Categories and counterparties

A category answers the question “on what”, a counterparty — the question “to whom”. Every transaction always has a category and optionally a counterparty and a note. Well-tuned categories are the foundation of useful analytics.

Starter set

When you create your first book, Svodly fills in about 50 ready-made categories: “Food”, “Transport”, “Cafés”, “Subscriptions”, “Salary”, “Gifts”, “Taxes” and so on. Each comes with an icon and a color from a single palette.

This set is a starting point. You can rename, delete or change the icon of any of them. If something is unnecessary — delete it without hesitation; if something is missing — add your own.

You don't have to create a new category in advance: you can create one right from the transaction form. Start typing a name in the category field — if there are no matches, a “+ Create “…”” option appears. It works for expenses, income and transfers; Svodly will pick an icon and a color itself, and you can adjust them later.

Hierarchy

Categories are nested, with no limit on depth. You can have “Food” as a parent and under it “Groceries”, “Cafés”, “Delivery”, and if you like — yet another level inside. Child categories inherit the parent's color but pick their own icon.

In analytics you can look at both the top level (“Food — ₽32,000”) and expand it (“of which 18,000 is groceries, 9,000 is cafés”). The parent's total automatically gathers all the children.

If the “Food” category is a parent and has subcategories, then direct transactions into “Food” are also allowed and go into the “other” group. There's no need to create “Food → Other” by hand.

Icons and colors

Each category is an icon from the Lucide set and a color from the Svodly palette (12 pairs of shades for the light and dark themes, fine-tuned by a designer). This is done so the categories and analytics screens stay readable even with a hundred categories — no bright reds next to crimsons and burgundies.

• Tap a category in the list to open editing.
• Choose the icon by meaning — search by words inside the picker.
• The color — any one from the palette; the pairs are assembled automatically.

Counterparties

A counterparty is a specific person or organization. “Magnit” is a counterparty of the “Groceries” category. “My son's school” is a counterparty of the “Education” category. “Ivan” is a counterparty of the “Debts” category.

Counterparties appear automatically as you enter a transaction: you type a name in the “To” field — it becomes a new counterparty, and next time Svodly will suggest it in the hints. You can also add them in advance in the Counterparties section.

Why separate them from the category

A category is a typical line of spending (“Communications”), while a counterparty is a specific recipient (“MTS”, “Megafon”, “Yota”). In reports it's handy to look at both: “how much went on communications in total” and “how much exactly MTS was this year”.

In business books and when keeping books together, counterparties are especially useful: “office landlord”, “tax office”, “kindergarten” — these are specific entities you need separate reports for.

Deletion and merging

You can delete a category or a counterparty if they have no transactions. If they do, Svodly will offer to move them into another category and then delete. This way transactions aren't lost and you can safely reorganize the list.

Merging two categories (“Cafés” and “Restaurants” → “Cafés and restaurants”) is the same steps: create the new one, move transactions from both old ones, delete the old ones.

Where to go next

• Transactions — how categories and counterparties work together.
• Budgets — setting limits by category and counterparty.
• Analytics — what you can see across breakdowns.