Category Groups

Jump to:

What are category groups

When you have a large number of categories, you may find it easier to organize your categories into groups. To do this, you will create a category group, and then nest categories within them.

Category groups cannot be assigned to transactions, as their purpose is to help organize your categories. Only the categories nested within the category group can be assigned to transactions.

Category groups must also be composed of at least 1 category. When creating a new category group, you will be able to choose one or more of your existing categories to add to it, or create brand new categories to add.

Note that a category can only exist as part of one category group at a time. If you choose to add a sub-category from another group to a new group, the sub-category will be removed from the original group in favor of the new one.

Category groups are not only used to organize the categories in the Categories page, but also across the different areas within Lunch Money. For example, on the Transactions page, you will be able to quickly filter to see transactions associated with a group. In the Overview page, you can see your spending breakdown by individual categories, as well as by category group.

How to create a new category group

Category groups are created on the Categories page:

  1. Open the Categories page

  2. Click on “Add category group” located above the table

  3. In the ‘Create Category Group’ panel that appears on the right, enter a group name (required), a group description (optional), and enable any relevant category properties.

All sub-categories nested within the category group will inherit that group’s properties.

  1. Next, under ‘Categories to include’, select all that apply. If you’d like to add a new category, click on the first option and a new entry will be created with an empty name field for you to type the name of the new category. You can repeat this as necessary.

  2. To confirm and create the new category group, click on “Create”.

How to add categories to an existing category group

To add a category to a category group, the quick way is to click and drag it using the re-order icon at the end of each category row, and drop it under the relevant category group in which you wish to nest it:

The category will have a nested line icon added before the name to let you know that it is now nested under a category group.

The same drag-and-drop action can also be used to remove a category from a category group.

Note that a regular category cannot be made into a category group, and vice-versa. This is because the essence of each is different. Category groups are made to hold other categories, while regular categories are made to hold transactions. Since transactions cannot be assigned to a category group, you will not be able to set an existing category to be a category group.

Adding categories from the 'Edit Category Group' panel

Another way to add a category to a category group, is from the ‘Edit Category Group’ panel:

  1. Open the Categories page

  2. Locate the category group and click on the little arrow icon on the far-right of the row

  3. In the ‘Edit Category Group’ panel, click on the “Modify categories in group” button

  4. You can now check and uncheck categories, or add new categories as desired

  5. To confirm the changes, click on “Save changes” at the bottom

Last updated

Was this helpful?