Your bank labels every transaction with a category and a name, and they aren’t always helpful. In Copper you can pick your own category, rename a transaction, and add notes. With Always, Copper does the same for that merchant every time.

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Categories

Open a transaction and tap Category. One A–Z list holds everything:
  • Your categories, the ones you’ve made
  • Built-in categories, based on the ones your bank uses
  • Suggestions you can add in a tap, like Coffee, Gas or Pets
Type in the search box to find one, or to create a new category with that name. Picking one saves it on that transaction.
A category is a label. It doesn’t move money; buckets do that. Your pick shows across the app, including Trends and CSV exports. The bank’s own category is kept too, so card payments, transfers and paychecks are still recognized.

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Always use this category

Tap the Always pill in the Category field before you pick. Copper makes a rule for that merchant:
  • Past transactions from it switch to the category when you save.
  • New ones get it as they sync.
Category rules live in Settings › Rules with your bucket rules. See Auto-assign rules.

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Names

Type a new name in the Name field, for example “Mom’s birthday” for a Venmo payment. The bank’s name stays underneath so you can always tell what it was. To name every transaction like it, tap the Always pill in the Name field. Copper renames the past ones that match and names new ones as they arrive, including a pending charge that posts under a different description.

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What Always matches

Banks add details that change every time: reference and confirmation numbers, store numbers, phone numbers, dates, and prefixes like “SQ *” or “POS DEBIT”. Always ignores them and matches who was paid, so “WAVE PAYOUT REF 8X7Y2” and “WAVE PAYOUT REF 9QK41” get the same name. Any transaction whose merchant or description starts the same way is covered. Account numbers count, so “Transfer to Checking *6783” and “Transfer to Checking *7012” can have different names. When more than one rule matches, the more specific one wins: a rule for “Wave Payout” beats one for “Wave”.

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Pictures

A transaction shows the merchant’s logo. To use something else, open the transaction and tap its picture. Pick an Icon or an Emoji, or choose Website, paste a link like costco.com and tap Get icon to use that site’s icon. Tap Save to keep it. Use merchant logo puts the logo back. The picture is for that one transaction, on your phone and the web.

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Notes

The Notes field holds anything else: receipts, context, reminders. Notes are included in exports.

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Shared budgets

Categories, names and rules belong to the budget, so everyone on a shared budget sees the same ones. If an account moves to another budget, its transactions go back to the bank’s categories there.