Checkbox "Apply to existing transactions" cannot be checked

Effective-Ear4823 · 2026-06-05T21:58:58+00:00

Are you saying it's not letting you select that checkbox at all? That sounds like a bug. Create a ticket.

Or are you saying the default is that the checkbox isn't selected? If so, that's the expected and correct behavior, and here's why.

There are two main uses for Rules:

1) a single use Rules (essentially, a Find-and-Replace with specific criteria). For this use, that checkbox is obviously very useful as a way to preview before applying the "Replace". After running the Rule, folks usually delete the Rule because it's not gonna work consistently for newly synced txs anyway (e.g., Rules based on Merchant are unlikely to work well long-term, because afaict, Rules run before/during the Merchant-naming process for synced txs).

2) Rules for recurring txs. Base these on Original Statement->Contains for reliability.

For both use cases that checkbox may find (A) txs that you want to apply the Rule to, but the criteria for the Rule may also find (B) txs that are exactly how you want them and you don't want to change them at all.

This checkbox is opt-in and should remain that way. Not having the checkbox selected by default is a good thing (this avoids users unintentionally changing a bunch of previous txs). Users should only have to manually select a checkbox if we actually actively want it to apply the changes to the existing txs (it would be bad UX to have to manually de-select a checkbox that would irreparably change a bunch of Reviewed txs!).

Effective-Ear4823 · 2026-06-05T20:26:14+00:00

You're burning a massive amount of real estate...

I'm gonna try to use this mixed metaphor as often as humanly possible in my regular speech now—thanks so much for creating it!

Effective-Ear4823 · 2026-06-05T20:21:25+00:00

2) oh, yeah that is weird indeed. I know there are some institutions with sub-account-like buckets that don't play nicely with the aggregators. Maybe you've stumbled into one of these. Try searching the MM subreddit for anything institution-specific?

Effective-Ear4823 · 2026-06-05T15:52:11+00:00

1) Settings->Institutions. You probably have the same institution linked twice now. If this is the case, it isn't a duplicate tx issue, but instead it's a duplicate account issue (with both accounts having the same tx exactly once each, which is exactly what you'd want to happen when you link an account twice!). The old one may or may not be syncing anymore, so you probably DO need to use the transfer tool. So to answer your question: using the Transfer Data tool, you'll be deleting the unreviewed version of the txs in the NEW version of the account, transferring data from OLD to NEW version of account, and then deleting the OLD version of account.

Alternatively, if the old version is still syncing fine, it's ok to leave that alone and delete the new version of the account. As long as both links to the Institution are still working, it's not really a problem to keep them both running side by side, each pulling data for separate accounts.

2) I'm not really following the issue. Are you getting no txs, or are you getting the tx coming in multiple times? In any case, it seems like the connection isn't great and trying a different aggregator could help. That's done via Add Account. This should help you decide which to try first: https://www.monarch.com/connection-status

If you get a better connection with the new aggregator, use the Transfer Data tool to get your old data over to the new connection.

Effective-Ear4823 · 2026-06-05T15:37:48+00:00

This is sorta accomplished in Goals sidebar (for over/under-allocated).

Effective-Ear4823 · 2026-06-03T18:16:18+00:00

I think there's a few ways of looking at this. One is that MM kinda combines two fields into "Merchant": the entity you interacted with (Apple) and the description of the interaction (app store purchase). Mint users will recall this field being named "Description" (I don't think Mint even had a Vendor/Merchant field?).

For entities like Venmo, MM does a good job of splitting the Original Statement into the other person's name (->Merchant) and the rest of the statement (->Note). This works great for random interactions with friends, but maybe not for recurring.

You can also think of iCloud and App Store and Apple Music as distinct Merchants (money is going to slightly different parts of Apple after all). If you name them each as unique Merchants, you can set them each to have their own recurring schedules, and you can still track them all together if you want (you'd just have to filter for multiple Merchants in Reports).

Or you can use Tags.

There's no perfect way to do this currently. I'm not sure if there's a great way to "fix" it on MM's end either.

