Create and manage smart rules

Reduce manual review by teaching Dolla how to categorise common patterns during imports and transaction cleanup.

When to create a rule

Create a rule when the same merchant, keyword, amount pattern, or transaction style keeps needing the same cleanup. Rules are especially valuable after your first few imports, when the manual work starts to repeat.

Manage Smart Rules from the Rules row in Track at /transactions?tab=rules. Budget, Settings, guidance, and command-palette shortcuts route to that section so creation, suggestions, priority, and rule runs stay together.

Use New rule for a rule you already understand, or review suggestions when Dolla has found a repeated pattern. You can edit, reorder, select, and delete saved rules from the same list. Preview the matches before applying a rule to existing transactions.

Category suggestions in your first look

After your first import or bank sync, Dolla may show up to three repeated spending patterns that do not have categories yet. Each suggestion includes example transactions and explains what will change.

Choose Add category to create that category, move the matching transactions, and save the disclosed Smart Rule for future matches. Choose Dismiss if the pattern is not useful, or use the add-all and dismiss-all controls to handle the group. These suggestions do not use AI. Provider-backed patterns have stronger evidence, while description-only patterns use more cautious wording.

Every rule created this way remains editable and removable from Smart Rules.

What a good rule usually includes

• Clear matching text such as a merchant name or known descriptor.
• The target category.
• Optional refinements such as amount filters, review behaviour, or tags.

Rule priority matters

Rules can overlap. If two rules could match the same transaction, order and specificity matter. Revisit the list if a broad rule is catching transactions that should belong to a more precise one.

Creating rules from transaction cleanup

When you create a rule from a transaction cleanup flow, you can either save it for future imports only or save it and apply it to matching history straight away. Use the second option when the pattern is already trustworthy and you want to clear a repeated backlog faster.

During CSV import review, changing a category can also open the same smart-rule prompt. In that unsaved preview flow, the apply option updates matching rows in the current import batch before you confirm the import.

If a preview row was matched by an existing Smart Rule, its Matched pill opens that rule directly inside the import review. You can adjust the rule in place, save it, and Dolla will reapply the updated rule to matching rows in the current unsaved import preview.