Playing with the rules there fixed my over-zealousness, but it is still renaming based on Buxfer’s reformatted transaction description, rather than the original transaction description. Meaning that the single 3 most common charges I make all have to be manually renamed and categorized. :-(

The effect of these unasked-for renamings were to strip out critical differences in the transactions — such as addresses of stores. The addresses, which were part of the original transaction name, showed when I viewed the detail of the transaction next to the label “Original”. Since there are 5 stores on “Maple St” that I visit, this makes the transactions harder to identify until the detail is viewed.

Unfortunately, when I entered a number of rules to rename transactions based on store addresses (for example to match “123 Maple St”) this rule was ignored — since Buxfer had already reformatted that transaction to the anonymous “ST City Maple St”.

To compound matters, I added a rule the already-reformatted name which unfortuantely renamed 3 of the 5 stores to 1 name.

Ultimately I individually viewed the detail and renamed each transaction.

However, my experimentation evidently created a far-too-generic rule that caused my next experimental import (of my credit card) to rename each transaction (including payments) as my local grocery store. Since I can’t find anywhere to manage the rules I’ve created in order to change or delete them this makes giving the service a trial run almost impossible.

To summarize the issues, Buxfer should apply transaction renaming rules based on the *original* transaction name or at least avoid automatically renaming imported transactions until the user specifically creates a rule. It is also critical to create a management interface for rules so that poorly-thought-out or out-of-date rules can be modified or deleted.

I like the idea of making this work as a macro as I can see it applying well with cash transactions. I’m a fan of tracking cash transactions on the go with my iPhone, that way the pile of reciepts is less daunting when I finally get around to sorting through them.

Thanks for the great work.
PS. the new UI is great, well done.