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Review Transactions

It is very common for use to review transactions at your own pace, some people do it daily, some people do it weekly, and some people do it monthly.

Periodically reviewing your transactions is a good practice to keep your finance organized and up to date. During the review, we can do the following things:

  1. Categorize transactions: categorize transactions that are not categorized yet.
  2. Tag transactions: tag transactions that are not tagged yet.
  3. Edit transactions: edit transactions like split transactions, change date, add notes, etc.

Categorize Transactions​

Categorizing transactions is the most important step to keep your finance organized.

You can manually categorize transactions, but you should do more to create rules that can automatically categorize transactions in the future. When you change the category of a transaction, Fina will prompt you to create a rule for the transaction.

  1. Set and edit the rule condition, such as name contains, amount greater than, etc.
  2. Set the rule action, such as set category to Groceries, or tag it as christmas etc.
  3. Save the rule.

A saved rule will be applied to all transactions that match the condition in the future. But you can easily adjust the rule priority on Rules page to make sure they work property in the right order as you wished.

Create Rule

Tag Transactions​

Tagging transactions is a powerful way to tell a financial story. Use one tag to thread all related transactions together, and you can easily see the total amount of all transactions with the tag.

For example, you can tag all transactions related to a trip with the same tag, such as trip to Paris, and you can see the total amount of all transactions with the tag in one click. Every tag has its own color which helps you to identify the tag quickly. You can also use tags to filter transactions in the transaction list.

Read this blog post to learn more about how to use tags in Fina: How to Use Tags in Fina.

Edit Transactions​

Editing transactions is a powerful way to keep your finance organized. You can edit transactions to split them into multiple transactions, change the date, add notes, etc. Adding extra description is useful if a transaction name is vague. You can also use notes to filter transactions in the transaction list or in page blocks.

Review Transactions​

Reviewing transaction is an optional feature where you can make sure every new transaction has reviewed and unreviewed state. This feature makes sure you won't miss any transaction in the future.

The function is turned off by default, but you can turn it on in the Profile Settings dialog:

  1. Hover over the profile name in the profiles section on the left.
  2. Click the Settings icon to open the profile settings dialog.
  3. Click the Review Transactions checkbox to turn it on.
    1. You can choose initial review state for all transactions: Reviewed or Unreviewed.

Filters & Views​

Fina provides a powerful filter and view system to help you find the transactions you want to see.

On the title section, there is a view list where you can select a view to see the transactions. A view is a saved filter that can be applied to the transaction list. Fina has already provides some default views for you to use, such as Uncategorized Transactions, Expense Only, Income Only, No Investments, etc.

View List

Create a View​

Here is how to create a new view:

  1. Click Filter button to open the filter section.
  2. Choose field to filter by, such as Category, Tag, Name etc.
  3. Input proper value to filter by, transactions will be filtered in real time.
  4. Click the Save as View button to save it as a new view.
  5. The new view will be added to the view list, and you can select it to see the transactions.

Quick searhc is embedded almost everywhere in Fina. You can use it to search for transactions, accounts, categories, rules, and more. Whenever you see a search icon, you can click it to search for the data you want to find.

Merchant Management​

Merchant management is a powerful feature that allows you to manage your merchants in Fina. A lot of times, merchants are coming in a messy state, such as Amazon.com, Amazon, AMAZON, amazon.com, etc. By renaming them into a recognized name, you cleaned up the data and make it easier to analyze.

  1. Click the Merchants button to open the merchant management dialog.
  2. Click rename (merchant) button to rename the merchant.
  3. If you want to revert the renaming, just delete the value in the input box.
  4. Click Save button to save the changes.

Here is a blog post with more details: How to Use Merchant Management.

Import & Export Transactions​

Fina provides a powerful import and export system to help you manage your transactions.

  • Import: You can import transactions from connected Google Spreadsheet.
  • Export: You can export transactions to a CSV file.
    • Raw format: same transaction list as you see in the transaction list.
    • Rollup format: a summarized transaction list with the total amount of each category, good for accounting and tax purpose.

Transactions page is the core of Fina. You should get your data sorted and cleaned easily on this page.