Guides / Spending and Categories
How do I bulk categorize transactions on my iPhone?
To bulk categorize transactions on an iPhone, find a group that shares a merchant or description, choose the category you want (creating a custom one if none fits), and apply it to every match in one action instead of editing each row. Then look at your spending totals by category and open the biggest ones to confirm nothing landed in the wrong place. Start with your most frequent merchants, since they clear most of the backlog.
Why bulk categorizing beats editing row by row
Bank feeds hand you the same merchants again and again. A coffee shop, a grocery chain, a transit pass: each one shows up dozens of times a year. Fixing them one at a time is slow, and most people give up halfway. That leaves a pile of uncategorized transactions that makes every total unreliable.
Bulk categorizing flips the work. You decide once what a merchant means, apply it to every matching transaction, and the backlog shrinks in big chunks. The order matters: do the most frequent and the largest merchants first, then handle the odd one-offs by hand.
Custom categories make the effort worth it. A stock category list rarely matches how you really spend. If Dog, Side project or Kids activities is a real line in your life, give it a category of its own so the totals mean something.
How to bulk categorize in Manu
Manu is an iPhone app that keeps every bank account and card in one ledger and lets you categorize transactions your way. The flow looks like this:
- Get your transactions in. Connect accounts through Plaid or SimpleFIN, point Manu at a bank's own OFX server, or import OFX or QFX files by hand. Connected accounts sync every six hours.
- Create your custom categories. Name them for how you actually spend, not for what a default list allows.
- Apply a category in bulk. Pick the matching transactions and use bulk categorize to give them all the same category at once.
- Open the Spending tab. Your spending is shown by category.
- Repeat with the next group. Work down from the biggest merchants until the uncategorized pile is small.
The point of the bulk step is that you are not tapping through the same merchant fifty times. You set the category once and every matching transaction follows.
Check your work by tapping a spending bar
Bulk actions are fast, which is also how mistakes spread fast. A category applied too broadly can sweep in a transaction that does not belong, so verify right after you apply it.
In Manu, spending is drawn as bars by category. Tap a bar and you see the transactions behind it. That turns a total into a list you can read in a few seconds.
What to look for
- A charge from a different merchant that happened to match.
- A refund or a transfer sitting inside a spending category.
- A bar that is bigger than you expected. It is often one large transaction, not many small ones.
- A category that looks empty when you know you spend there. Something is probably filed somewhere else.
If something is off, fix it and tap the bar again. The check takes a minute and is the difference between categories you trust and categories you hope are right.
Tips for a category list that stays useful
- Keep the list short enough to remember. If you hesitate over which category fits, you have too many.
- Do not create a category for a single transaction. Use a broader one and let the exception live inside it.
- Separate costs you cannot change quickly from spending you can, so the bars tell you where there is room.
- Give new categories a month, then check which ones you never used and which ones are catching too much.
Categories also feed budgets. Manu lets you set a budget number per category, per month, and watch the month fill up, with a nudge before the budget fills rather than after. The cleaner your categories, the more that number means.
What you need before this works
Manu is in private beta. It is not on the App Store: you request access and get a TestFlight invite when a seat opens. It runs on iPhone with iOS 26 or later, and it is free while in beta.
It also needs a Vritam server that you run. Your transactions land on that server, and the app talks only to your own server, not to a cloud of Manu's. Bank sign-in happens on the provider's own page, so Manu never sees or stores your bank usernames or passwords. You can read more on the Manu home page or in the Privacy Policy.
Manu is in private beta. One iPhone app for your accounts, investing and a trading bot you run yourself, all against a server you own.
Frequently asked questions
Can I make my own categories instead of using a fixed list?
Yes. Manu supports custom categories, so you can name them for how you actually spend and then apply one in bulk to matching transactions.
How do I see which transactions make up a spending total?
Open the spending view, which shows spending by category, and tap a bar. You see the transactions behind it, so you can spot anything that does not belong.
How often do new transactions arrive?
Connected accounts sync every six hours. If a bank supports nothing else, you can also import OFX or QFX statement files by hand.
Do I have to give Manu my bank password?
No. Sign-in happens on the provider's own page, and Manu never sees or stores bank usernames or passwords.
Is Manu on the App Store?
Not yet. It is a private beta distributed through TestFlight on iPhone with iOS 26 or later, and access is by request.