Prompts for importing and categorizing a statement
This is the highest-traffic moment in the whole product: a statement shows up, and it needs to become entries in the ledger. It happens in two steps that shouldn't be rushed — getting the whole statement in at once, then sorting what's uncategorized — and the prompts below are built around that order.
The one habit worth adopting from day one: hand over an entire statement in a single message, not a few rows at a time. Splitting it up is the one thing in this workflow that reliably causes wrong results later.
Getting a statement in
From PDF, CSV, or pasted text to rows in the inbox.
Extracts every row plus the statement's own opening and closing balance, then checks that they add up before anything is saved. Read the arithmetic check in the preview, not just the row count.
Uses: import_statement
Same import, different source format. For a card, remember purchases are negative and payments to the card are positive — so the card's own balance reads negative, as money owed.
Uses: import_statement
A flagged import means the extraction is probably missing a row or has an extra one; the arithmetic can't say which. Worth going back to the source document before trusting the totals.
Uses: import_statement
Yes — re-importing a statement that's already in inserts nothing new. It's a genuinely safe question to ask instead of guessing.
Uses: import_statement
Sorting what's uncategorized
Turning inbox rows into balanced journal entries.
Lists unposted transactions for that account, which is the actual to-do list a bank feed alone can't give you — nothing here has hit the ledger yet.
Uses: list_transactions
Posts one balanced entry per matched transaction. Always previews the exact lines first — check that it found the transactions you meant and not a similarly named one.
Uses: list_transactions, categorize_transactions
Categorizes with splits instead of a single account, as long as the split amounts add up to the transaction total. The preview shows each line separately.
Uses: categorize_transactions
A case-insensitive search against the description, useful for finding a specific vendor before deciding how to categorize it.
Uses: list_transactions
Filters the inbox to one bank account and one status, which keeps a mixed-account session from getting confusing.
Uses: list_transactions
Teaching it for next time — and fixing a miss
Saved rules and undoing a wrong call, honestly described.
Saves a matching rule. Be clear-eyed about this one: nothing in BalanceMCP applies a saved rule automatically yet, so this records a decision, it doesn't change future behavior.
Uses: create_rule
The rule preview lists existing rules for the book as part of its response, which is currently the only way to see what's been saved.
Uses: create_rule
Reverses the posted entry, which returns the original bank transaction to the inbox so it can be categorized correctly. The wrong entry stays visible in history alongside its reversal.
Uses: reverse_entry, categorize_transactions
Worth knowing before you run these
- Saved rules are stored, not applied. Creating a rule does not change what categorize_transactions does now or in a future session — treat it as a note to yourself, not an automation.
- There are no bank feeds yet. Every import here is a statement someone hands over, extracted by hand or by the assistant — nothing pulls transactions from your bank on its own.
- A category total from spending_summary excludes anything still uncategorized. If a lot is sitting in the inbox, ask what's left before trusting a "total spent" number.
Common questions
- Can I import a few transactions now and the rest of the statement later?
- You can, but don't — splitting one statement across multiple imports makes the duplicate check misread genuinely repeated charges as duplicates. Hand over the whole statement in one message.
- If I save a rule, will it categorize new charges automatically?
- Not in this release. Saving a rule stores it and nothing more — no tool reads it back to suggest or apply an account, to anything past or future.
- What if I categorize something and then realize it was wrong?
- Reverse the entry. That's the only way to correct the ledger — entries are never edited or deleted — and reversing one releases its bank transaction back to the inbox to categorize again.