Transactions

Hi Mags, I want to give you a complete answer since your posts all circle one workflow that is reviewing what comes in.

On approval: transactions in Waypoint Budget will always land categorized rather than waiting for sign-off. That's a deliberate design decision, not an oversight. Approval queues make your budget wrong until you've done the reviewing, and the first busy week leaves a pile of unapproved transactions and numbers you can't trust. We built the app on the opposite bet: everything stays live automatically, and when you spot a wrong category, you fix it once and the app learns that correction for next time.

Worth knowing: most categorization here isn't AI. Transactions are matched by rules, ones you create, ones learned from your corrections, and a built-in merchant dictionary. AI only handles merchants none of those recognize. For your examples: the KYIV pavilion charge is what the Split feature is for (open the transaction and divide it across categories), and CO-OP is genuinely unsolvable by any automatic system because your bank sends identical text for the grocery store and the gas station. Those are worth a quick fix when you see them, and each fix teaches the app.

If you'd rather the AI part never process your data, email us at support@waypointbudget.com from your account email to confirm, and we'll switch it off account-wide. You'll then have a Smart Features toggle in your Settings to control it yourself. Rule-based categorization keeps working either way.

I'm closing this one since the approval design isn't changing, but genuinely, thank you for the detailed examples. The pressure-testing makes the product better.