Categories

Business Chart of Accounts / Groups

Business workspaces are seeded with a chart of accounts organized into eight groups:

  1. Revenue — Revenue, Other Income, Refunds
  2. Cost of Goods Sold — Direct Costs, Shipping & Fulfillment, Payment Processing
  3. Sales & Marketing — Platform & Marketplace, Marketing & Advertising
  4. Software & Tech — Software & Subscriptions, Research & Development
  5. Labor & Contractors — Contractors & Consultants, Payroll & HR
  6. General & Admin — Office & Admin, Accounting & Legal, Travel & Meals, Insurance, Other & Uncategorized
  7. Non-Operating — Interest Expense/Income, Taxes
  8. Excluded from P&L — Credit Card Payments, Transfers, Sales Tax Collected

COGS sits above Gross Profit; operating groups roll into Operating Income; Non-Operating appears below Operating Income before Net Income.

Creating Custom Categories

Go to Categories and click **Add Category**. You can create up to 30 custom categories and place them in an appropriate Business group/type (for example operating expense vs COGS). Custom categories appear in the Categories grid and in transaction category pickers. Prefer extending the seeded COA only when a real business line is missing — too many one-off categories make P&L harder to read.

Changing Names and Icons

Custom categories you created can be renamed and given a new icon from the Categories page. Built-in seeded categories generally cannot be renamed. You can still remap transactions away from a built-in category you do not use, and Business supports removing groups when you remap remaining categories to a same-type peer.

Split Transactions

Split a transaction across multiple categories when one bank line covers mixed activity (for example inventory plus shipping).

On Transactions, open the row actions menu and choose Split Transaction. You can create up to 10 lines. Split amounts show a split icon — click it to edit or remove the split.

Platform payout matching also creates allocation splits automatically (revenue vs fees). Those system-owned child lines behave differently from manual splits — see Rules and Integrations.

Understanding Refunds / Platform Fee Categories

Refunds lives in the Revenue group (typically a negative/contra revenue line) for customer refunds, chargebacks, and processor reversals.

Platform fee and marketplace lines usually land in:

  • Payment Processing (COGS) — card/processor fees
  • Platform & Marketplace (Sales & Marketing) — marketplace commissions
  • Marketing & Advertising — paid ads such as Etsy Ads when synced

When a platform payout is matched, BudgetBadger auto-splits the deposit into these categories based on your Integrations split preferences.

Understanding Excluded from P&L / Transfers

The Excluded from P&L group (stored internally like Transfers) keeps passthrough and balance-sheet movements out of Gross Profit and Net Income:

  • Transfers — money moved between your own accounts
  • Credit Card Payments — paying the card from checking (avoids double-counting purchases already categorized on the card)
  • Sales Tax Collected — tax collected to remit; not revenue

Use these categories whenever the cash movement is not operating income or expense.