Debit & Credit User Guide

Search Operators

When to Use Them

The search in Debit & Credit was designed to work with all available information. For instance, if you enter “cafe” into the search box the app will find all transactions with this word. All transaction fields will be used, such as description, category, tag and payee.

In many cases, this is exactly what is needed however sometimes extra granularity might be required. For instance, you might want to see only transactions with a particular payee or category. This is when search operators can be used.

How to Use Them

The following search operators are supported: description, category, payee, tag, notes, after, before and year. The following examples demonstrate how to use them:

category:coffee - search for all transactions with coffee category
payee:none - search for all transactions without a payee
gift payee:”Apple Store” - search for all transactions with payee Apple Store and the word “gift” used anywhere (description, notes, tag, etc). Quotes for Apple Store were necessary since more than one word was used with the search operator
year:2014 description:John - search for all transactions with files made in 2014 and where “John” was used as a description
after:2018-03-01 notes:"Colin's Birthday" - search for all transactions after 1 March 2018 where "Colin's Birthday" was mentioned in transaction notes

So as you can see multiple search operators can be used at once alongside any other regular search query. It is also important to remember to use quotes if more than word is used for an operator.

Supplementary Search Operators

You can additionally use supplementary search operators to specify types of transactions you want to see. The following operators are supported: refunds, splits, attachments. If you enter "yes" after any of them, you will see the specified type of transactions. For example, you can enter "splits:yes" to see only transactions with split categories. The other supplementary search operator is "type", which can be used as "type:expense" (to show expense transactions only), "type:income" (income transactions), "type:transfer" (transfers).

Handy Tip

You can always export your search results from the Mac app. While having your search results displayed, select “Import / Export” in the menu bar and then select the relevant export menu item. Enable the “Only transactions matching search criteria” option.

Related topics: payee locations, general information about transactions, split categories.