Categories vs Tags

What's the difference between categories and tags? You first have to know their limitations: transactions must have one and only one category, whereas they can have zero or multiple tags.

How you use them really depends on your own needs. You should create a restricted set of categories to get the "global picture" of your expenses. Tags should then be used to get more detailed information.

Using tags as sub-categories?

Tags can perfectly used as sub-categories, but they're not limited to that. You can tag transactions according to a location, an event (for example your last holidays)...

If you use a particular tag as a sub-category, you might want to specify an associated category. Every time this tag will be added to a transaction, its category will be changed to that tag. This makes categorizing transactions even faster.

To assign a category to a tag

  1. Select Squirrel > Preferences…

  2. Select the "Tags" tab.

  3. Select the desired tag.

  4. Click on the "Implies category" check box.

  5. Select a category in the drop down list.

    When this tag will be assigned to a transaction, the category of that transaction will automatically be set to that category.

SEE ALSO

Quickly assign tags