bottom right corner of your screen. If a different browser doesn't work, please try using Incognito Mode.
Hi everyone. Our accounting & machine learning team has taken all of your feedback into consideration and they've let us know that they'll be working on improvements to the way that the auto-categorization function works based on your insights. I don't have an ETA on exactly when this will be happening but we'll let you know as things are progressing.
Can we turn off the automatic categorization? I order a lot of things from Amazon and they are for many things but the automatic one always puts them in the wrong place so I have to double check everything, which takes a lot more time.
It would be great to be able to turn off auto-categorization altogether, and another option to turn off the popup that appears every time I categorize something.
It seems that none of my transactions are auto completed; specifically when i categorize one transaction identical transactions on different days are not auto categorizing like they did in the past. Why is this feature no longer available?
As others have mentioned - the very useful categorisation of "similar" transactions (when manually approving single transactions) seems to no longer be around. This was a great feature, shame that it's now missing.
Hey @gabe1232341 !
I'm sorry to hear that the auto categorization feature isn't working smoothly for you. As mentioned in previous comments in this discussion, our auto categorization feature isn't perfect and can experience issues like the one you are describing. I understand that this is frustrating and can negatively impact your accounting workflow. Our accounting and machine learning teams have kept a keen eye on our customer feedback in this area and they will be rolling out an update to provide a better experience in the future. When more information is available on these changes, Wave will notify the Community forum.
Tremain responded via email - income transactions are not automatically categorized, only expense transactions. Would be a nice feature to add in the future.
Hey Wave!
Any news on this?
I think I will have to move to a paid subscription to QuickBooks as the time
it takes to fix automatically assigned category is too time-consuming. I have
no easy way to identify incorrect items. This is a manual process and prone
to errors/missed entries.
Please turn off auto-categorization until it's fixed!
Wave is assigning it's own logic and it's wrong. It is causing way too much
work and too much room for errors in the accounting.
Please give us a way to delete ALL saved automation!!!!
Not a fan.
Hey there @volkswagner !
Thanks for reaching out and sharing your feedback with us. At this time, there are no updates available around our auto categorization feature. As soon as we have updates available, we'll be sure to share them here in Wave's Community forum.
A helpful feature would be for me to be able to customize these rules, so that I can enter a rule that says that every transaction with X descriptor would automatically be categorized Y.