Within Puzzle, several different types of Rules can suggest Categories for Transactions. You can also manually change Categories for Transactions. Here’s how it works.
To understand what Rules do and why they are important, consider where they fit in to the overall data flow within Puzzle.
<aside> 💡 Summary: Rules auto-suggest Categories for new items in the Transactions feed.
Once applied (and modified by users, if needed), these Categories allow Puzzle to transform the Transactions into an accurate General Ledger, which allow you to create accounting Financial Statements.
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Everything in Puzzle starts with the Transaction feed, which is a combination of data from all your company’s integrations, including banks, credit cards, payroll, and payment processors. Each transaction represents a distinct event.
In order to create accounting records, each Transaction will have a Category applied to it. Certain Categories may be automatically suggested based on Rules.
The Category allows Puzzle to interpret how to treat each transaction for accounting purposes. Based on the Categories, Puzzle transforms your Transaction feed in real-time into a General Ledger, which applies double-entry accounting to each transaction (but allows you to skip making these journal entries yourself!).
The General Ledger is the standard log for all accounting entries that is transformed into Financial Statements, which aggregate your General Ledger into standard accounting output.
The Transaction feed within Puzzle is a real-time listing that constantly updates for new transaction data from account integrations.
When a new transaction record comes into the Transaction feed, two things could happen: