Mint’s Categories get Personal

Here by popular demand: Custom Categories. And by popular, we mean both as requested by our users and Mint employees alike. We’ve launched the biggest update ever in our Categorization, Tagging and Trends features – all to provide you with greater flexibility in making sure Mint shows you your money in the way you’d most like to look at it. Here are some of the biggest changes you see when you log in to your Mint account today:

Categorization made Simpler

You can now rename and tag transactions, manage and create categories within the Transactions page itself. Just click on any transaction to edit the description inline, and recategorize via a drop down menu.

Click on Edit Details to add your notes to any transaction, and add one or more tags.

Tags made More Powerful

Click on Manage your tags to create the labels most important to the way you manage your money. You’ll see that you can now filter all of your transactions by tag, with one click.

Custom Fit your Categories

If we’ve been missing a category that’s important to you, or used one category where you really want two or more, there’s good news.

First, we’ve updated Mint’s category list based on user feedback. So, you may find our new list already includes some categories that you’ve been missing. And don’t worry, if we’ve eliminated a category you’d been using, we’ve moved those transactions to the new category for you.

Second, you’re now free to create sub-categories in any category we provide. If Shopping: Hobbies is too general for you, add sub-categories for Golf and Gardening. If you consider your Golf and Gardening spending as Entertainment, add those sub-categories there, instead. Or perhaps under Health and Fitness? Whichever works for you, you’ll find it simple to personalize your categories.

Just click on the category you want to personalize from the drop down menu, select Manage Categories, then type and save the sub-category to start slicing and dicing your expenses as you want to see them.

Separate Business and Personal expenses

We’ve just made it easy to track and analyze your business and personal expenses separately using Mint. Just click Edit Details and tag any work-related expenses as “Reimbursable” in transaction details. You’re now able to filter your Spending Trends charts on any tag, giving you separate charts on your work — and play — related spending. Mint tip: Once you’ve filtered your transactions by “Reimbursable”, click on Export Transactions and save a file to send to your company’s accounting department, your accountant or tax prep firm.

Set Budgets and Alerts for custom categories, too.

Now that you’re measuring it, manage it. You can set up a monthly budget for any category you create. Like other categories, we’ll show you what you typically spend, so you can set a realistic goal. And provide you a choice of email or mobile alerts, to help you stay on top of your progress.

We invite you to start customizing your Mint experience today. And as you discover what works best for you, we encourage you to share your creative ideas with other Mint users who may have similar money management interests and approaches. We’ve set up a few threads in the Mint Forums for some folks we expect to hear from — feel free to start your own!

• Managing Your Business using Mint.com
• Tracking Reimbursable Expenses
• Household Budgeting

If you’ve been waiting until Mint offered customizable categories to open your free Mint.com account, now is the time!