Expense rules that write themselves

You've categorized Starbucks as Meals forty times. Your teammate calls it Coffee, the bank feed calls it STARBUCKS #1234 SEATTLE, and your accountant quietly fixes all of it at month-end.

None of that is a decision. It's the same decision, re-made every time. Mylo's expense rules make it once. And now, Mylo can even write the rule for you.

Rules, in one sentence

An expense rule says: if the merchant contains X, apply these updates. Clean up the merchant name, set the category, add a description, assign a customer, mark it billable or reimbursable, drop it into a report. Rules run automatically the moment an expense is created, whether it came from a scan, a text-in receipt, a bank import, or a manual entry.

Set them up once in Settings → Expense rules, at two levels:

• Organisation rules apply to everyone's expenses (owners and admins manage them).
• Personal rules apply only to your own, and override org rules when both match.

The part that writes itself

Here's the new bit. The first time an expense for a new merchant is approved, Mylo learns from it. It takes the messy feed string, strips the store numbers and card-feed noise (STARBUCKS #1234 SEATTLE → Starbucks), pairs it with the category the approver just signed off on, and drafts an organisation rule:

> Merchant contains "STARBUCKS" → Merchant becomes Starbucks, Category > becomes Meals.

Deliberately, that's all it learns: merchant name and category. Those two are what make your books consistent. Judgment calls like billable, reimbursable, or which report something belongs on stay with humans (or with rules you write yourself).

Suggested, not imposed

A learned rule doesn't apply by itself. By default it lands as a suggestion on the Expense rules page, visible to owners, admins, and your connected accountant. Until one of them taps Accept, the rule is inert; it changes nothing.

• Accept it, and it becomes an active org rule that shapes every future expense matching that merchant.
• Dismiss it, and Mylo remembers: that merchant is never suggested again.

Trust the learning loop already? There's an org setting for that, Activate auto-learned expense rules immediately, which skips the suggestion step and puts learned rules straight to work. It's off by default; your org opts in.

Your policy, on autopilot

Every approval your team makes is a small policy decision. Learned rules turn those decisions into infrastructure: approve it once, and every future STARBUCKS #4471 PORTLAND arrives pre-cleaned and pre-categorized, for everyone in the org, on every entry path.

Rules are the deterministic half of the story: pair them with the AI Spending Policy, which reads your written policy and checks each expense with an LLM, and you get judgment and consistency: your expense policy, on autopilot.

Good to know

• Rules run at creation. They shape new expenses going forward; they never rewrite expenses you've already filed.
• Learning triggers on the first approval of a merchant no existing rule covers: one suggestion per merchant, never a flood.
• Suggestions are gated. Only owners, admins, and a connected accountant see and accept them; nothing applies until someone says yes, unless your org turns on auto-activation.
• Dismissals stick. Dismiss a suggestion once and that merchant won't be suggested again.
• Personal beats org. If your personal rule and an org rule both match, yours wins on your expenses.

Want the mechanics (every action a rule can take, and exactly where the toggle lives)? See the companion guide: How to set up expense rules.