New Spending Feature: Advanced Rules
We’re excited to announce that we’re rolling out one of our most-requested features: advanced spending rules. We know that our members want to break down their spending in a way that makes sense for them. Now, you can drill down deeper in Origin and create your own set of rules.
What rules you can make
There are a handful of scenarios that advanced rules will be particularly useful for. These are among the types of advanced rules you can now make:
- Rules based on payment methods. This can be especially handy if you regularly shop somewhere that gets miscategorized; now, you can create a rule that automatically sorts those transactions into the category you want.
- Rules to delete transactions. Sometimes you don’t want or need payments to show up or affect your budget. Fair enough! Now you can set your Origin account to automatically hide certain transactions.
- Rules to customize your spending tracking. For example, if inscrutable or incomplete vendor names annoy you, you can set it so that they appear as a more legible name.
So, for example, you can set your account to do things like:
- Put all “Uber” transactions in your Transportation category.
- Categorize all transactions that contain “Zelle” in the description and are between $1,000 and $1,500 as Rent.
- Mark all transactions on your Ramp credit card as work expenses.
How rules can help you manage your spending
Advanced rules allow you to categorize your spending on a granular level, in as much detail as you want. Some people will have a handful of rules, and other users may have dozens; what you decide to do all depends on what information will be most helpful to you.
These rules ultimately allow you to get actionable insights into the nuances of your spending. Maybe you’re trying to find a way to cut down on certain categories of spending; first you need a full picture of what exactly is in those categories. Or maybe you’re planning for a new addition to your family, and want to track exactly how and where your spending is impacted.
In these situations — and countless others — you can’t manage your spending without a full picture of it, and that’s where advanced rules come in.
How to add rules
Head over to your spending tab, and click to see all of your recent transactions. At the bottom of the Spending Breakdown page, you’ll find a button that says “Spending settings.” There you can set your rules and edit them as you’d like.
The mechanism for rules can seem a bit technical, but it’s really pretty straightforward, we promise. These are “if, then” rules. So you’re telling our backend that if a transaction has a certain attribute, then a specific action should be performed.
The first part of the rule — the “if” — can be based on any of these criteria:
- Merchant: You can specify merchants via the “exactly matches” or “contains” filters.
- Amount: Including amounts less than, equal to, or greater than a given total, or within a range.
- Spending categories: You can set a rule to apply only to some specific spending categories.
- Accounts: You can set rules based on your accounts that are connected to Origin.
You can set your “then” part of the rule — i.e. what is changed — to be any of these things:
- Rename merchant.
- Update category.
- Hide transaction.
- Change description.
For example, if your monthly Petsmart order gets categorized as “household,” you can create a rule that automatically sorts it into “pet expenses,” so you no longer have to do it manually.
Get started!
At Origin, we pride ourselves on being responsive to our members’ needs, and are really excited to be rolling out this highly requested feature. We encourage you to get started setting up your own advanced spending rules to create your totally customized, perfect-for-you tracker.
Let us know how it goes, and how these rules are helping you budget. We’re all ears over on Reddit, and you can always be in touch with our direct support team to give immediate feedback or get instant help.
