We're thrilled to announce the rollout of our automated rule engine, a powerful feature that lets you create custom rules to automatically update, categorize, and organize your transactions.

What Are Transaction Rules?

Transaction rules are conditional statements that tell Skwad what to do when certain criteria are met. Think of them as "if this, then that" instructions for your finances. When a transaction matches the conditions you've defined, Skwad automatically applies the actions you've specified.

For example, you could create a rule that says: "If a transaction payee contains 'NETFLIX', then categorize it as Entertainment and tag it as 'Subscriptions'." Once set up, every Netflix charge that comes through will be automatically handled without you lifting a finger.

This isn't just about saving time, though that's certainly a benefit. It's about consistency and accuracy in your financial tracking. Human beings are prone to inconsistency. One month you might categorize a coffee shop purchase as "Dining Out," and the next month you might put it under "Food & Drink." Rules eliminate this inconsistency by applying the same logic every single time.

How Skwad Automations Work

The automation system in Skwad is built around three core concepts: conditions, actions, and execution. Understanding how these work together will help you create powerful rules that transform your financial management.

Conditions: Defining What to Match

Conditions are the criteria that determine which transactions your rule applies to. Skwad offers a robust set of condition fields to work with:

Payee Matching: The payee field is often the most useful for creating rules. You can match payees that contain specific text, start with certain characters, exactly match a value, or exclude specific terms. This flexibility is crucial because bank transaction descriptions are notoriously inconsistent, often including reference numbers, locations, or other variable information.

Merchant Matching: If you've already set up merchants in Skwad, you can create rules based on merchant names. This is particularly useful for transactions that have been through Skwad's auto-categorization and already have a merchant assigned.

Category Matching: Want to apply additional processing to transactions that are already categorized? Category conditions let you target transactions based on their current category, which is helpful for adding tags or making secondary adjustments.

Account Matching: For users with multiple accounts, you can create rules that only apply to specific accounts. This is useful when the same merchant might need different categorization depending on whether you're using a personal or business account.

Amount Conditions: Sometimes the transaction amount is the distinguishing factor. You can create rules for transactions above or below certain thresholds, or within specific ranges. This is perfect for flagging large purchases or handling micro-transactions differently.

Date Conditions: Date-based rules help you handle time-sensitive categorization, like applying different rules for transactions before or after a specific date.

Combining Conditions with AND/OR Logic

The real power of Skwad's rule system comes from combining multiple conditions. You can use AND logic when all conditions must match, or OR logic when any condition should trigger the rule.

Consider this example: You want to catch all your streaming service subscriptions. Instead of creating separate rules for Netflix, Spotify, and Disney+, you could create a single rule:

Payee contains "NETFLIX"
OR Payee contains "SPOTIFY"
OR Payee contains "DISNEY"

Add an action to tag these as "Subscriptions" and categorize them as "Entertainment," and you've just automated the handling of all your streaming services with one rule.

For more complex scenarios, you might combine AND and OR conditions. Perhaps you want to categorize Amazon purchases differently based on amount:

Payee contains "AMAZON"
AND Amount greater than 100

This rule could categorize large Amazon purchases as "Shopping" while letting smaller purchases be handled by your default categorization for household supplies or groceries.

Actions: What Happens When Rules Match

Once a transaction matches your conditions, Skwad can apply various actions to update it automatically.

Update Payee: Replace the entire payee name with something cleaner and more readable. Turn "AMZN MKTP US*123ABC" into simply "Amazon" for better readability in your transaction list.

Replace Payee Text: Sometimes you don't want to replace the entire payee, just clean up a portion of it. This action lets you find and replace specific text within the payee field, perfect for removing those annoying reference numbers that banks append to transactions.

Update Merchant: Set the merchant field to a specific value. This is helpful for establishing consistency across transactions from the same source that might have slightly different payee names.

Update Category: The most common action. Automatically assign transactions to the appropriate spending category without manual intervention.

Update Account: Move transactions to a different account. While less common, this can be useful for certain workflow scenarios.

Update Memo: Add notes to transactions automatically. Great for adding context that might be useful later, like "Business expense" or "Reimbursable."

Add Tag: Tags are one of Skwad's most flexible features for organizing transactions beyond categories. You can add tags for projects, trips, events, or any other organizational scheme that makes sense for your finances. Learn more about using tags effectively.

Remove Tag: Clean up tags that were incorrectly applied or are no longer relevant.

Delete: Archive transactions that match certain criteria. Use this cautiously, but it can be helpful for automatically removing duplicate entries or test transactions.

Action Behavior: Continue vs. Stop

Each action can be configured to either continue evaluating more rules or stop after the action is applied. This is important for rule ordering and preventing conflicts.