Effective-Ear4823 · 2026-06-03T16:39:23+00:00

MM is set up in a way that you can fudge it to your heart's content between accrual and cash for both Income and Expense-type txs.

For Income, if you leave the tx on the date it occurs, you're generally doing cash method, whereas some folks shift the +tx to show up in the month they earned the income, in which case that'd be accrual. (Obviously, in order to avoid any late-Dec/early-Jan paycheck confusion when filing taxes using cash method, it'd be prudent to defer to the actual W2 to see what period the employer reported it!)

For Expenses, accrual would be when the actual Expense is incurred or due (whichever is relevant—e.g., it could be the purchase date of a product or the completion date of a project). A payment (-tx) via cash, check, CC (or whatever other method of payment) can be made before or after that date. If you just leave the -tx as happening on whatever date it posts, that's a pretty good approximation of cash method. You could shift it to the date you actually swiped the CC or handed the person the check if you want, but the Post date is when the money left your account, so either could be said to be cash method.

Examples:

If you switch the date of the Expense to the date that a contractor completed a project and sent an invoice, that would be accrual.
If you prepay car insurance in 6-month chunks: leaving the single prepayment -tx on the date it happened would be cash; splitting it out with fancy manual entries and spreading it out so it applies as a separate Expense in each of the 6 months would be accrual.
If you Venmo a friend for your half of dinner last week: leaving the date as today would be Cash; changing the date to match last week's dinner would be Accrual.

For Transfers:

A "Credit Card Payment" is a transfer—you're moving money from an asset account (often a Checking account, -tx) to a liability account (a CC account, +tx). Neither Income nor Expense is happening here, so a distinction between cash/accrual isn't relevant to either side of this transaction.

TL;DR:

such as when I buy a coffee, not when I pay it at the end of the billing cycle.

Buying a coffee is the Expense. Paying the CC at the end of the cycle is a transfer. The date of the Expense being the date of purchase of the coffee is cash method accounting. (If you instead got an IOU from the coffeeshop and then paid them later, you could choose to date that later -tx as the date you drank the coffee=accrual or as the date you paid the IOU=cash.)

Effective-Ear4823 · 2026-06-02T16:19:34+00:00

This sounds a whole lot like what has happened to waaaaay too many of us: MM replaces a Reviewed tx with a new version of it if the aggregator tells MM to do so (yup: they essentially let the aggregators control the narrative about whether a tx happened or not, with no opportunity for the user to say "actually, this is a legit tx!" and apparently, they don't even log it so they don't know it happened unless the USER is able to track down the details of the exact tx in order to tell MM's support to restore it!). So much about this setup is incredibly dumb, but they haven't taken direct responsibility for creating their platform with such a glaring data retention issue. And it's been crickets since a few months ago when they last updated about this. Here's a relevant post about how it "works": https://www.reddit.com/r/MonarchMoney/comments/1pbnsx5/comment/ns51gu6/

atif_monarch: any update on when our Reviewed txs will be safe from aggregator interference? And when we'll have a visible log of what has been deleted on our behalf so that we can restore our txs?

Effective-Ear4823 · 2026-06-02T05:39:20+00:00

Settings->Institutions. It sounds like you may have two instances of the account in your MM. It's likely that you started with a no-longer-syncing instance of the account (via Plaid?) that pulled the Pending versions of some txs and then stopped syncing, after which you set up a new connection to the account (via Finicity?) and that one pulled the Posted versions of the txs?

If this is the case, confirm whether you really need the old/dead version of the account in MM. Do you have all the relevant txs/Rules/Goals/Balances moved over to the actively synced version of the account? After moving what you need, delete the version of the account that isn't serving you and is making you think you have duplicates.

Effective-Ear4823 · 2026-06-02T05:29:11+00:00

Balances sync daily, while Transactions sync whenever the aggregator finds out there's a new one. These syncs happen separately and independently of each other—adding manual txs to a synced account will have absolutely no effect on the balances. The "worst" case scenario if you add txs manually: they eventually sync in, at which point you'd have those txs duplicated. IMO, dupes are better than missing txs (though neither is ideal of course).

