NerdWallet uses an internal algorithm that automatically categorizes each transaction. The transactions displayed in your account should match (excluding accounts that have not updated) what you'd see if you were to check each account's individual ongoing activity. While the transaction amount itself cannot be changed, you can adjust the transaction category to better reflect spending, income or an internal transfer as needed.
For example, sometimes credit card payments are incorrectly auto-categorized and must be adjusted to ‘internal transfer’ to avoid being calculated as income in the receiving account. Similarly, loan and mortgage payments may appear as income (shown in green) because the corresponding loan balance decreases — recategorizing these as ‘internal transfer’ removes them from your income total.
Internal Transfers don't calculate into your Net Worth. When funds move from one account to another; they reflect as the money going into one account in green and money leaving the other account in black.
Currently, you can't add your own custom categories for transactions, though we may offer this option in the future.
Your Savings & debt total is calculated as your income minus your Needs and Wants spending — transactions in categories that haven’t been assigned to a budget bucket don’t count toward either total. So there is no selectable “savings” category.
Transaction categories (like Groceries or Dining) are different from budget buckets (Needs, Wants, and Savings & debt).
To change a transaction category in the NerdWallet app (does not apply to 'Savings' as that is automatically calculated):
From the Cash flow tab > tap on Spending > View all transactions
Tap the transaction that you’d like to update
Tap the pencil icon in the upper right corner to edit
You’ll find the category at the bottom of the transaction details pop-up. Tap the existing category, then select the new category from the available options that pop up
Tap Apply to this Transaction. The category will be automatically updated immediately.
You can also choose the Apply to all from this place button, below the Save for this transaction button, which will attempt to identify and categorize all matching transactions
From the main Edit Transaction screen, tap Save to lock in your changes.
If your category change doesn't appear in your spending totals within a few minutes, force-close the app and reopen.
Please note that it is only possible to update transaction categories or other transaction information (like amounts) in the NerdWallet app, not on the website.
You can learn more about features that are only available in the app here: https://www.nerdwallet.com/p/web-deprecation-faq