I am okay with creating auto-categorizing rules manually if that feature could be more easily achieved than the fully smart auto categorization. Either way, I will certainly need a way to manually change auto auto categorization rules.
Auto-categorization learns as you fix its mistakes (machine learning is really cool!). As you help the system understand your transactions better, it'll get faster and more accurate, up to the point where it will only require a quick review every now and again.
Auto-categorization learns as you fix its mistakes (machine learning is really cool!). As you help the system understand your transactions better, it'll get faster and more accurate, up to the point where it will only require a quick review every now and again.
This answer needs to be posted as a sticky to the first page.
Pretty silly guys. Not having an 'Off' feature? I'm not a software Engineer, but I am an Engineer. I love that you guys strive to improve, but you shoot yourselves in the foot buy not thinking ahead. Auto-categorize is great... For Some People. I wire money all the time to different places. Wave just auto-cat's it to the last place i wired money. And I can't turn this off? Can't imagine the nightmare this has caused for people with high volume transactions. *face palm.
@GoodAccounting Thanks so much for your feedback! As a user as well as an employee, I can relate to your gripes with the autocategorization tool at times. I assure you that as this is a new tool, the team at Wave is working on refining the machine learning aspect to the feature moving forward, and appreciate your patience while we continue to build out this feature to be less clunky.
I switched to Wave from Quickbooks over a year ago because Quickbooks online is so expensive. I've been using the bulk categorize feature for my repeating transactions. It still takes hours longer then using Quickbooks. I have been waiting for Wave to implement some sort of rule creation feature for over a year now! Promises that its coming have not come to fruition. How is it that you don't have this same simple feature that every other accounting software has? Its such a huge time saver. Alas, now that I'm getting more online sales, I just can't keep assigning accounts for every single shipping fee, merchant fee, etc for every single order. I'm going back to Quickbooks. Its too bad because I like your interface so much better. I also love your invoicing feature, and use it as an easy way for my wholesale customers to pay me online. I will miss it, but I just can't keep wasting hours re-assigning the same transactions over and over. Its maddening!
Hey @Tara -- I do appreciate the insight of how auto-categorization could be improved to work better for your business. It definitely gives us an idea of what your work flow would be like in terms of creating rules for the categories (especially similar accounts for shipping/merchant fee etc). We're hoping that within the year we will have something more intuitive implemented to make the categorization of your accounts more simple.
@JamieD ya this is not what I meant. Assuming you have used Xero or QBO or basically any other accounting software on the market, you can set bank rules. "When $XX comes in on account X, assign to X and categorize as X"
Rules are a pretty simple function that I am surprised you do not have.
Hi @tschwartz . Wave doesn't currently support rules for imported transactions. Can you give us your workflow and how this would be used for your business so we have a better understanding of how this would help your business out?
@alexlewiszarkos sure, when I have a transaction that comes in from XYZ Company often, the purpose of bank rules is to set it to a vendor and a category once and have it auto pick those in future. I would suggest you check out the way Xero and QBO do this.
Hey @kennethyim since this thread started, we have launched an auto-categorization feature in Wave for Wavers who have a bank connection established. You can learn more about this here: https://support.waveapps.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001301666-All-about-automatically-categorizing-transactions Should you have any additional questions about using the Autocategorization feature, feel free to leave a comment at the bottom of that article and a Waver or Admin will be happy to help
I'd just as soon turn it off. It auto categorizes my transactions WRONG almost every time. It certainly is NOT learning as I have to change my Cable bill payment from "Utilities - Electric" category every month (I don't remember which bill it gets wrong but it is one of the utilities). And the rest of them are typically left uncategorized despite 2+ years of data showing the exact same payments to the same vendors and the same categories. Speaking of Vendors, again, the fact that Vendor's can't be picked up and auto-applied at this point is aggravating as well.
So with the new redesign and all the new features, I still don't see a way to set up reconciliation rules to automatically categorize items based on criteria like a string match. Am I missing something?
