Rules and categories

Every time money moves through your business — a bank transfer, a credit card charge, a payroll run — it shows up in Puzzle as a Transaction.
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For your financial reports to be accurate, each transaction needs a Category (think of it like a label, such as "Software Expenses" or "Payroll"). Puzzle tries to apply the right category automatically so you don't have to do it manually every time.
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Once transactions are categorized, Puzzle uses them to build your General Ledger and Financial Statements — the standard reports your accountant or bookkeeper would recognize.
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Puzzle uses Rules to automatically suggest categories for your transactions. Think of Rules as smart shortcuts that Puzzle applies based on what it knows about your business.
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Puzzle suggests categories for over 90% of transactions automatically. The more you use Puzzle and confirm categories, the smarter it gets.
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Here are the different types of Rules, from highest to lowest priority:
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1. Linked Transaction Rules Some transactions appear in two places at once — for example, a credit card payment shows up in both your credit card and your bank account. Puzzle automatically links these so they don't get counted twice.
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2. Your Custom Rules Rules you create yourself for your business. These take priority over everything else (except linked transactions). [Learn how to create a custom rule → here]
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3. PuzzleBot Rules (Based on Your History) As you confirm and finalize transaction categories, Puzzle learns from your choices and automatically creates rules for similar transactions in the future. For example, once you categorize a few Amazon Web Services or Stripe charges, Puzzle will start categorizing similar ones for you going forward.
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You can view and manage these under the Rules tab in Puzzle:

From the side panel, you can edit the conditions, change the action taken, and set whether the rule applies to all past transactions or just future ones.
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🎥 Watch a quick walkthrough of PuzzleBot Rules →
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4. Rules Based on Other Puzzle Users If a transaction description is common across many businesses (like a well-known software vendor), Puzzle may suggest a category based on how similar companies have categorized it.
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5. Rules Created by the Puzzle Team Puzzle's team manually reviews common transaction types and creates rules to make sure they're categorized correctly across the board.
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No problem — you can change it! Before marking a transaction as Finalized, simply select a different category. You can also create your own Custom Rule (Type 2) to make sure similar transactions always get the right category going forward.