Categorize Transactions

This is the job you'll do most often, so it's worth ten minutes to understand how it flows.

Money moves in your bank account. NP Ledger learns about it — from a connected bank feed, or from a file you import. But knowing that $250 left your checking account isn't the same as knowing it was office rent. Someone has to say what it was. That's categorizing, and it's what turns raw bank activity into books you can actually report from.

The good news: NP Ledger does most of it for you and shows you its work. You confirm, correct, and move on.

There are two screens, and they do different jobs. Knowing which is which saves a lot of confusion.

Bank Activity is the receipt. When an import or a feed sync finishes, you land here. It answers one question — did the activity arrive safely? Nothing on this screen posts to your books. It's a place to glance, not a to-do list.

To categorize is the worklist. This is where the bookkeeping decision actually gets made, and it lives on your Transactions page.

Activity flows from the first to the second. Most lines pass through on their own.

1. Check the Bank Activity receipt

Go to Bank & Cash, then click into the account you just imported. You'll see Bank Activity — [your account name].

Most lines confirm themselves. Confirming isn't the same as recording — it just means NP Ledger is satisfied the line is real, not a duplicate, and ready for a decision. Nothing has hit your books yet.

Look at "Needs your attention." This section holds only the lines NP Ledger wasn't sure about, with the count in the heading. Each one gives you a plain choice:

• Confirm — yes, this is real activity, send it on to be categorized.
• Exclude — set this line aside; you don't want it in your books.
• Not a duplicate / keep and Exclude as duplicate — shown when a line looks like one you already have. If it's genuinely a second, separate payment, choose keep.

If this section is empty, you're done here. Move on.

2. Open the To categorize queue

Go to Transactions. Below the transaction list you'll find the queue, headed "Confirmed bank activity awaiting a bookkeeping decision."

Each row shows you:

"What we think" is a suggestion, never a decision. NP Ledger fills in what it can work out from your own history and the description. You always see it before anything is recorded, and you can always change it. If it says No suggestion yet, it simply hasn't seen enough similar activity to have an opinion — that's normal early on, and it gets quieter as you go.

3. Categorize the easy ones in bulk

Most of a month's activity is a handful of repeating things: the same donations, the same utility bill, the same subscription. Don't code those one at a time.

1. Tick the checkboxes on rows that belong together — the bulk bar appears once you select any.
2. Pick what kind of activity it is: Donation, Other income, or Expense.
3. Choose the account, and the fund if you're splitting money by purpose. (A fund is a separate bucket of money within your organization — like a grant that can only be spent one way — tracked independently from your general money.)
4. Apply. Every selected row is recorded together.

If you change your mind mid-selection, Clear selection starts you over. Nothing is recorded until you apply.

4. Handle the special cases

Some rows get their own treatment, because coding them as ordinary income would put wrong numbers in your books.

Money moved between your own accounts. A transfer from checking to savings isn't income and isn't an expense — no fund balance should change. Where NP Ledger can see both sides of the pair, it offers the transfer as a single one-click entry. Where it can't, it tells you why in plain words ("Not offered as a one-click transfer: ...") and you code it individually.

Payment processor deposits. When Stripe or PayPal deposits money, the deposit is net — your donors gave more than what landed, because the processor kept its fee. Recording the net as your donation revenue understates what your donors actually gave, and hides the fee entirely. Where NP Ledger recognizes a payout it shows you both Gross donations and Net deposit, and Record payout books them correctly in one step. If it isn't actually a payout, the screen says so: Not a payout? Use Categorize below instead.

5. Finish the month

Work the queue until it's empty, then reconcile the account against your bank statement. Reconciling means comparing your records in NP Ledger to the statement to confirm they match. An empty queue means every line has a category; reconciliation is what proves nothing is missing.

• The queue is empty, or everything left in it is something you're deliberately holding.
• Anything you excluded, you excluded on purpose — excluded lines stay out of your books.
• Deposits from Stripe or PayPal were recorded as payouts, not as plain donations.
• Transfers between your own accounts didn't land as income or expense.

Recording the net deposit as donation revenue. This is the single most common one. Your books end up showing less donation income than your donors actually gave, and your processing fees vanish. Use Record payout whenever the screen offers it.

Excluding a line to make the queue go away. Excluding is for activity that genuinely doesn't belong in your books. A line you're unsure about is better left in the queue, where you'll see it again.

Accepting a suggestion without reading it. What we think is usually right, and it's still a guess. A quick glance at the account before you apply costs seconds; unpicking a month of mis-coded entries costs an afternoon.

Coding a transfer as income. If the same money shows up as a deposit in one account and a withdrawal in another, it's a transfer. Recording it as income counts money you never received.

• Transaction List — find and filter everything you've already recorded
• Bank Statement Import — get activity into NP Ledger in the first place
• Bank Reconciliation — the month-end check that proves your books match the bank
• Funds and Programs — how funds work and when to use them