Home Loan Manager - User Manual

Table of Contents > Category Auto Matching

Category Auto Matching

To save you manually allocating categories to every transaction, Home Loan Manager Pro provides you with a Category auto-matching tool.

Note: The Auto Match option will remain disabled until the account contains at least one statement.

Overview

The category auto-matching tool tries to match categories to transactions automatically, and once tuned to your needs it will do most of the matching for you.

The tool uses two main techniques, which are covered in more detail below:

1. Previously Matched Transactions.
2. Category Wildcard Patterns.

Previously Matched Transactions

Some transactions come up statement after statement. For example, the transaction that reflects the interest you are charged may appear on each statement with a description similar to "Interest Payable".

The first time you enter a new transaction description into Home Loan Manager Pro, you will need to manually assign it to an appropriate category (for example "INTEREST - Periodic Interest").

From then on the auto-matching tool will recognise that the category "INTEREST - Periodic Interest" should be assigned to all "Interest Payable" transactions and it will automatically match them for you.

Category Wildcard Patterns

Often a word in a transaction description can make it a good candidate to be placed in a category.

For example, one month your interest transaction may be "Interest Payable to 30 August" with the following month being "Interest Payable to 28 September". It would be convenient if any transaction description containing the words "Interest Payable" could automatically be assigned the category "INTEREST - Periodic Interest".

This type of matching can be easily achieved through the Category Wildcard Patterns.

For example, from above, you could set up the wildcard "contains Interest Payable" for the category "INTEREST - Periodic Interest".

When you run the auto-matching tool, any transaction containing "Interest Payable" would automatically have the category "INTEREST - Periodic Interest" assigned to it.

From the Category menu choose Category Maintenance to set up and maintain Category Wildcard Patterns.

Restrictions

The auto-matching tool has been designed to assign categories to transactions only if they have not already been matched.

This will prevent it trying to change any categories that you have manually assigned or previously auto-matched.

Running the Auto Match tool

1. From the Action menu choose Auto Match.
2. Select the statement you wish to auto match.
3. By default the auto-matching tool will use the Category Wildcard Patterns. If you do not wish to use the category wildcard patterns deselect the "Match to Category Wildcard Patterns" check box.
4. By default the auto-matching tool will use the transactions you have matched in the current statement. If you do not wish to use the current statement then deselect the "Match to Current Statement" check box.
5. By default the auto-matching tool will use all previously loaded statements. You can select the number of statements to match to by selecting from the drop down list.
6. By default the auto-matching tool will try to match descriptions using the first 10 letters in the transaction description. This can be useful when two descriptions start with the same words (eg "INTEREST CHARGE"), however the bank adds transaction numbers to the end of the descriptions to make them unique (eg "INTEREST CHARGE 18293", "INTEREST CHARGE 29833". By default these two descriptions don't match, however by using the first 10 letters in the matching process the auto-matching tool will be able to match them. You can choose the number of letter you want to match, ranging from five letters (lots of matches, less accuracy) to an exact match using all letters (fewer matches, more accuracy).