Categorizing a transaction in Mercury Books means assigning it a ledger account from your chart of accounts — the account it's recorded against on your reports. Books categorizes most transactions for you, so the work is usually reviewing what it proposed, changing what's wrong, and splitting the occasional transaction that belongs in more than one account.
Changing a transaction's ledger account
Go to Transactions in the left-hand menu of Books. The Ledger account column shows which account each transaction is categorized to. To change one, hover over the Ledger account cell and choose a different account.
Most transactions arrive already categorized. See our How auto-categorization works article for how Books decides.
A transaction that's matched to a bill or invoice is the exception. Its ledger account comes from that bill or invoice, so you can't change it from the transaction — open the bill or invoice, change the account there, and the transaction follows. See our Matching payments to invoices, bills, and payroll article.
Splitting a transaction across ledger accounts
When one transaction covers more than one thing you want to track separately — a card charge that's part software and part hardware, say — split it into line items, each with its own ledger account.
- Go to Transactions and locate the transaction
- Click on the chevron (>) to open its side panel
- Click the pencil icon to edit
- Under the line items section, click + to add another line
- Set the ledger account, memo, and amount on each line
- Confirm that the total line item amount matches the transaction amount
- Save
Books doesn't work out the remainder for you, so enter each amount yourself and check that the lines total the transaction before you save.
Adding memos, tags, and matches
The side panel is also where the rest of a transaction's detail lives. From it you can:
- Add or edit the memo on any line
- Apply tags to the whole transaction or to individual line items — see our Tagging transactions in Books article
- Match the transaction to an invoice, bill, or payroll run — see our Matching payments to invoices, bills, and payroll article
- Open the original transaction in your banking dashboard, for Mercury transactions
Notes and receipts you added to a Mercury transaction in your banking dashboard come across to Books automatically.
FAQs
Why can't I change the ledger account on some transactions?
Because they're matched to a bill or invoice, which is where their ledger account comes from. Change it on the bill or invoice and the transaction follows. Unmatching the payment also releases the transaction, and leaves it uncategorized.
Do the lines of a split have to add up to the transaction total?
Yes. A split isn't finished until the line amounts match the total, so keep adjusting or adding lines until they do.
Can I categorize transactions by asking Command?
Yes. Command can categorize transactions in bulk, grouping them by proposed ledger account and asking you to approve each group.
Are my Mercury spend categories the same as my Books ledger accounts?
No. See our Understanding categories, ledger accounts, and ledger codes across Mercury article.
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