Category
A category answers “what was this for?” — one label per transaction (or per split part) that powers budgets and every spending report.
Key takeaways
- Each transaction (or split part) carries one category.
- Categories are the backbone of budgets and spending reports.
- Keep the list short enough to review; split categories only when the split changes a decision.
A category is the "what was it for" label: Groceries, Rent, Utilities, Dining out. Owniko allows one category per transaction, or one per part of a split transaction, and that single-label discipline is what makes the totals mean something: every dollar of spending lands in exactly one place, so the report's slices genuinely add up to the whole.
Categories versus tags
Categories answer the permanent question, "what kind of spending was this?" Tags answer cross-cutting, often temporary questions: which trip, which project, which tax year. A hotel bill is categorized Travel forever; it might be tagged italy-2026 for one year of interest. If you find yourself wanting a transaction in two categories, one of them probably wants to be a tag.
An example
A $180 warehouse-store receipt, split: $120 to Groceries, $40 to Household, $20 to Clothing. One transaction, three categories, each budget touched correctly. Meanwhile the whole receipt might carry the tag back-to-school if that is a question you plan to ask in September.
Where you’ll see it
Owniko starts you with category templates to trim rather than a blank page. Budgets attach to categories; reports group by them; and the Categories page is where merging, renaming, and pruning happen. A quarterly prune of categories you never review is healthy maintenance.