Customizing categories and groups

Categories are fully yours

Zypper starts you with a sensible default set, but every category can be changed and new ones created. A category has a name and an emoji, and lives inside a category group, which has a color and a type — income, spending, savings, or transfer — that its categories share. Groups organize your budget and reports.

Managing categories

Everything happens in Settings › Categories:

• Create a category in any group, with its own emoji
• Edit any category — rename it or restyle it, and move a spending or savings category to another group of the same type
• Archive a category you no longer use — it disappears from pickers, while its transaction history stays intact; unarchive anytime
• Delete a category permanently — its transactions are reassigned to another category of the same type that you choose. For a savings category that's optional: without a replacement, they go back to counting toward their primary category
• Reorganize groups — create groups and arrange categories to match how you actually think about your money

Category changes flow through everywhere: your budget, cash flow breakdowns, filters, and rules.

Budget settings live on the budget page

An income or spending category's budget amount and frequency — and, for a spending category, its Flex setting and rollover — are edited on the budget page: hover the row and click the gear (Edit category). That dialog can also rename the category and, for a spending category, move it to another spending group. See Creating your budget. Exclude from the budget is available in both places for income and spending categories.

Archiving and deleting apply to every month of your budget

Your budget reads category structure as it stands today and applies it to every month you can view, past ones included.

• Archiving a category stops the budget counting it in every month, so a rollover balance that included it changes; the archive dialog says so. Its transactions still appear in the transaction list, cash flow, and reports. A Flex category's history leaves the Flex pool the same way, and unarchiving puts it back.
• Deleting a category moves its transactions to the replacement you choose, which then counts them in every month. A savings category can be deleted without a replacement; its transactions then go back to their primary category.
• A category that a rule assigns transactions to can't be archived, and a category a rule refers to at all can't be deleted, until you change the rule. The last income, spending, or transfer category can't be archived either.

See Rolling over unspent budget for how balances are rebuilt after a change like this.