Categories Module
Managing Categories
A shared list of category names, one per area of the app that uses them — mostly built for you automatically as you work, with this page as the place to review, add, rename, or clean it up.
Start here
1Before you start
You don’t need to set anything up here first. Every time you type a brand-new category name on an Income entry, an Expense entry, a Purchase order line, an Expense Reimbursement line, or a Contact’s tags, it’s automatically added to this shared registry — permanently reusable as a suggestion from then on, within that same area.
This page exists for the times you want to manage that list directly rather than waiting for it to grow organically: adding a category ahead of time, fixing a typo, or clearing out one you don’t use anymore.
2Add a category by hand
Click Add Category, enter a Name and pick which Type it belongs to (see Category types). Names are matched case-insensitively within a type, so typing “Rent” when “rent” already exists for that type just reuses the existing entry instead of creating a duplicate.
Common tasks
Renaming a category
Open a category and change its Name. Its Type can’t be changed on a rename — a category only ever moves between areas by being recreated fresh under the new type.
Renaming here only updates the registry entry itself. Existing Income entries, Purchase lines, and so on that already used the old name keep whatever text they already have — the same way renaming an account in the Chart of Accounts doesn’t rewrite old journal lines.
Removing a category
Deleting a category removes it from the suggestion list and this page’s own list. It has no effect on records elsewhere that already used that name — their text stays exactly as it was. If someone later retypes the same name in Income or Expenses, it’s simply added back to the registry as if it were new.
Reference
Category types
Five fixed types exist, one per area of the app with a real category concept. They’re independent of each other — “Rent” typed under Income and “Rent” typed under Purchases are two separate entries, not one shared name.
| Type | Fed by |
|---|---|
| Income | Income entries (real Banking inflow transactions). |
| Expenses | Expense entries (real Banking outflow transactions). |
| Purchases | Purchase order lines. |
| Reimbursements | Expense Reimbursement claim lines. |
| Contacts | Tags on a Contact record. |
The usage count shown next to each category is computed live from those real records every time this page loads — it’s never cached, so it can’t drift out of date, but it also means a category’s count reflects everything that has ever used that exact name, including entries you can no longer see if they were later changed elsewhere.
What this module doesn’t do
There’s no way to merge two differently-spelled categories into one from this page — each is a fully separate entry, and cleaning up near-duplicates means renaming or deleting them by hand.
Removing a category here never edits, hides, or renames existing records elsewhere that already used it — see Removing a category.
A category name is scoped to its type. There’s no cross-type view or shared pool — see Category types.