Categories

Every bill and transaction can be labeled with a category — Housing, Groceries, Subscriptions, and so on — so you can see where your money actually goes, not just what’s coming up next.

The category list

Tally uses one fixed list of categories, the same for every account: Housing, Utilities, Insurance, Transportation, Subscriptions & Streaming, Technology, Groceries, Dining & Restaurants, Health & Medical, Childcare & Kids, Education, Savings & Investments, Debt Payments, Entertainment, Clothing & Apparel, Travel, Pets, Personal Care, Donations & Giving, Family Support, and Other. You can’t add your own — anything that doesn’t fit elsewhere goes in Other.

Setting a category

You can set a bill’s or transaction’s category yourself from a dropdown when you add or edit it. As you type a name, Tally may show a suggested category — see Categorize your spending for how suggestions work and what the confidence badge means.

A category you set yourself, or a suggestion you accept, counts as confirmed. A bill or transaction with no category set yet still shows up in the Categories report — Tally makes its own best guess from the name for the purposes of the report, but that guess is never saved, and doesn’t count as confirmed until you actually pick it.

The Categories report

The Categories page (in the main navigation) shows a donut or bar chart, and a table, breaking down your spending by category:

• Bills count at their real due amount, for however many times they’re actually due this calendar month — a weekly bill due 4 times this month counts 4 times, an annual bill due in a different month counts 0 times in this one. Bills aren’t smoothed to a monthly rate.
• Transactions count for the current calendar month only, and only ones that reduce your balance (debits) — a paycheck or refund doesn’t count against a spending total.

Free accounts see the full chart and table, combined across every account you have. Paid accounts see the report scoped to the one account they’re currently viewing, and can also switch between bills-only/transactions-only/both, sort the table, filter to confirmed categories only, and click a row to see every individual bill or transaction inside it — including a dropdown right there to confirm or change its category on the spot.

Privacy

Setting a category on your own bills and transactions never leaves your account by default. Tally’s optional category suggestions are powered by a shared reference of anonymized merchant names other users have opted to contribute — see Categorize your spending for what that means and how to turn it on or off.