Hey @TimK . Totally understand your frustrations here. The auto-cat feature is definitely constantly being improved but it does have some flaws. The long-term goal is that it contributes to your workflow instead of taking away from it, especially when any mis-categorized transactions would have to be categorized to something without the auto-cat feature anyways. Thank you for putting this on our radar though, your feedback is appreciated.
Hi @noxigen . There's no current ability to choose rules to have your transactions categorize in specific ways, although the auto-cat function will automatically categorize if you have an active bank connection.
I have some transactions that come in the exact same way every month. I manually categorize them every month. Hopefully the new changes will auto-cat those going forward. I honestly don't understand why Wave would add a categorization rules features with all the feedback you are getting from customers.
@noxigen Thanks for leaving your sentiments in regards to the autocategorization rules. This is definitely what we consider to be Version 1 of the feature and are looking at ways to improve it as we continue to see users leaving us with detailed solutions or feature ideas. Your feedback is important and felt by many and I hope that future updates to the feature will add value to your workflow in Wave.
Being a long term user of XERO, Quickbooks and MYOB and an accountant in Public Practice, give me XERO rules every time. QB auto categorises but does a terrible job at it. Laughable really. Have to check each transaction every time. It looks ok on the screen, it allocates a vendor and an account but when you drill down you see it was for something completely different. Not sure what you experience OS is but Intuit/Quickbooks in Australia cannot be recommended. Their customer service is poorly named at best
At least with XERO rules they will allocate according to what you tell them. Not change their mind every time you use the program. True XERO is getting worse, not better but compared to QB, XERO every time. Wave seems to still be listening to users, unlike XERO who just say they are but have not for years now. Mention QB to any of my staff and they all groan.
Wave is not quite there yet for me to recommend to most clients but it is close and getting closer every time I look. Obviously you have to fix that date issue, inventory is no solution really, payroll and a heap of other things.
For a personal user or a small business who does not need bells and whistles, Wave is a good choice and hopefully will continue to improve.
I was super pleased to sit in on a presentation from one of our developers in some updates to the auto-cat feature. We should be seeing some MAJOR improvements but I sadly can't say when this will come into production. So an ETA is not available right now, but we are working on this!
It's now 2 years since this was requested. The request is really straightforward. When I click to categorize something like this:
Zelle from Johnny Five $500
to be:
Rent,
I'd like to have it allow me to do this for future transactions. You implement this with a string matching function. It searches for "Zelle from Johnny Five." That's it.
Guy and gals, I used freaking Microsoft Money in the 90s that I installed from a floppy disk. When the internet didn't exist. AND IT HAD THIS FEATURE!!!!
It seems there's a barely working version of this feature right now. You can fix incorrectly categorized transactions as described here. But unfortunately once I re-categorize the transaction and then download a new one it again doesn't know how to deal with it. All the Zelle rental income transactions are still uncategorized.
If there was a simple way to search for a phrase and make a rule like every other accounting software (including MS Money) and auto-categorize I'd be sold on Zelle. Please implement this feature! Happy to describe it more.
I'm afraid that rule based categorization is not supported in Wave, and we do not currently have plans to implement it at this time as it is not on our product road map moving forward. I apologize for the inconvenience here.
Comments
@mattschilds you can already filter new transactions by marking old transactions as reviewed. That is the green checkmark. It works pretty well.
I use that to reconcile my bank statements. Just wish I could get the program to stop trying to help me categorize stuff.
I am okay with creating auto-categorizing rules manually if that feature could be more easily achieved than the fully smart auto categorization. Either way, I will certainly need a way to manually change auto auto categorization rules.
Hi, @rwall88,
Auto-categorization learns as you fix its mistakes (machine learning is really cool!). As you help the system understand your transactions better, it'll get faster and more accurate, up to the point where it will only require a quick review every now and again.
