Use this guide to help troubleshoot common issues when installing or using AutoCat. If you're having an issue with AutoCat that is not documented here or the steps don't help use the chat in the lower right corner to write to our team and let us know.

AutoCat Install seems to fail

If you click the Install AutoCat button and this process adds the AutoCat sheet but seems to get stuck "installing" it is likely due to a bug with the add-on trying to add an example rule with an invalid category (e.g. the example rule's category no longer exists in the spreadsheet).

To fix:

Close the sidebar to exit the crashed process
Re-open the sidebar and access the AutoCat rule builder to start building rules or build rules manually in the AutoCat sheet.

After I click "Run AutoCat" the process never finishes

If the AutoCat run process seems to take forever and never complete it has likely crashed. If the run process takes more than about 5 minutes it has definitely crashed. Sometimes certain conditions in your filter criteria can cause AutoCat to crash.

These are possible causes:

double "" somewhere in the list of filter criteria for your rules
categories that contain apostrophes
several thousand extra blank rows at the bottom of your Transactions sheet

AutoCat isn't categorizing or modifying a transaction as expected

If you notice AutoCat not categorizing or modifying transactions as you'd expect check out these tips:

AutoCat doesn't automatically categorize transactions for you based on your previously categorized data. You'll need to build rules in the AutoCat sheet in order for AutoCat to apply your categorizations.
AutoCat only applies rules to transactions that are uncategorized (as indicated by a value being present in the "Categorized Date" column) by default. Sometimes additional modifications won't be made if a transaction has a "Categorized Date" set. You can change the AutoCat Run Settings to run against ALL transactions rather than just uncategorized transactions to re-categorize or make more modifications.
AutoCat categorizes transactions in a top down order. If a rule higher in your rules list runs on a transaction first (including rules that don't apply a category) subsequent rules will not be run (e.g. if there is a rule higher in the list that applies a cleaner description but no category and a lower rule that applies a category, the category rule will not run).
If the transaction is already categorized or AutoCat has already made modifications (as indicated by a value being present in the "Categorized Date" column) by default AutoCat will not re-categorize or modify the transaction again. You can change the AutoCat Run Settings to run against ALL transactions rather than just uncategorized transactions to re-categorize.
Double check that the transaction matches the criteria and that AutoCat should really be categorizing it if it's uncategorized and not matching on another rule.

I am missing a category in the AutoCat sheet Category dropdown

Most likely your data validation rule for the dropdown in the Category column on your AutoCat sheet needs to be corrected. Follow the steps in this guide to correct the issue on the AutoCat sheet.

Note the steps reference the Transactions sheet, but the same basic steps will fix the same issue in the AutoCat sheet.

I see a "No rules present in AutoCat sheet" error

After opening the AutoCat sidebar you see a "no rules present in AutoCat sheet" error at the top.

Make sure that your AutoCat sheet header row (the blue one) is in row 1
Make sure the header row has both "Category" and "Description contains" (without the quotes) in the AutoCat sheet - usually this is in cell A1 and B1 - AutoCat won't recognize there are rules without the Category or Description Contains columns

Your sheet is NOT sorted newest to oldest AND you have a filter turned on for one of the columns that is filtering out an invalid category (i.e. a category that does not exist on your Categories sheet).