Categorizing, splitting and tagging transactions

Edit any transaction to match how you think about your money — change its category, split it across categories, attach tags, or add notes.

Done through your assistant. This isn’t something you set up inside the Wise Pennyapp yet — you ask your connected AI assistant to do it for you. The app shows the result (for example, an “Edited” or “Split” mark on a transaction); the examples below show what to ask.

Every transaction has one category

Wise Penny ships with a category taxonomy out of the box — Food & Drink, Transportation, Shopping, Income, and dozens more. Plaid assigns a category to each transaction as it syncs, so most things land in a reasonable bucket without any work from you. The defaults won't cover everything; that's what the rest of this page is about.

When the default is wrong, ask your assistant to change it. You can edit one transaction at a time, or describe a pattern (“everything from Trader Joe's should be Groceries”) and the assistant will set up a rule that applies it automatically going forward. If your life includes something the defaults don't cover, the assistant can create a custom category — “Specialty Coffee”, “Crypto”, “Studio Rent”.

When merchant names need cleaning up

Plaid tries to normalize merchant names as transactions sync — big chains often arrive as “Starbucks” rather than SQ *STARBUCKS #1234. Smaller merchants and unusual processors often stay cryptic. When that happens, ask your assistant to rename the merchant. Once a rule picks up the pattern, every future charge from the same place shows the clean name.

Notes for context the bank doesn't carry

A note is free-form text you attach to a transaction: “anniversary dinner”, “Alex's half of the Airbnb”, “client reimbursable”. Notes are searchable and visible when your assistant pulls transaction details, so “why did I spend $200 at the hardware store last March?” gets an honest answer.

Splitting a charge across categories

A $340 Costco run is rarely all groceries — usually it's half groceries, half paper towels and a folding table. Logging the whole charge as Groceries inflates your grocery total and leaves Household uncounted. A split divides one transaction across multiple categories so each one gets its real share.

One transaction, two categories. The $340 total stays intact in your account view; budget totals follow the allocation amounts you set.

The transaction still appears at its full amount in your account history — splits affect how the amount is attributed to categories and budgets, not the ledger balance. Each allocation has its own category, optional note, and optional tags, and the allocations have to sum to the full amount.

Most everyday charges aren't worth splitting. The ones that are: warehouse runs (Costco, Sam's Club, Target), large Amazon orders, group payments you fronted, and any charge where your own note hints at mixed purposes.

To change a split, ask your assistant to unsplit it and re-split with the new allocations. Allocations aren't edited in place.

Tags for what categories can't capture

A category answers “what kind of business did the money go to?” — coffee shop, grocery store, airline. That's one useful lens, but it misses everything categories can't see: why you spent the money, who else it involved, what project it belongs to, what trip it was part of.

Tags fill that gap. They're free-form labels you attach to a transaction (or to one slice of a split), and a transaction can carry any number. Common examples: a trip (“Italy 2026”), a tax bucket (“Tax-deductible 2026”), a client project (“Q1-Acme”), a person (“Alex shared”), a one-time event (“Wedding”). Ask your assistant to create new tags as needs come up — there's no fixed list.

On a split transaction, tags go on individual allocations rather than on the parent. That way only the relevant slice counts against the label — not the whole charge.

Six pre-installed tags for pass-through money

These cover the common “pass-through” cases — money that isn't really spending or income and shouldn't count as either.

Reimbursable: You paid for something you'll be reimbursed for, or the reimbursement just arrived. Tag both sides so the flow nets out.
Lent: You lent money to someone. Tag the repayment with the same label when it comes back.
Borrowed: You borrowed money. Tag your repayment the same way when you send it.
Cash withdrawal: ATM pulls or cash transfers you don't plan to track further. Marks them as pass-through money.
Internal transfer: Money moved between your own accounts — savings to checking, and so on. These get linked automatically in most cases.
Credit card payment: A payment from your bank account to a credit card you own. Also linked automatically.

Any transaction (or split allocation) carrying one of these is automatically excluded from your budget totals and from income/expense math. A Venmo repayment to a friend won't show up in your dining budget or inflate your monthly expenses, and a reimbursement that arrives won't count as income.

The two transfer tags — Internal transfer and Credit card payment — are handled automatically for most cases. See the internal transfers guide if you need to link or unlink one manually.

Edits never modify your bank's data

Every change you make sits on top of the original as an edit layer. What you see in Wise Pennyis your organized view; what the bank holds stays exactly as it was. Any field can be reset to whatever the bank originally said, and the whole transaction can be reset in one step. The one exception: a reset doesn't undo an internal transfer link — see the internal transfers guide.

Ask your assistant: “Split yesterday's $340 Costco charge — about $200 was groceries and the rest was household stuff.”