Payees

A payee is the person or business on the other side of a transaction, such as “Amazon” or “City Bakery”. Banks write the same payee in many ways (“AMZN Mktp EU”, “AMAZON PAYMENTS”); a payee gathers those spellings under one name so you can follow your spending by who you dealt with.

How payees are created

• Payees are created from your existing transactions; descriptions are never changed.
• Importing an OFX, QFX, QIF, CAMT or CSV file creates a payee from each transaction’s text, or reuses the payee that already has that name or alias. The payee is that text without the operation prefix (“Carte”, “Avoir”, “Annul Carte” and its date), the card suffix (“Cb0908”), dates, long reference numbers, the reference token glued after a star (“Freenow4uo2fi-2”, “Amazon.fr3b3sr0v”), a reference after a star and a space (“Helpling Fr-1928”), a trailing store or terminal number (“Monoprix 4”, “Carrefour City 31”), a 4 or 5 digit id (“Franprix 5524”), the Bolt “/o/200227” suffix and the 4-character code after Google Cloud, so every purchase at one merchant shares one payee while the transaction keeps its original text.
• The preview of such an import shows each row’s payee and marks the ones that will be created as New, with their number above the table.
• Importing a Boursorama category CSV gives a transaction that has no payee the payee named by the row’s label.
• On the Payees page, click New payee, type a name and press Enter.

For example, “Carte 02/08/24 Sncf Internet Cb0908” and “Annul Carte 04/11/24 Sncf Internet Cb1234” both belong to the payee “Sncf Internet”, and “Chèque N.1954917” belongs to “Chèque”. If a payee or alias already matches the whole text, that payee is used instead.

A name keeps what follows a star when a space comes before it (“Paypal *google Cu”, “Sumup corvisart”), because that is the merchant. A leading star (“Paiement”) and a year (“La Perugina 2021”) are kept too. Before and after: “Freenow4uo2fi-2” and “Freenow4e7wmw-2” both belong to the payee “Freenow”, and “Monoprix 4” to “Monoprix”.

Choosing a payee on a transaction

In the transaction form and the planned transaction form, the Payee field lists your payees as you type. Pick one, or choose Create “name” to add a new payee on the spot. Clear payee removes it. See also Planned transactions.

Searching and sorting

The search box matches payee names and aliases. A payee that goes by other names shows them under its name on an “Also known as” line. Click the Name or Used in header to sort by name or by the number of transactions. The list is paged: use the page controls and the Payees per page selector (50, 100 or 250) below the table, and search to narrow the list down.

Renaming a payee

Double-click a name, or use the pencil, then press Enter to save or Escape to cancel. The old name is kept as an alias, so later imports of that text still land on the payee. If another payee already has the name or an alias, nothing changes and you are told to merge them instead.

Default category

Each payee can carry a default category, and a subcategory if you want one, chosen in the Default category column. It is saved as soon as you pick it, and the dash clears it. When a bank-file import creates a transaction for the payee, the payee’s default category (and subcategory) is used if no rule set a category (see the next section). If the subcategory moves to another category, the payee’s default follows it, and a category or subcategory that a payee uses as its default can’t be deleted until you change or clear that default.

Suggested category

Importing an OFX, QFX, QIF, CAMT or CSV-with-mapping file fills a transaction’s category from the default category (and subcategory) of its payee. This happens only after your categorization rules have run, and only for a transaction that is still without a category: a category set by a rule always wins. The payee never replaces a stored category and never changes transactions you already have. Planned transactions and the Boursorama categories import are not affected. When the payee has no default category, the import uses the category the payee most often has in your own history. That needs at least 3 categorized transactions with one category on at least 60% of them, so a tie or too little history suggests nothing. A subcategory is added only when at least 60% of those transactions share it. Transactions in the trash, transfers and split transactions are not counted.

You can turn the suggestion off in Settings, under Rules, with the Suggest a category from the payee switch (on by default).

On a new transaction, picking a payee fills the category as a value you can change, with the note “Suggested from payee” under it. This happens only while the category is empty and you have not touched it. If you pick another payee, the suggestion follows it until you touch the category; clearing the payee, or picking a payee that suggests nothing, removes a suggestion the form made. Once you change or clear the category yourself, it is never filled in again for that form. Editing an existing transaction never suggests a category. The Suggest a category from the payee switch in Settings also controls this.

The import summary adds a Categorized from payee line with the number of rows that took their category from the payee, shown only when at least one did.

Merging payees

When one payee appears under several names, merge them into one. On the Payees page, click Select, tick two or more payees and choose Merge. Pick the payee to keep (the most used one is suggested) and a preview shows how many transactions and planned transactions will move to it, then confirm with Merge payees. The other names become aliases of the kept payee, so future imports land on it. Its default category is filled from a merged payee when it has none, and categorization rules that named a merged payee now name the kept one. Saved filters and saved reports that selected a merged payee select the kept one instead. Planned transactions that use a merged payee, including those in the trash, follow the kept payee. A merge can’t be undone.

Deleting a payee

A payee can be deleted only when no transaction and no planned transaction uses it, and an item in the trash counts. Otherwise the delete button is disabled and its tooltip says how many transactions and planned transactions use the payee: merge it into another payee instead.