Payee Cleanup

Use Payee Cleanup to improve your payee list and automate future imports.

It has three separate workflows:

• Duplicate payees: find payees that likely represent the same merchant, then review and stage merges or renames.
• Payees needing rules: find payees whose bank text will not resolve automatically, then review and stage rules that set the correct payee on future imports.
• Unused payees: find payees with no transactions or rule references, then review and stage deletions.

You can use each workflow on its own. Open it from Tools → Payee Cleanup (/payees/cleanup).

Writing to Actual: Scanning, accepting, and dismissing suggestions do not write to Actual. Stage cleanup adds selected changes to Draft Changes. Use the app-wide Save action only after reviewing those changes.

Before you start

Payee Cleanup works with regular payees. Transfer payees are managed by Actual and are excluded.

The feature can stage payee merges, payee renames, payee rules, and unused-payee deletions. It does not change Favorite or Category-learning settings. When payees differ, choose the payee whose settings you want to keep.

The workflow

1. Scan your payees.
2. Review duplicate-payee suggestions, then accept, correct, or dismiss them.
3. Review rule suggestions for payees that need import automation.
4. Review unused payees and mark any you want to delete.
5. Select Stage cleanup to add your accepted work to Draft Changes.
6. Review the staged changes, then use Save to write them to Actual.

Duplicate payees

Banks can create several payees for one merchant when their text includes details that change from transaction to transaction, such as dates, card endings, store locations, or reference numbers.

Cleanup looks for two kinds of evidence:

• Structural details: recognizable information such as dates, card numbers, references, and locations.
• Repeated boilerplate: text repeated around many otherwise unrelated payees in your data.

Repeated boilerplate is a clue, not proof. Suggestions that use it stay in Needs review.

Review a suggestion

Each suggestion shows the payee that would remain, the proposed final name, affected transactions, rule references, and any difference in Favorite or Category-learning settings. Schedule-managed payees are already represented by their linked rules, so Cleanup counts each rule reference once. Open Reasoning when you want to see why Cleanup grouped the payees.

You can:

• accept the suggestion;
• choose a different payee to keep;
• change the final name;
• add or remove payees from the group; or
• choose Not duplicates.

Not duplicates hides the suggestion for this budget. Restore it later from Dismissed. Use Undo my changes to restore the suggestion’s original survivor, final name, group members, and optional rule choice.

Suggestions are grouped as High, Likely, Needs review, or Low confidence. Low-confidence suggestions are hidden by default; show them only when you want to investigate weaker matches.

Accept safe accepts only suggestions with clear structural evidence, matching payee settings, loaded transaction counts, and no rule conflict. It does not write to Actual.

What a merge changes

When you save staged changes, Actual performs the merge. Transactions follow the payee you keep. Existing rules are not rewritten, but continue to resolve through Actual’s payee mapping after the merge.

A duplicate-payee suggestion can include an optional rule for future imports. You choose whether to stage that rule; it is not required to merge the payees.

Renaming or merging a payee can let the original bank text create another duplicate on a future import. Cleanup proposes a rule only when the surviving name or an existing rule will not already handle that text.

Before staging, Cleanup re-reads the affected payees. If a payee changed since the scan, or the combined plan is invalid, Cleanup stops and explains what you need to correct or scan again.

If two accepted groups would result in the same final payee name, Cleanup asks you to combine them rather than creating duplicate names.

Payees needing rules

A payee can be correct and still need a rule. Actual resolves an import automatically when its imported payee exactly equals an existing payee name. When a bank sends different text, a rule can set the correct payee automatically.

A payee needs recorded import text from at least two transactions before Cleanup can suggest a reliable rule.

The Payees needing rules tab identifies payees whose import text does not already resolve by name or by an existing rule, and for which Cleanup can suggest a sufficiently specific rule. This is independent of duplicate cleanup: a payee can appear here even when it has no duplicate.

Review a rule suggestion

Cleanup can match against Imported payee or Notes, depending on where the bank text appears. It proposes an exact match when the text is stable, or a pattern when the text varies around a reliable merchant name.

Cleanup tests each proposal against your recorded import history. It shows how many transactions for the target payee it matches and warns when it would also match transactions that belong to another payee.

You can change the source field and condition. Cleanup reruns the check when you edit them.

When an existing rule covers only part of the payee’s history, Cleanup shows it so you can decide whether to edit that rule or stage the proposal. If an existing exact-match rule can be extended safely, Cleanup adds the missing bank text to it instead of creating another rule.

Use Accept safe rules for proposals with no identified conflict, or select rules one at a time. Not needed dismisses a rule suggestion and can be undone from Dismissed.

Cleanup does not suggest a rule when the payee name already handles the imports, an existing rule handles them, or it cannot find a specific enough condition.

Check the whole budget

The initial scan uses a limited amount of import history so the page stays responsive. Use Check the whole budget when you need stronger evidence for a rule.

The result shows:

• how much of the target payee’s history the rule matches;
• other payees whose transactions the rule would also match; and
• transactions with no payee that the rule would newly resolve.

If the result is only a sample, Cleanup says so. It does not present a partial result as proof that a rule is safe.

Unused payees

The Unused payees tab identifies regular payees with no transactions and no rule references.

Use the checkbox in the Payee header to choose every unused payee currently shown. Select a payee’s checkbox to include its deletion in Changes. Then select Stage cleanup, review the Draft Changes, and use Save to write the deletion to Actual. Nothing is deleted when you select it.

Cleanup is deliberately cautious: a payee that a rule sets or checks is not shown as unused. Before staging, Cleanup checks the payee again so a new transaction or rule reference prevents deletion.

Stage and save

When you are ready, select Stage cleanup. Accepted merges, renames, rules, and selected unused payee deletions appear in Draft Changes.

Review the staged changes, then use the app-wide Save action to write them to Actual. Payee changes are saved before dependent rules.

Limits

• Transfer payees are excluded.
• The surviving payee keeps its own Favorite and Category-learning settings.
• Saved payee locations cannot be read or moved through Actual’s API.
• Some bank text cannot be reduced to a reliable merchant name. Cleanup may group it for review, but it does not treat that as proof that the payees should be merged.