Custom Categories

Beyond the built-in invoice and cash categories, every workspace can define its own custom category lists: extra ways of labelling invoices and bank transactions, such as cost centres, company cars or funding sources. The AI applies them in a separate pass, and anything it cannot decide on a mandatory list is flagged for review.

You will find them under Master data → Custom Categories: one tile per list, plus a tile for a new one. Each tile opens the list's own page.

Creating a List

A list has:

Title: what accountants see everywhere ("Cost centres").
Description: plain-language guidance the AI reads word for word. Write it the way you would brief a junior colleague: what the list means, how to choose, and which category is the catch-all.
Applies to: invoices, bank transactions, or both.
Mandatory: when the AI cannot assign a category with enough confidence, the item is flagged for review.
Active: inactive lists are not applied to new items and are not sent to the AI.

Mandatory only looks forward. Ticking it on a list that has existed for months does not flag the ledger behind it; only items that arrive after the tick are flagged.

A workspace can hold up to 20 active lists.

Filling the List

Each category has an optional Code (your own identifier, for example CC-100), a Name, and an optional Description that becomes part of the AI's vocabulary. A code must be unique within its list, and a list can hold up to 500 active categories.

There are three ways to fill one:

By hand, with + New Category.
From a spreadsheet, with the same import used for the built-in categories: upload a file, confirm the column mapping, review what would be created. Nothing existing is overwritten, and one file may bring in up to 2,000 rows.
From a document you have already uploaded, described below.

Building a list from a document

Open the document under Documents and click Create category list. The AI reads it and proposes a list: a title, the guidance text, and the categories with their codes and descriptions.

It works on a costing manual, a chart of accounts, a department list, a grant budget. Only the first 20 pages are read; a longer document is not refused, and the screen tells you how many pages it read and how many categories it found. Nothing happens on its own: the AI reads a document only when you ask it to.

What comes back is a proposal, and you decide:

Every field is editable before anything is created, including the title and the guidance.
Individual categories can be dropped with Exclude.
A category the document marks as closed or retired is created as inactive, and says so first.
The categories can go into a new list or be added to an existing one, where only what is missing is added.

The last step shows what will happen: how many categories will be created, how many are already there, and how many rows could not be used. Nothing is written until you click Create.

If the document holds no categorisation scheme, the screen says so plainly rather than offering an empty list. That is the normal answer for most documents.

A list built this way remembers where it came from, and the document shows which lists it produced.

Archiving Categories

A category you no longer use is archived rather than deleted, because records already carry it.

One at a time: use Deactivate on its row, and Activate to bring it back.
Several at once: tick the rows and press Archive in the bar that appears above the table. Only active rows have a checkbox, and the toast reports how many were actually archived. There is no bulk restore: bringing categories back is one row at a time, so the 500-category limit cannot be tripped by accident.

What archiving does, and does not do:

Records keep the category. An invoice already tagged with it still shows it.
Nobody can choose it again. It leaves the picker on a record, and the AI never proposes it.
Reports still break down by it, so a historic period keeps its column. It does disappear from the report's filter menu.
The tile's category count drops, because that counts active categories.

One rough edge: on a record whose category was archived, the name still shows but the picker beside it reads Not set, because the archived category is no longer among the options.

How the AI Applies Them

After an invoice or transaction has finished its normal categorisation, a separate pass reads your active lists. Duplicates and rejected invoices are skipped.

On a bank transaction it assigns one category per applicable list.
On an invoice it answers for every line separately, so a laptop and a plane ticket on the same invoice can land in different cost centres.
A confident answer (0.70 or better) is applied and shown with a High or Medium badge, the same two the accounting category uses.
When the AI is unsure about a single line, that line takes the AI's answer for the invoice as a whole, if that answer is confident. Otherwise the line stays empty.
On a mandatory list, an empty value flags the item: an invoice with even one empty line shows an amber to-do chip and counts into the monthly closing checks, and bank transactions show the chip on their detail page, with a Custom category missing filter on the list.

A partner's fixed value comes first. If the partner has a fixed custom category for a list (see below), every line gets it before the AI is asked, and the AI is not asked about that list at all.

The AI asks once per record and list. What it leaves empty stays empty until a person fills it, because asking the same question again gives the same answer. Two things ask it again: changing the list's categories or its guidance, and running Apply to existing items.

A category you pick by hand always wins, and the AI never overwrites an existing value.

Setting a Value by Hand

On an invoice with several lines, open the Lines & VAT tab. Under each line sits its value for every list, with the list names in a second header row:

Click the pencil beside a value to change it for that line. Pick Not set to clear it.
The small arrow beside a list name sets one category on the lines that are still empty. It never replaces a value that is already there, and it disappears once no line is empty.
A purple Partner rule badge marks a value that came from the partner's fixed custom category. A value with no badge was set by a person.

The Overview tab summarises the invoice: the one value every line shares, or the split, with the number of lines and the net amount per category. There is no picker on it. To give every line of a partner's invoices the same value, fix it on the partner instead.

On an invoice with a single line, and on a bank transaction, the picker is on the card itself.

Fixing a Value for a Partner

When everything from one partner belongs to the same cost centre or project, set it once. On the partner's page, the Rules tab has a Fixed custom categories section with one picker per list. The value then lands on every line of that partner's invoices and on its bank transactions as they arrive, and Run on existing records applies it to what you already have. See Partners.

The same rules are on the list's own page, in the Fixed value per partner section: every partner with a value for that list, and who set it when. Add partner picks a partner and a value. Each row's menu changes the value, runs it on existing records (for that list only) or removes it. Both places change the same rule. A client-side member with the permission "Edit custom categories" sets it here, because the partner page is for the accounting firm.

Covering Items You Already Have

A new list only applies to items that arrive after it. To cover history, use Apply to existing items on the Custom Categories page itself, next to + New List. It appears once the workspace has at least one list.

Choose a period: Last 3 months, Last 6 months, This year, Last year or All time. Invoices are picked by issue date, transactions by booking date.
It covers every list that is still missing on an item, not only one.
One run processes up to 2,000 records in total, invoices first. Run it again for the rest.

It also asks again about records the AI had already left empty.

Who Can Change Them

Creating and editing lists, adding, importing and archiving categories, and running the backfill all need the permission "Edit master data", which accountants hold. Fixing a custom category for a partner needs "Edit master data" or "Edit custom categories".

Setting a custom category by hand on a record needs the permission "Edit custom categories". Both accountant roles hold it, and on the client side the Finance lead and the Finance admin hold it by default. A Team member does not. A member who can edit the record itself ("Edit invoices" on an invoice, "Edit bank transactions" on a bank transaction) can set it without that permission.

Client-side members see the lists and their categories, read-only. A client-side member with "Edit custom categories" can also set a category on an invoice line or a bank transaction, and can change one the accountant set by hand.

Every change made by hand is on the record's History tab: who changed which list, on which line, from what to what.

Using a List in Reports

A list is not only a label. On any report you can pick it under Break down by, and every reporting line splits into columns by that list. Only lists that fit the report are offered.

See Reports for how the breakdown reads: the Unassigned column, what happens when more than twelve categories have activity, the coverage strip, and "only this".