How does category assignment work in Cash Compass?
Every transaction gets a category before save. For voice entries, the parser looks at the transcribed text for category keywords — "lunch," "groceries," "gas," "Uber" — and assigns the matching category automatically. For receipt scans, the merchant name extracted by OCR is matched against known patterns (Whole Foods → groceries, Shell → transport, Starbucks → dining). For manual entry, you tap the category picker and select from the list. You can also add custom categories from the settings screen if the defaults don't cover your tracking needs. After save, the transaction appears in your monthly breakdown under that category, and the chart view rolls it into the relevant pie slice or bar segment. Re-categorizing later is two taps: open the transaction, tap category, pick the new one.
Is category tracking free or premium?
Category tracking is free and unlimited — it's the core of how Cash Compass organizes expenses, available to every user. Free tier includes unlimited manual entry with category selection, three voice entries with auto-categorization, three receipt scans with auto-categorization. The dashboard always shows your transactions grouped, and recent category totals are visible to free users. The seven-day free chart trial is where the deeper category visualization (charts, trends) lives; after seven days, the charts view requires premium ($29.99/year), but the dashboard categorization stays free. Most users don't hit the chart paywall — the dashboard alone provides enough category context for day-to-day tracking.
How does this compare to category tracking in YNAB, Mint, or Monarch?
YNAB uses an envelope-budget mental model where you assign every dollar to a category at the start of each month, then track spending against the envelope. Powerful but requires real time investment to learn. Mint (before shutdown) auto-categorized bank-imported transactions, often imperfectly — Amazon would land in Shopping when half the time it was groceries. Monarch and Copilot use the same imperfect bank-sync categorization with cleaner UIs. Goodbudget is envelope-style like YNAB. Cash Compass takes the simplest path: categorize at entry, see the breakdown automatically, no envelope mental model required. The trade-off versus auto-sync apps: you have to log entries yourself. The trade-off versus YNAB: less explicit budget allocation, more passive observation.
Can I create custom categories or split a transaction across categories?
Yes to custom categories — you can add your own in settings, name them anything, and they appear in the category picker for new entries. Common custom categories users add: kids' activities, pet expenses, side hustle income, specific subscriptions like "Apple One" or "Spotify Family," travel sub-categories for a sabbatical. Splitting a single transaction across multiple categories (say, a Target receipt that's part groceries and part household goods) isn't supported as a single entry today — the cleanest workflow is to enter it as two separate transactions matching the receipt subtotals. We're tracking split-transaction support as a frequently-requested feature, but the engineering cost is real and we'd rather ship it well than ship it fast. For tax-time precision, the CSV export (premium) lets you do splits in a spreadsheet after the fact.