If you set an action to "Stop," no subsequent rules will be evaluated for that transaction. This is useful when you have a specific rule that should take precedence over more general rules.

If you set an action to "Continue," Skwad will keep evaluating the remaining rules in order. This allows you to chain multiple actions across different rules, like first cleaning up the payee name and then applying a category.

Automatic vs. Manual Execution

Rules in Skwad can run in two ways, each serving different purposes in your financial workflow.

Automatic Execution: When enabled, rules automatically run on new transactions approximately one minute after they're processed. This is the "set it and forget it" approach that keeps your finances organized without ongoing effort. New bank transactions, uploaded receipts, or manual entries all get processed through your rules automatically.

Manual Execution: Sometimes you need to apply a rule to existing transactions, perhaps when you create a new rule and want to apply it retroactively, or when you've imported a batch of historical transactions. The manual execution feature lets you apply any rule to all matching transactions on demand.

Before running a rule manually, Skwad shows you exactly how many transactions will be affected. You can even click through to see the specific transactions that match, giving you confidence before making bulk changes.

Best Practices for Creating Effective Rules

After working with thousands of users, we've identified some patterns that lead to the most effective automation setups.

Start Specific, Then Broaden: It's tempting to create broad rules that catch everything, but this often leads to unintended matches. Start with specific rules for your most common transactions, then gradually add broader rules as needed.

Use Auto-Categorization First: Skwad's AI-powered auto-categorization handles most categorization automatically and learns from your corrections over time. Reserve rules for situations where you need specific, consistent behavior that differs from the AI's categorization, or for applying tags and cleaning up payee names.

Order Rules Thoughtfully: Rules are evaluated from top to bottom. More specific rules should generally come before broader ones. If you have a rule for "Amazon Prime" and a general rule for "Amazon," put the Prime rule first so it takes precedence.

Test with Filters First: Before creating a rule, use Skwad's transaction filter to verify your conditions match the transactions you expect. This prevents surprises and ensures your rules work as intended.

Check Match Counts: Always verify the match count before running rules manually. This quick sanity check can prevent accidentally updating thousands of transactions.

Use Descriptive Names: Name your rules clearly, like "Categorize Starbucks as Coffee" rather than "Rule 1." Future you will thank present you when you're reviewing your automation setup months later.

Real-World Automation Examples

Let's look at some practical examples of how Skwad users are leveraging automations to simplify their financial lives.

Subscription Tracking: Create a rule that matches common subscription services and adds a "Subscriptions" tag. This makes it easy to review all your recurring charges in one place and identify services you might want to cancel.

Business Expense Separation: If you use a personal account for occasional business purchases, create rules to tag or categorize business-related merchants. This simplifies tax preparation and expense reporting.

Payee Cleanup: Bank transaction descriptions are often messy. Create rules to replace cryptic payee names like "SQ *COFFEE SHOP NYC" with clean, readable names like "Local Coffee Shop."

Large Purchase Alerts: While not an "alert" in the traditional sense, you can tag purchases above a certain threshold for later review. This creates a built-in system for reviewing significant expenses during your budget reviews.

Trip and Event Tracking: Planning a vacation? Create a rule that tags transactions from a specific date range or location. After the trip, you'll have all related expenses neatly organized for review.

Getting Started with Automations

Ready to start automating your finances? Here's how to create your first rule:

1. Navigate to Settings and select Automations
2. Click Create your first rule to start
3. Give your rule a descriptive name
4. Add conditions that match the transactions you want to target
5. Add actions that define what should happen when conditions match
6. Save your rule

The rule will immediately start processing new transactions. To apply it to existing transactions, click the Apply button and confirm the number of transactions that will be affected.

Monitoring Your Automations

Skwad provides full visibility into how your rules are performing through the Execution History panel. Here you can see:

• When rules were executed (manually or automatically)
• How many transactions were processed
• Whether executions completed successfully or encountered issues
• How long each execution took

This transparency helps you verify your automations are working correctly and troubleshoot any issues that arise.

The Future of Automated Finance Management

The Rules and Automations feature represents our commitment to making personal finance management as effortless as possible. We believe that technology should handle the repetitive tasks, freeing you to focus on the decisions that actually matter, like whether your spending aligns with your values and goals.

As we continue developing this feature, we're exploring additional condition types, more sophisticated action options, and deeper integration with other Skwad features like budgets and reports.

We're rolling out access to automations gradually to ensure stability and gather feedback. If you don't see the Automations option in your settings yet, it's coming soon. Can't wait? Reach out to our support team to request early access.

Your financial organization is about to get a whole lot easier. Welcome to automated finance management with Skwad.