You have three levers: classify a real personal purchase as Personal, omit a duplicate or irrelevant transaction, and stop unwanted merchants from being added in future scans. Use the one that matches what actually happened.
1) Clean up personal rows already in your spreadsheet
Use Review expenses instead of deleting spreadsheet rows:
- Personal: set the transaction or allocation to Personal when it is a real personal purchase. Example: a $42 family dinner.
- Omit: use Omit for a duplicate or a transaction ExpenseBot should not count at all. Example: the same $75 hotel receipt was imported twice. The row and receipt stay available, but future calculations count only one.
- Restore: open the Omitted view and restore a transaction if you omitted it by mistake.
Reports you already generated remain snapshots. Omit and restore affect future reports, year-end and tax calculations, exports, analytics, cash insights, reconciliation totals, and scheduled summaries.
2) Stop new personal expenses from being scanned in going forward
Two surfaces, depending on where the receipts come from:
Gmail receipts — Exclusions
At the end of Settings → Expense Organization → Personal expense rules, choose Yes, skip Personal. You can save the preference before Gmail is connected. It applies to every Gmail inbox connected to this ExpenseBot workspace now or later. The same switch is available under Scan Gmail for Receipts → Skip rules. It keeps any receipt whose Tag or Expense Category is Personal out of the spreadsheet. Matching is case-insensitive and the Gmail message is labeled ExpenseBot-Excluded for a clean audit trail. If you previously added Category Personal (or Tag Personal) as a skip rule, ExpenseBot enables this broader switch automatically—no setup redo required. You can still add other specific merchants, tags, or categories separately.
Bank/card transactions — "Never flag again"
From My Reports, click Review expenses, then Check card months to launch the reconciliation dashboard. Pick a time period that includes the merchants you don't want, and click Never flag again on each. Skipped merchants appear in the Auto-skipping Merchants dropdown — you can un-skip any of them later.
Teach the AI what's "personal" for you — Personal Identifier wizard
For broad classification (your kids, your pets, your streaming subscriptions, and card last-four clues), use Settings → Expense Organization → Personal expense rules. Five short questions, about 90 seconds — and you can re-run it anytime your cards or spending patterns change. Mark a card Personal-only only when every purchase on it is personal. Mark an employee or reimbursable card Mixed personal + business so the card number alone never hides a legitimate business receipt. After you finish, the nightly Gmail scan classifies the receipt first; the Personal skip switch then keeps confirmed Personal receipts out of the sheet.
3) Choose visible exclusions for a Date Range report
When you generate a report, My Reports → New Report → Date Range shows separate exclusion controls for Tags and Expense categories. Personal is selected in both by default. You can remove either default or add other Tags and categories before previewing.
The source spreadsheet is untouched. If you deliberately include Personal activity, ExpenseBot keeps it in a separate Personal - not claimed section and shows a distinct Business / claim total. Report by Tag remains scoped to the Tag you selected and does not add a second category-exclusion step.
4) How Year-End treats Personal and Omitted activity
Year-End reads the complete master ledger for the selected year, including expenses that already appear in another report. It does not inherit filters from a Date Range report.
An expense is Personal for Year-End when its expense category, Tag, or a split allocation is Personal. Any one signal is enough. Personal amounts may be shown for review but never flow into Schedule C, T2125, AU, or UK business deduction lines. Omitted rows do not appear individually; ExpenseBot may show only an omitted count and a Review expenses link.
If you correct a Personal classification or restore an omitted row after generating Year-End, ExpenseBot marks the workbook stale and asks you to regenerate it.
Which lever to pull when
| If you want to… | Use |
|---|---|
| Keep a duplicate or irrelevant receipt but remove it from calculations | Omit it in Review expenses |
| Reclassify a single Personal row | Edit its Category or Tag in Review expenses |
| Block a specific merchant from future Gmail scans | Gmail Exclusions |
| Block a bank merchant from future reconcile flags | "Never flag again" in Check card months |
| Teach the AI a pattern (kids, pets, your personal card) | Personal Identifier wizard |
| Keep Personal out of a Date Range report | Keep the default Personal Tag and category exclusions |
| Correct Personal in Year-End | Fix the Category, Tag, or split in Review expenses, then regenerate |
🔗 Full picture: Personal & omitted transactions — effects on reports and tax