Thank you
This answer needs to be posted as a sticky to the first page.
so in conclusion WHEN wave have this function or never, just let me know so i can decide to stay or leave.
thanks
@Alexia, It's really great you've been keeping folks up-to-date on this feature. Many thanks.
Pretty silly guys. Not having an 'Off' feature? I'm not a software Engineer, but I am an Engineer. I love that you guys strive to improve, but you shoot yourselves in the foot buy not thinking ahead. Auto-categorize is great... For Some People. I wire money all the time to different places. Wave just auto-cat's it to the last place i wired money. And I can't turn this off? Can't imagine the nightmare this has caused for people with high volume transactions. *face palm.
@GoodAccounting Thanks so much for your feedback! As a user as well as an employee, I can relate to your gripes with the autocategorization tool at times. I assure you that as this is a new tool, the team at Wave is working on refining the machine learning aspect to the feature moving forward, and appreciate your patience while we continue to build out this feature to be less clunky.
I switched to Wave from Quickbooks over a year ago because Quickbooks online is so expensive. I've been using the bulk categorize feature for my repeating transactions. It still takes hours longer then using Quickbooks. I have been waiting for Wave to implement some sort of rule creation feature for over a year now! Promises that its coming have not come to fruition. How is it that you don't have this same simple feature that every other accounting software has? Its such a huge time saver. Alas, now that I'm getting more online sales, I just can't keep assigning accounts for every single shipping fee, merchant fee, etc for every single order. I'm going back to Quickbooks. Its too bad because I like your interface so much better. I also love your invoicing feature, and use it as an easy way for my wholesale customers to pay me online. I will miss it, but I just can't keep wasting hours re-assigning the same transactions over and over. Its maddening!
Hey @Tara -- I do appreciate the insight of how auto-categorization could be improved to work better for your business. It definitely gives us an idea of what your work flow would be like in terms of creating rules for the categories (especially similar accounts for shipping/merchant fee etc). We're hoping that within the year we will have something more intuitive implemented to make the categorization of your accounts more simple.
Has this feature been accomplished yet? I can't seem to find it and its absolutely insane if it hasn't been done yet.
Hey @tschwartz. If you are referring to the auto-categorization feature itself, this is something that we definitely have in Wave as of right now: https://support.waveapps.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001301666-All-about-automatically-categorizing-transactions -- in terms of being able to disable the function of auto-categorization, this is something that still isn't available to our users, and we don't have a solid ETA as to when this would be available.
@JamieD ya this is not what I meant. Assuming you have used Xero or QBO or basically any other accounting software on the market, you can set bank rules. "When $XX comes in on account X, assign to X and categorize as X"
Rules are a pretty simple function that I am surprised you do not have.
Hi @tschwartz . Wave doesn't currently support rules for imported transactions. Can you give us your workflow and how this would be used for your business so we have a better understanding of how this would help your business out?
@alexlewiszarkos sure, when I have a transaction that comes in from XYZ Company often, the purpose of bank rules is to set it to a vendor and a category once and have it auto pick those in future. I would suggest you check out the way Xero and QBO do this.
Here is also a quick 2 min video on my suggestions. https://cl.ly/121090
Thank you @tschwartz - especially for the video, this is really helpful!
Wait, what? It's been a year or more since this has been brought up, and still no auto-categorization? Like many people here, this is a deal breaker.
Hey @kennethyim since this thread started, we have launched an auto-categorization feature in Wave for Wavers who have a bank connection established. You can learn more about this here: https://support.waveapps.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001301666-All-about-automatically-categorizing-transactions Should you have any additional questions about using the Autocategorization feature, feel free to leave a comment at the bottom of that article and a Waver or Admin will be happy to help
I'd just as soon turn it off. It auto categorizes my transactions WRONG almost every time. It certainly is NOT learning as I have to change my Cable bill payment from "Utilities - Electric" category every month (I don't remember which bill it gets wrong but it is one of the utilities). And the rest of them are typically left uncategorized despite 2+ years of data showing the exact same payments to the same vendors and the same categories. Speaking of Vendors, again, the fact that Vendor's can't be picked up and auto-applied at this point is aggravating as well.
