You manage your Merchants and Payers on the Merchants & Payers page. In the web app, click Merchants & Payers in the left sidebar (it is also a tab in Account settings). In the mobile app, open Account settings and tap Merchants & Payers. From there you can clean up the list yourself: rename a Merchant, merge duplicates into one, delete names nothing uses, and add Category rules.
A Merchant is the name an expense is filed under, and a Payer is the name an income document is filed under. The page has a Merchants tab and a Payers tab, and each row shows how many documents use that name and the date of the latest one.
The page is available to everyone on the account except Contributors.
How do I merge duplicate Merchants or Payers?
Merging folds two or more Merchants (or two or more Payers) into one. Their documents and Category rules move to the one that stays.
Web app
- Open Merchants & Payers and pick the Merchants or Payers tab.
- Tick the rows you want to combine. You can tick rows on several pages, or use the search box to find the variants of a name.
- Click Merge in the bar that appears.
- Under Keep the name, pick which of the names stays, or choose A new name and type it.
- Click Merge.
Mobile app
- Open Account settings and tap Merchants & Payers.
- Press and hold a row to start selecting, then tap the other rows you want to combine.
- Tap Merge, choose the name to keep (or A new name), and confirm with Merge.
Good to know:
- You can only merge Merchants with Merchants and Payers with Payers.
- Names synced from your accounting software (marked Synced) can't be merged, renamed or deleted in SparkReceipt. Change them in the accounting software instead.
- Every document filed under a merged name is renamed to the name that stays.
How do I rename a Merchant?
Open the Merchant (click its name, or tap the row on mobile) and choose Rename. On the web you can also use Rename in the row's menu. Every document filed under that name is renamed too.
If another Merchant already has the new name, SparkReceipt asks you to merge the two instead.
How do I delete a Merchant?
Choose Delete on the Merchant. You can only delete a Merchant that no document uses, documents in the Trash bin included. If expenses still use it, merge it into another Merchant instead. Deleting a Merchant also deletes its Category rules.
Does a new scan use a Merchant I already have?
Yes, when the names match. A scan reads the merchant name printed on the document and files the expense under the Merchant with that name. Upper and lower case, punctuation and accents don't matter, so a receipt that says "ACME, INC." joins your Merchant "Acme Inc".
If the receipt prints the name differently, for example with a store number, a branch name or a different legal suffix, the scan doesn't pick your existing Merchant for it, and a new Merchant shows up in the list. That is why Add merchant asks you to use the name as it appears on the receipts.
When the scan picks a Category, it also looks at how you categorized earlier expenses from the same Merchant. If there are none under the exact name, it uses a Merchant whose name appears as a whole word in the new one, so earlier "Amazon" expenses guide a new "Amazon Marketplace" receipt.
Merging cleans up the documents you already have, but it doesn't change what future scans read. A later receipt that prints one of the old names shows up as that name again. To file future receipts under one name automatically, add an auto-assign automation that matches the printed name and sets the Merchant. For example, match Merchant name contains "AMZN" and set the Merchant to "Amazon". See How to set up automations in SparkReceipt.
Category rules: book a Merchant's lines the same way every time
Open a Merchant and use Add rule under Category rules to choose the Category its lines get after each scan. A rule can cover Every line, or only lines whose name contains a word, is exactly a name, or matches a pattern with *. A rule for named lines wins over the rule for every line, and you can change the order of the line rules.
The Merchant's page also lists Categories used so far, with a Make a rule shortcut, and the Automations that match the Merchant's name.
Category rules apply to documents scanned after you save them. Expenses you already have stay as they are, and an automation that sets a Category wins over a Category rule.
You can add a Merchant before its first receipt with Add merchant and give it Category rules straight away.
See all documents from one Merchant
Open the Merchant and click Show expenses (or Show income for a Payer). The Documents view opens filtered to that name.