How this is different
Anything can categorize a transaction
What matters is what happens when it is not sure. Even Margin states how confident it is on every category, shows what it matched on, and hands you the rest instead of quietly categorizing it anyway. This page is the whole argument, including where we stop.
Six things you have probably put up with
- Instead of: A category appears on a transaction and there is no way to find out where it came from. Even Margin: Every category carries how confident we are and what we matched on, from a curated merchant to the signals on the payment itself.
- Instead of: Everything looks equally certain, so you either re-check all of it or none of it. Even Margin: A confident match goes straight into your books. Everything else waits in your review queue, with the most important first.
- Instead of: You fix the same merchant again every month. Even Margin: Turn one correction into a rule. It runs in a priority order you control, and you can apply it to what is already in your books.
- Instead of: A report shows a total and there is no way back to the transactions inside it. Even Margin: Statement lines and charts open the transactions behind them, filtered to exactly what the figure counted.
- Instead of: The same charge lands twice and you find it at month end. Even Margin: Duplicates are flagged before they reach your reports, and each flag says what actually matched.
- Instead of: Leaving means rebuilding your books somewhere else. Even Margin: Export everything whenever you like: transactions, categories, rules and statements, in one download. Your books are always yours to take.
Every number shows where it came from
- It says how sure it is, every time. Three levels, on every category, with the reason underneath. That is the difference between books you trust and books you re-check, and it costs nothing to look.
- It shows its reasoning when a figure needs more. When a figure needs more to work from, you see the reason in its place. Money paid out by a card processor arrives with its fee already taken off, so we show it as what landed and say so.
- It says who did what. Even Margin AI is named only where it did the work, and nowhere else. Your bank sent the transaction, Plaid carries the connection, and you wrote the rule. Each of those is credited as itself.
- Its history reads like something you did. Every change leaves an entry describing the action in words, not a list of columns that moved. Six months later you can still see who decided what, and when.
- Even Margin's access to your accounts is read-only, always, so your money stays exactly where it is.