Categorize and Match Transactions

From the home screen, click on the Transactions tab.

Select Banking on the sub menu to get to the Bank and Credit Card screen.

Click Recognized Transactions to open a list of items that QuickBooks has “recognized.” A Recognized item is any item that has a match, has a rule applied or uses categories from related transactions you’ve accepted into your QuickBooks account. Some might be purchases you already entered as expenses or checks; others might be payments you’ve received.

If QuickBooks finds one of these recognized items, it’ll mark it as a Match.

You can take a look at a matched transaction simply by clicking on it. This will open the drop-down transaction detail where you can check to make sure QuickBooks got the match right. To accept a matched transaction into your QuickBooks click the Match button in the far right of the drop-down transaction detail.

QuickBooks will also recognize transactions you categorized and approved the last time you worked with this account. It will repeat whatever categorization action you did before, then turn the category green in the transaction list.
You won’t see any green the first time you work with transactions, but look for it the next time and the time after that.

When QuickBooks doesn’t recognize a transaction, it takes a guess. The guess category is gray. If you agree with QuickBooks, great. If not, you can re-categorize the transaction by clicking the Category or Match column head to sort your transactions.

Take a look at your transactions and find one you want to re-categorize – then click on it to examine the transaction’s details. If you agree with how QuickBooks categorized this transaction, leave it.

If you don’t agree with how QuickBooks categorized this transaction, put the transaction in a different category by clicking on the Category Menu and choosing from the options in the sub menu.

Next, you’ll want to enter the Payee (i.e. the person you paid with this transaction). In the dropdown transaction detail, choose a Payee that matches this transaction.

If you don’t want QuickBooks to categorize transactions from this Payee the same way again, click Edit the Setting and a box appears – you can select or deselect this option in the checkbox here.

Once you’ve successfully re-categorized the transaction and entered the appropriate payee settings, click theAdd button on the right to accept the transaction into your QuickBooks account.

In cases where you want to record that money went to another Account in QuickBooks, select the transaction and click on it to open the drop-down transaction detail. Choose the Transfer radio-button in the top left and click the Transfer button on the far right option to record that this money went to another account in your QuickBooks.

When you spend money but buy stuff from more than one category in a single purchase, you’ll want to clickSplit to open the split window.

In the Split window, choose the appropriate categories for each item you want to split, then enter the amounts you spent for each item.

When you’re finished, click Save and Add to accept the split category transaction into your QuickBooks account.

When QuickBooks categorizes several transactions and you agree with its categorization, you can just add all of those transactions at the same time. To do this, go to the main Banks and Credit Cards screen, click the top checkbox in the list.

Hold down the shift key and click on the bottom checkbox in the list. This will select all of the transactions in the list.

Open Batch Actions and choose Accept Selected to add all of the transactions to your QuickBooks.

If you make a mistake categorizing a transaction, don’t worry; you can easily undo it. On the Bank and Credit Card Screen, go to the In QuickBooks tab.

Find the transaction you mistakenly categorized and in the dropdown transaction detail, you’ll see an Undobutton on the right. When you click Undo, the transaction will go back to the New Transactions list so you can put it where it belongs the next time around.

Eventually, you’ll teach QuickBooks a lot about your business by repeating this process. QuickBooks will make more matches and better suggestions for categories and payees over time as you continue to download your transactions and go through categorizing and matching them.

When you see green matches, you can choose them in batches and accept them all at once.