Automating with Rules

Tender supports building rules to automate recurring work. Currently, rules can:

• categorize a transaction
• change a transaction's description

In the future, we expect to also support different effects including:

• Automating splitting bills with others

Rules can match transactions based on its description, statement line, account, or amount. They are run when new transactions are imported.

Creating rules

You can create rules directly from a transaction or from the settings.

Rules can optionally be applied to transactions currently in the inbox.

How a rule gets applied

Rules are applied to new transactions synced into Tender. When a rule automatically categorizes a transaction, the transaction will still go into your inbox for review.

💡 Limitation

For now, rules are unordered. When multiple rules apply to a transaction, Tender will pick one winner.

Skipping the inbox

Transactions that are automatically categorized by a rule are still sent to your inbox for review.

Sometimes this can be annoying, e.g. for changes you never want to review like internal transfers due to your autopay showing up in the inbox. In these cases, you can also specify that rules should skip the inbox review in the rule editor.

Example rules

Here are some example rules we've found useful.

Ignoring transfers between accounts

• When description contains "AUTOMATIC PAYMENT"...
• When the description contains "Venmo" and the account is "bank account"...
• When the description is "Payment" and the account is "Splitwise"...

then

• Set the category to "Internal Transfer" and skip the inbox

Renaming bank transfers

• When the description is "APPLECARD GSBANK PAYMENT WEB ID: 9999999999" then change the description to "Apple Card Payment"

Recurring bills

• When the description is "T-mobile" and the amount = "$50.00" then set the category to "Utilities"
• When the description is "Rent" and the amount = "$1200.00 then set the category to "Housing"