One of Ambrook's most powerful features to make the best use of your time is the ability to automate your bookkeeping. Every time you tag a transaction in the ledger, you have the option to automate the tags for similar transactions. An automation can match transactions by their description, amount, account, or any combination of the three. You can automate tags for balance sheet transactions as well as income and expense categories.

Select the tags you want to associate with the transactions and hit “Tag.” Make sure you include both the Category, Enterprise, and any other tag types if relevant.

Click the down arrow next to the 'Tag' button and select 'Tag and Automate'.

Under If the transaction matches choose which transactions the automation should tag. The transaction's description is already added as a condition. Click Add condition to add more.

A transaction has to meet every condition you add. Click on a condition to change it, or click the X next to it to remove it. You can remove the description completely and match on amount, account, or both. An automation needs at least one condition, and amounts must be more than $0.00.

Under Then tag transaction with choose which of the transaction's tags the automation applies. Only the selected tags are saved in the automation, so make sure the Category, Enterprise, Contact and any other tags you want are all included. [?]

Tip: You may need to delete trailing numbers or characters to set up automations for certain transactions, such as credit card payments. However, be careful of instances where you have a shorter word that might appear in multiple different types of transactions - for example "Apple" alone might be a payment to the Apple store, but it might also appear in "Johnny Appleseed" for your seeds.

If a short description matches too much, add an Account or Amount condition to narrow it. For example, "Apple" plus your business credit card account only matches Apple charges on that card.

Many banks add a code or reference number to the end of a description that changes from one charge to the next (for example "...AUTOCR" one month and "...AUTOMO" the next). If you leave that code in, the automation will only match some of the transactions. Shorten the text to the part that stays the same, such as the business name. Avoid very general words like "CHECK" or "DEPOSIT" on their own. If the description is too general to use, match on account and amount instead.

Use the “Preview Tags” button to verify that you’ve correctly created the automation. It will also tell you how many transactions you’ll tag with the automation.

Tag all the transactions in your automation by clicking "Finish & Tag Transactions". This will backfill existing transactions that match your conditions and will automatically tag any new matching transactions that come on to your ledger.

Ambrook applies the automation in the background, so it can take a moment for existing transactions to update. It won't change any tags you've set by hand.

If you clicked Tag instead of Tag and Automate, it's not too late. After you tag a transaction, a message appears at the bottom of your screen confirming the tag and giving you the option to Automate.

Click the Automate option and the same Create Automation pane will open as described above.

If you need to create an automation for a transaction recorded to a balance sheet account, you can follow similar steps to the above after selecting the balance sheet account you'd like to tag the transaction to.

On the category tagger, search for "asset", "liability" or "equity" adjustment, or scroll to the bottom of the tagger. Select the type of balance sheet account you're categorizing the transaction to.

After selecting the balance sheet account you'd like to record the transaction to, click the down arrow next to "Record" and select "Record and Automate".

As with category automations, you can edit and preview tags for the automation. Note that automations will be applied in the background and may take time to appear on your ledger (if they do not appear, refresh your page).

Remember that automations should only be used for items that are consistent month to month. Account transfers and credit card payments should be matched to the corresponding transaction and automations do not apply.

If you have a principal payment on a loan, for example, you may want to split out the principal and interest amounts monthly instead of using an automation instead. Alternatively, you can automate the principal payment to the liability account, and use a journal entry to recategorize the interest payment on a regular basis.

If you pay more than one loan to the same lender, add an exact Amount condition to each automation so each payment goes to the right liability account.

Consider creating an automation anytime you tag a transaction that is recurring and has a predictable description, amount or account. Common examples of automatable transactions are fuel purchases, rental payments, loan and lease payments, and sales of uniformly named products.