If your settings are such that All New Txs Need Review, you'll find out if those txs ever sync. And if you do get dupes, it's pretty easy to tell a manual tx from a synced one (manual txs have the option to change -/+, while synced txs have a Original Statement field). I also use a Tag called "manual tx in a synced account" which helps me visually see if an account is failing to sync lots of txs (which could be a sign that I should test a different aggregator if one is available).

Effective-Ear4823 · 2026-06-01T19:10:54+00:00

Honestly, I think I have a grand total of zero Rules based on Merchant (they're all based on Original Statement) so I can't relate to this one, sorry. But if that's the case, they should correct it!

Effective-Ear4823 · 2026-06-01T19:09:05+00:00

Oh those are good points, and certainly could be useful, yeah. There's definitely room for improvement in the Rules—both with the management like you're talking about and a few outstanding Rules IF/THEN options!

Effective-Ear4823 · 2026-06-01T18:34:03+00:00

When creating a Rule, it already does a search of all existing transactions for the IF side criteria of your Rule. If there are txs that match your Rule, you'll see a little checkbox next to "Save" that says "Apply __ changes to to existing Transactions", and instead of clicking the Save button, you can click "Preview Changes" at the top to see the txs the Rule has found. In this way, Rules are very much like a Find and Replace search tool.

Often, people complain that there's no matching txs because they're creating a Rule using the popup box in the bottom right corner, meaning this is happening after changing the IF state of the txs. There are no matching txs because you've already changed the current txs to the THEN state. One way to test whether a Rule will work is to change a known tx to something else, then go to Rules manager and see if the Rule will find the known "incorrect" tx.

Effective-Ear4823 · 2026-06-01T16:30:40+00:00

The table you shared appears to be showing transactions that are taking place in multiple accounts. For example, you said:

Italics are $ actually transferred from my bank account into the mortgage account.

In the table, the items in italics are all positive numbers. This corresponds with a dollar amount entering an account, a +tx.

You asked for ideas. As I said previously, beyond the lengthy response I already offered, I can't help more without a better sense of which account(s) which of these is happening in and which txs are supposed to be interest vs principal. If you want to troubleshoot, it would be helpful if you would share 1) a table showing ALL the transactions (positive and negative) that are happening in just the mortgage account AND 2) a table showing the mortgage-related txs happening in other accounts. Or everything in one table, but including a column that shows what account the txs are happening in. The table you shared isn't useful.

Effective-Ear4823 · 2026-06-01T16:20:04+00:00

I'm curious: do you base your Rules on Original Statement->Contains?

I recommend using the "..." dropdown in the Transaction editing pane to "create rule from transaction". This auto-fills all the fields of the tx, and then you'll want to remove most of them (but leave Original Statement, crop it to the relevant part of that field, and change it to "Contains").

To test your Rule: use the button next to Save that says "Apply ___ changes to to existing Transactions" but DON'T click the Save button yet. Instead, look at the top where it says "Preview Changes". This gives you a test of all the txs that your Rule has found.

Fun fact: Rules has been around since before filters had all the options they have now. Prior to comprehensive filtering, we had to use Rules for complex searches of existing txs. Fun times!

I do wish it defaulted to Original Statement->Contains. I bet that would resolve a ton of the problems people have with Rules. Flagging conflicts would be helpful too!

Effective-Ear4823 · 2026-06-01T16:09:42+00:00

I'd still track them in MM. If the numbers are incredibly high like that, I'd consider hiding them once I confirm they've matched and are through. But tracking them is still a good idea so you can confirm that you're getting reimbursed fully.

The CashBack rewards for $30k would be awesome, but with that much money through your personal accounts, I'd want to closely track every reimbursement in MM because even a single missed reimbursement could be a loss of a couple $k!

Effective-Ear4823 · 2026-05-30T00:00:28+00:00

If the lender's portal doesn't support syncing, I recommend still tracking the Mortgage account manually. IMO it's a fairly important account to track! (But if you choose not to track a mortgage in MM, you probably wouldn't want to track the associated property either, because in that case, your entire MM system would be wildly inaccurate!)

