The power of tags

A single Target trip can include groceries, clothes, and gifts. Labeling the whole purchase “Groceries” overstates your food spending and hides what you spent on everything else.

Was that restaurant charge lunch for yourself, lunch you picked up for your parents, or a birthday lunch you sent a friend? All three are “Dining Out,” but counting them all as spending on yourself would be misleading.

Dollar Diary lets you tag each purchase with every detail that matters: what you bought, who it was for, and whether it was daily life, work, a vacation, or a special occasion. Use the default tags as they are, or edit them and add your own.

Example: one Target run, three kinds of spending

Say you spend $100 at Target on groceries, clothes, and gifts. Split the charge into three parts, one for each kind of spending, and tag each part with what you bought and who it was for:

A trip to Target

$100

$55

Groceries for home

Spent For

Family

Context

Daily Life

Food & Drink

Groceries

$15

Clothes for yourself

Spent For

Myself

Context

Daily Life

Apparel & Goods

Clothes

$30

A Christmas gift for your sister

Spent For

Family

Context

Daily Life

Misc.

Gifts

Holidays

Christmas

Now each dollar counts in the right place: $55 toward groceries, $15 toward clothes, and $30 toward gifts.

Tagging the whole $100 with Groceries, Clothes, and Gifts wouldn’t do that. Each tag would claim the full $100, so your grocery total would include the sweater and the presents.

Make as many splits as you need. A good rule of thumb: whenever part of a purchase needs different tags or a different discretion level, give it its own split.

Example: three lunches, three kinds of spending

Three lunches are all Dining Out, but each was for someone different, for a different reason. Add those tags too, and each charge tells its own story:

Later you can total what you spent on friends, family, or workday lunches, not just dining out. If you ate too, split the charge so your share counts as yours.

Use tags to create rule sets

Tags describe each purchase. A tag rule set turns them into an answer. It’s a saved filter, like “food and drink on vacation” or “spending for other people,” that you build once and reuse anywhere.

Here are four rule sets made from the default tags:

Vacation Food & Drink

Food & Drink group is any of

Dining Out

Coffee

and Context group is

Vacation

Personal Food & Drink

Food & Drink group is selected

and Spent For group is

Myself

and Context group is none of

Vacation

Work

Spending for Others

Spent For group is other than

Myself

Food & Drink Outside Holidays

Food & Drink group is selected

and Holidays group is unselected

Each line in a rule set checks one tag group. Pick the kind of check that matches your question:

• Is / is any of: has at least one of these tags. Food & Drink is any of Dining Out, Coffee finds every meal out and coffee run.
• Is not / is none of: doesn’t have any of these tags, including purchases with nothing tagged in that group. Context is none of Vacation, Work keeps your everyday spending.
• Is other than: has a tag in this group, but not one of these. Spent For is other than Myself finds spending for family, friends, or anyone else.
• Is selected: has any tag in this group. Food & Drink is selected covers groceries, dining out, coffee, and everything else in the group.
• Is unselected: has no tag in this group. Holidays is unselected leaves out holiday spending.

A transaction must pass every line to match a rule set. When you pick more than one rule set in Dashboard, Search Table, or Budgets, a transaction counts if it matches any of them. See tag rule sets for the exact controls.

Use rule sets anywhere

Once you save a rule set, pick it wherever you look at your spending:

• Dashboard: Pick Vacation Food & Drink to chart what you spend eating out on trips.
• Search Table: Pick Food & Drink Outside Holidays to see the purchases behind your regular food spending.
• Budgets: Pick Personal Food & Drink to set a limit on what you spend on food for yourself.

Change a rule set once, and Dashboard, Search Table, and Budgets all use the new version.

Have a question the dashboard can’t answer, like “How does my food and drink spending compare across vacations?” Ask it in Queries. Describe it in plain English to generate SQL, or write the SQL yourself. See the SQL editor guide for more examples.

To use a rule set when you generate SQL, refer to it by name, like “Vacation Food & Drink,” or choose Copy ID from its menu on Tag Rule Sets and paste the ID into your question.