Bank Rules
Teach Trabalance to recognise the bank lines you see every month — so the category is already filled in when they arrive.
Most bank lines repeat. The same card fee, the same hosting bill, the same interest credit, month after month. A rule matches those by their description and pre-fills the category, so classifying a statement becomes confirming rather than typing.
Navigate to: Finance → Banking → open an account → Rules
A rule never posts. It fills the Category on a matching line and stops there — you still review and post it on the Classification tab. Nothing reaches the ledger without a person agreeing to it.
Rules Apply Everywhere
Although the tab lives inside one bank account, the rules you create are held for the whole business and apply to every bank and cash account you have. A rule written while looking at one account will pre-fill matching lines on all of them.
Writing a Rule
Top right of Your rules.
| Field | Required? | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Description contains / is exactly | Yes | The text to look for. Placeholder "e.g. monthly card fee". The label changes with the Match setting |
| Match | Yes | "Contains" (default) or "Is exactly". Both ignore capitalisation |
| Direction | No | "Money in or out" (default), "Money in only", or "Money out only" |
| Categorise to | Yes | The account to pre-fill. Placeholder "Choose an account…" |
Disabled until both the text and the account are set. The confirmation reads "Rule created — it now pre-fills matching lines".
Match on the part of the description that never changes. Bank text usually carries a reference or a date that differs every month, so Contains "card fee" keeps working where Is exactly "CARD FEE 0412 15AUG" matches once and never again.
Rules That Suggest Themselves
Once you have sent three or more lines with a similar description to the same account, that pattern is offered under Suggested from your history, with the count and an example: "You classified 7 lines like this. e.g. 'MONTHLY CARD FEE 0412'". Make it a rule adopts it as a Contains rule on the text shown.
Suggestions are mined from your own classifications only, and anything an existing rule already covers is left out.
The Rules You Hold
Each rule reads back as a sentence — Description contains "interest earned" → Interest Income — with its direction beneath. When two rules could match the same line, the first match wins.
| You can | You cannot |
|---|---|
| Create a rule | Edit a rule — delete it and create it again |
| Delete a rule | Reorder rules, or set a priority |
| Limit a rule to money in or money out | Limit a rule by amount, or to a single bank account |
Remove rule deletes immediately, with no confirmation. Nothing already posted changes — a rule only ever pre-filled a suggestion — but the rule itself has to be typed again.
Using Rules on the Statement
On the Classification tab, lines a rule recognises arrive with their Category already filled in and the toolbar offers Apply N suggestions. Nothing is applied on its own: you apply, review and then Post N categorised. See Classifying uncategorised money.
If Rules Are Not Available Yet
The tab may show "Bank rules aren't enabled yet", explaining that the database migration has not been applied. In that state you cannot create rules, and the built-in bank-charges recognition still runs. Nothing is lost — classify as usual, and the suggestions you generate become rule suggestions once the tab is enabled.
Related
- Classifying uncategorised money — where rules do their work
- Converting bank lines to documents — for lines that are really a receipt or a payment
- Banking — the account workspace and its four tabs
- Importing bank statements — getting the lines in
- Auto-matching — matching statement lines to entries the book already has