So with the new redesign and all the new features, I still don't see a way to set up reconciliation rules to automatically categorize items based on criteria like a string match. Am I missing something?
Hey @TimK . Totally understand your frustrations here. The auto-cat feature is definitely constantly being improved but it does have some flaws. The long-term goal is that it contributes to your workflow instead of taking away from it, especially when any mis-categorized transactions would have to be categorized to something without the auto-cat feature anyways. Thank you for putting this on our radar though, your feedback is appreciated.
Hi @noxigen . There's no current ability to choose rules to have your transactions categorize in specific ways, although the auto-cat function will automatically categorize if you have an active bank connection.
I have some transactions that come in the exact same way every month. I manually categorize them every month. Hopefully the new changes will auto-cat those going forward. I honestly don't understand why Wave would add a categorization rules features with all the feedback you are getting from customers.
@noxigen Thanks for leaving your sentiments in regards to the autocategorization rules. This is definitely what we consider to be Version 1 of the feature and are looking at ways to improve it as we continue to see users leaving us with detailed solutions or feature ideas. Your feedback is important and felt by many and I hope that future updates to the feature will add value to your workflow in Wave.
Being a long term user of XERO, Quickbooks and MYOB and an accountant in Public Practice, give me XERO rules every time. QB auto categorises but does a terrible job at it. Laughable really. Have to check each transaction every time. It looks ok on the screen, it allocates a vendor and an account but when you drill down you see it was for something completely different. Not sure what you experience OS is but Intuit/Quickbooks in Australia cannot be recommended. Their customer service is poorly named at best
At least with XERO rules they will allocate according to what you tell them. Not change their mind every time you use the program. True XERO is getting worse, not better but compared to QB, XERO every time. Wave seems to still be listening to users, unlike XERO who just say they are but have not for years now. Mention QB to any of my staff and they all groan.
Wave is not quite there yet for me to recommend to most clients but it is close and getting closer every time I look. Obviously you have to fix that date issue, inventory is no solution really, payroll and a heap of other things.
For a personal user or a small business who does not need bells and whistles, Wave is a good choice and hopefully will continue to improve.
Hey @PeregianAccounting
I was super pleased to sit in on a presentation from one of our developers in some updates to the auto-cat feature. We should be seeing some MAJOR improvements but I sadly can't say when this will come into production. So an ETA is not available right now, but we are working on this!
Hi all,
It's now 2 years since this was requested. The request is really straightforward. When I click to categorize something like this:
Zelle from Johnny Five $500
to be:
Rent,
I'd like to have it allow me to do this for future transactions. You implement this with a string matching function. It searches for "Zelle from Johnny Five." That's it.
Guy and gals, I used freaking Microsoft Money in the 90s that I installed from a floppy disk. When the internet didn't exist. AND IT HAD THIS FEATURE!!!!
It seems there's a barely working version of this feature right now. You can fix incorrectly categorized transactions as described here. But unfortunately once I re-categorize the transaction and then download a new one it again doesn't know how to deal with it. All the Zelle rental income transactions are still uncategorized.
If there was a simple way to search for a phrase and make a rule like every other accounting software (including MS Money) and auto-categorize I'd be sold on Zelle. Please implement this feature! Happy to describe it more.
Until then I have to stick to Xero sadly...
Andrew
Just reviving this thread. Rule base categorizing of transactions is a must. Did you guys have time to program it during 2020?
Hey @ChagaMan ! Thanks for reaching out.
I'm afraid that rule based categorization is not supported in Wave, and we do not currently have plans to implement it at this time as it is not on our product road map moving forward. I apologize for the inconvenience here.