Do you use Amount Equals for AutoCat?

Conversation
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:waving_hand: as we’re working on improvements to AutoCat, it came to light that Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel handle the Amount Equals columns differently.

For Google Sheets it treats the amount you input into that filter criteria column in your AutoCat sheet as an absolute value. So if you put in -$20 or $20 for the Amount Equals filter it would match on either amount in your Transactions sheet.

For Excel it treats it as a literal value. If you put in -$20 it would only match if the amount is a negative (-$20) and if you put in $20 it would only match if the amount is $20.

Thinking about it more, to me it makes sense to use the Excel version and treat it very literally, but I am curious about opinions, especially from those using this column, but anyone’s opinions are welcome.

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Noting that Amount Min and Amount Max also use absolute values.

(I’m currently only using Amount Polarity for Amount criteria)

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I’m must be missing something: my Excel foundation template version (downloaded the template last week - I’m a new user) does not have an “amount equals” option in the autocat list. To accomplish “amount equals” I put the desired value in both the min and max fields.

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Amount Equals is not a default column in the AutoCat sheet, it’s a column you can add in if you want/need it.

Yes I’m aware Amount Min/Max are also using absolute values :slight_smile:

The amount stuff can definitely get a bit complicated.

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I tried to use it earlier this year, using Google Sheets, but it didn’t work. I created rules that categorized and differentiated my husband’s and my Social Security benefits each month. AutoCat never utilized the amount, so I’ve continued to do it manually.

Rebecca

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I use “Amount Equals” in Google Sheets and it works for me. However my use case is for categorizing deposits so its always a positive polarity so I do not run into a negative polarity issue.