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Rules normally act on new transactions as they arrive. When you write a rule for a payee you’ve been buying from for months, you’ll also want it to clean up the history. Applying retroactively runs your active rules across existing transactions and lets you choose which matches to keep.

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Run rules over your history

1

Open the retroactive apply tool

On the Rules page, choose Apply Rules Retroactively.
2

Set a date range (optional)

Leave the From and To dates blank to scan everything, or set a range to limit the scan to a period.
3

Preview the matches

Choose Preview Matches. You’ll see each transaction that matched, with its date, payee, amount, and which rules matched it.
4

Choose what to apply

Every match starts selected. Uncheck any transaction you’d rather leave untouched.
5

Apply

Choose Apply. The selected transactions get their matching rules’ actions, and the register updates.
Only active (enabled) rules take part. Pause a rule first if you don’t want it included in the retroactive run — see Manage rules.

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When to use it

  • Right after writing a new rule, to categorize the back-history it covers.
  • After a big import, to sweep your rules across freshly imported transactions in one pass.

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Preview first, always

The preview step exists so a broad rule doesn’t reclassify transactions you’ve already handled by hand. Scan the match list before applying, and deselect anything that’s already the way you want it.

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If something looks wrong

  • No matches found → your rules’ conditions may be narrower than the transactions in range, or the date range excludes them. Widen the range or loosen the conditions in Create a rule.
  • It changed transactions you didn’t mean to → use undo (z on the web) right after, then tighten the rule and re-run with a tighter selection.

Create a rule

Write the rule before you apply it.

Manage rules

Enable or pause rules before a retroactive run.

Import overview

Bring history in, then sweep rules across it.

Bulk actions

One-off changes when a rule is overkill.