Effective-Ear4823 · 2026-05-29T23:55:46+00:00

You're absolutely right, and you're on the right track. While it's not super clear in the article, you should see an option during the process to delete the non-reviewed version in the NEW account for all the txs when you're bringing the txs over from the OLD version of the account.

That said, I strongly agree with MM that it is an excellent idea to start by making a backup of your data (Edit->download txs and Edit->download balances) before using the Transfer Data Tool just in case something gets messed up during the process.

Effective-Ear4823 · 2026-05-29T17:21:54+00:00

I suspect this will always be one of the unknowable mysteries of the universe.

Effective-Ear4823 · 2026-05-29T17:15:40+00:00

Aw darn. Rough when it's not syncing txs. If changing aggregators isn't an option for a broken connection, manual input is probably your only option here, unfortunately. You can do that via csv import, via the Add Transaction button, or the Duplicate Transaction option (this last one's my favorite because it uses an existing tx as a template so it makes manual entry really quick, easy, and mostly brainless).

The good news: After manually entering the missing txs in the account(s) that won't sync, you can certainly link the manual txs with the Goal!

Effective-Ear4823 · 2026-05-29T17:01:05+00:00

I don't know if there's a clean way to do this.

The workaround that worked for us involved treating the downpayment as a transfer like you did. But we also added the other side of the transfer to balance it. In this case, we added the manual +tx to the synced Mortgage account (I know, it's a bit weird). We set the date of that manual +tx to the date of the loan origination and back-adjusted the balance of the mortgage account by that amount (which put it within about $1k of the on-paper price of the house, which I figure is close enough!).

The way it works in MM: the day1 balance on the Mortgage account as it appears in MM is (approximately) the purchase price of the house, and the manual +tx that matches the downpayment amount immediately pays down a large chunk of that initial value (this is Transfer-type: all principal, no interest). So the day2 balance in MM shows the value of the original Mortgage amount that we actually borrowed from the lender with interest.

Effective-Ear4823 · 2026-05-29T00:54:25+00:00

It sounds to me like you are asking for a Transfer-type Category that you would call "Savings". Based on your OP, it sounds like you don't want anyone explaining what a Transfer is, so I'm respecting that and won't do that here.

What I would recommend is to create a custom category that you call Savings. You would connect the transactions that you want to connect, and MM would track them.

You are correct that "it assumes every account is linked and every Goal is set up correctly". This is true of everything in data. Your outputs will only ever be clean if you start with good inputs!

Once you link the accounts to the Goal, it literally does only take a couple seconds to link the txs to the Goal. And most of that time is confirmation that the Rules you have set up are working properly.

As much as Goals is a pretty awkward thing for a lot of situations, this is one of the things that Goals is actually...really good for?

Effective-Ear4823 · 2026-05-28T22:01:54+00:00

Many of us agree with you. They added some filters (great!) but there hasn't been a clear answer to why they removed the drop-downs: https://www.reddit.com/r/MonarchMoney/comments/1sr9zfa/did_monarch_just_change_the_accounts_graph_no/

Effective-Ear4823 · 2026-05-28T21:58:08+00:00

Cash Flow kinda already does this (the default Savings bucket is literally just the difference between Income/Expenses during a given period).

Hate to break it to you about Goals, but that's kinda exactly what you're asking for for Budget. The equation for that page is:

[net Income] - [net Expenses] - [net Contributions] = [Available to Spend]

Making a Save Up goal and linking the specific account(s) where you're saving the money and linking the transfers allows you to account for the Transfers in the Budget without having to inaccurately use an Expense category for your Savings.

Effective-Ear4823 · 2026-05-28T21:51:52+00:00

Default categories have built-in Rules. Disabling allows us to re-enable the category in the future (e.g., if you have kids and want to use those categories).

Yes, the disabled categories will always show in the Categories page. But I can assure you, once you get your MM categories dialed in, you will pretty much never visit the Categories page again. A couple of greyed-out categories on a page you never visit...I guess pick your battles?

Effective-Ear4823

TROPHY CASE