How your bank rules get made and maintained
Posting a transaction creates a rule. Tally then adds the ones you missed and retires the ones that go bad.
Posting Creates The Rule
You rarely create a bank rule by hand. Posting a transaction creates one, and Tally maintains the list from there.
When you post a coded bank transaction — one row, selected rows, Post all coded, or Post coded in Fast Coding — LedgerHQ saves a rule so the same merchant codes itself next time. Active rules post matching rows automatically.
This happens on every posting path, including the single row-level Post button. Posting one row is not a one-off — it is also a standing instruction for that merchant.
A rule is not created when:
- an existing rule already matches the row — that rule governs it;
- the row has no account;
- there is nothing stable to match on.
The rule keys on the payee when there is a clean one, and otherwise on the stable leading words of the description, so it covers the whole family of charges rather than one row's unique reference. A generic bill-pay payee falls through to the description so the rule keys on the actual biller.
What Tally Adds
Tally's rulebook scan looks for merchants that keep appearing in posted rows with no rule behind them and consistent coding. A candidate only becomes a rule after a clean 90-day backtest — if the matching history was coded several different ways, no rule is minted, because a rule that would have posted the same pattern inconsistently is not a confident instruction.
When it adds one, it says so and watches its first live matches:
added rule "Verizon" — 14 rows matched in backtest, all to Telephone & Internet. Watching its first live matches.
What Tally Retires
The scan also grades existing rules by whether their own postings survived contact with a human. Four findings:
| Finding | What Tally does |
|---|---|
| Miscoding — people keep moving what this rule posts | Retires it automatically and reports the recode-versus-agree count |
| Overbroad — matching far more, or more varied, activity than intended | Reports it to you; the call is judgment |
| Dead — no longer matching anything | Reports it |
| Shadowed — another rule always wins first | Reports it |
Retiring a rule changes the future only. Its past postings stay exactly where they are — Tally says so and offers to review them if you ask.
When Your Correction Touches A Rule
If you recode something a rule posted, Tally does not silently rewrite the rule. It asks — because the rule may still have other postings on its account, or a person may have authored it deliberately:
your correction touched rule "Office Depot" but it has 22 other postings still on its account — tell me to update it, retire it, or leave it as a one-off.
Answer it. A one-off correction and a changed vendor treatment look identical from the outside, and only you know which it was.
Your Part
- Read the Needs you lines. Overbroad, dead, and shadowed rules are reported, never retired for you.
- Review a new rule's first live matches.
- Edit or disable rather than delete when you want the history preserved.
To narrow or stop one, see Stop an overbroad bank rule. To write one deliberately, see Create a narrow bank rule. For what a rule can reach, see Understand what a bank rule will post.