Forecasted- and transaction categorization rules

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Automate how transactions are categorized
Categorization rules let you define conditions that automatically sort, classify, or group transactions into specific categories.
This reduces manual work, improves consistency, and ensures your financial data is always organized.

Create custom categorization rules to organize transactions and automatically apply categories based on predefined conditions.
Here are two examples:

• A rule for Salaries where any transaction containing the word “salary” in its description is assigned to the Salary category.
• A rule for Interest where any transaction containing the word “interest” in its description is assigned to the Interest category.

Atlar can automatically categorize both transactions and forecasted transactions:

• Transactions – Entries on a bank statement that impact the account balance.
• Forecasted transactions – Projected cash inflows and outflows used for Cash Flow Forecasting.
  These can be uploaded manually or sourced automatically from systems such as your ERP.

Configure a categorization rule

1. Navigate to Settings → Cash flow Setup in the Atlar dashboard.
2. Open the Transaction Categorization rules or Forecasted transaction rules tab.
3. Click Create rule in the top-right corner.
4. Configure the rule:
   1. Give the rule a Name.
   2. Add one or more Conditions for when the rule should apply.
   3. Select the Category to assign when the conditions are met.

Best practices for conditions

• Use Equal when the value must match exactly.
• Use Does not equal to exclude or specify that the value should differ from a given one.
• When using Description, the transaction description is compared to the condition by transforming both to lowercase text.
• Use Add condition block if you want either Condition 1 or Condition 2 to apply.
• Use Add condition if both Condition 1 and Condition 2 must apply.

Good to know

• New rules apply only to future transactions. Use a Categorization task to reapply rules to past transactions.
• Rules can use multiple fields (e.g. amount, merchant, or account) for more advanced logic.
• Prioritize rules by placing the most specific ones at the top and fallback rules at the bottom.

Testing rules before applying

The Test mode button in the top-right corner allows you to test your rule set against the last 10,000 transactions received for your accounts.
This helps validate rules before applying them.
Once satisfied with the results, run a Categorization task to update historical transactions accordingly.