Rename a Merchant
How to fix a merchant name your bank labels badly: pick a better name from a transaction's detail screen and Forbidden Finance applies it to every transaction from that merchant, past and future.
Overview
Banks don't always send useful merchant names. A theme park charge might arrive as just "Debit", a coffee shop as "SQ *0472 POS", a foreign purchase as a truncated code. Forbidden Finance lets you fix that once: pick the name you want a merchant shown under, and every transaction from that merchant, past and future, uses it.
Your bank's data is never changed. This is purely how the merchant is displayed to you, and you can undo it at any time.
Rename a Merchant
Open a transaction from the merchant
Find any transaction from the badly named merchant and tap it to open its detail screen.
Tap the name
Tap the Name row. A sheet opens showing every version of the name we have for this merchant, each labeled with where it came from: Your bank's statement text, Merchant name from your bank, Cleaned-up name, and the transaction's own description. You may also see a Suggested name that Forbidden Finance worked out for you, labeled Suggested: matched brand when it recognized the business or Suggested: tidied up from your bank's text when it cleaned up the statement text. The statement text is often where the real name survives.
Pick one or type your own
Tap the version you want, or use Or type your own to enter a custom name (up to 120 characters).
Confirm
Tap Use this name. You'll see a confirmation that transactions from this merchant now show your chosen name, including every past transaction, everywhere in the app.
How It Applies
- Past and future: The name applies retroactively to your whole history and to every new transaction that arrives from the same merchant.
- Only that merchant: The rule follows your bank's underlying statement text for the merchant, not the name on screen. If five different merchants all show up as "Debit", renaming one to its real name leaves the other four untouched.
- Everywhere you see the name: Transaction lists, search, transaction details, budgets, and reports all show your chosen name. So do your recurring series and the Upcoming Bills widget on your dashboard, and the bills section of your phone's home-screen widget, which is the one place you cannot tap through to fix a bad name.
- Search finds it either way. Searching your chosen name finds the transaction, and so does searching your bank's original statement text. Renaming never makes a transaction harder to find.
- Display only: Your bank's original data stays intact underneath, and the original statement text remains visible on the transaction's detail screen.
Renaming a merchant is separate from categorizing one. To make future charges from a merchant land in the right category automatically, use Always categorize this merchant like this in the review wizard. See Review & Categorize.
Manage Your Name Rules
Every rename is saved as a rule you can review and undo.
- Go to Settings > Merchant name rules.
- Each rule shows the name you chose and the original statement text it applies to, so you can tell similar rules apart.
- Tap a rule to change the name, or remove it. Removing a rule puts transactions from that merchant back to the name your bank sends. Nothing else changes.
You can also remove or change a rule from any transaction of that merchant: tap the name and the same sheet opens with a Remove rule option.
Tidy Up Merchant Names
Forbidden Finance cleans up messy bank text into readable merchant names for you. This is on by default. To see exactly what your bank sends instead, turn off Tidy up merchant names in Settings, just below Merchant name rules. The switch covers your whole account, and any name you picked yourself still wins either way.
Put the Bank's Name Back
If you edited the merchant on a single transaction, its detail screen shows a Bank recorded line under the Merchant row with what your bank originally sent. Tap it, then tap Use bank value to replace your edit. Your other changes to that transaction stay as they are.
Change a Merchant's Logo
On Starter and up, tap the logo at the top of a transaction's detail screen to open Merchant logo. Pick a version labeled From your bank or From your receipt, or choose Automatic to let the app pick again. Like a name, the logo you choose applies to every transaction from that merchant.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does renaming affect my budgets, category rules, or bill detection?
No. Renaming changes the name you see and nothing else. Budgets and category rules keep matching exactly as before, and recurring detection still groups charges the same way, using your bank's underlying data rather than the name on screen. What changed recently is only how far the name travels: a renamed merchant now also shows on your recurring series and upcoming bills, instead of those surfaces still showing the bank's version.
Will my partner see my chosen names?
No. Merchant names you pick are yours alone. On a shared account, each person sees their own chosen names (or the bank's name if they haven't set one).
Does this work for manual and imported transactions?
Yes. Renaming works the same for bank-synced, manually entered, and CSV-imported transactions, on every plan.
Why do several merchants show the same wrong name?
Some banks collapse certain charges (often foreign-card or point-of-sale purchases) into a generic label like "Debit". They're still distinct merchants underneath, which is why renaming one doesn't rename the others. Repeat the rename for each one, picking its statement text to tell them apart.
Related Articles
Review & Categorize
Review modes and category rules for merchants.Transactions Overview
Learn about the three transaction sources.Search & Filter
Find transactions quickly.Need more help? Email us at [email protected] and we will get back to you.