# Custom Categories In Emma
**URL:** https://community.emma-app.com/t/custom-categories-in-emma/1595
**Category:** Emma News & Updates
**Created:** [January 31, 2020, 11:48am UTC](https://community.emma-app.com/t/custom-categories-in-emma/1595 "2020-01-31T11:48:55Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Joel](https://community.emma-app.com/u/Joel)
#### Post date: [January 31, 2020, 11:48am UTC](https://community.emma-app.com/t/custom-categories-in-emma/1595/1 "2020-01-31T11:48:55Z")
I’m curious to know what custom categories other Emma Pro users have!
Here are mine:
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### Author:  [@Wmeads001](https://community.emma-app.com/u/Wmeads001)
#### Post date: [January 31, 2020, 10:58pm UTC](https://community.emma-app.com/t/custom-categories-in-emma/1595/2 "2020-01-31T22:58:36Z")
Hobbies, London travel (trips to)
And a catch it for the monthly payment to my wife in
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### Author:  [@grant.m](https://community.emma-app.com/u/grant.m)
#### Post date: [February 2, 2020, 11:14am UTC](https://community.emma-app.com/t/custom-categories-in-emma/1595/3 "2020-02-02T11:14:50Z")
Pub.
Simple and effective.
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### Author:  [@Gaoler](https://community.emma-app.com/u/Gaoler)
#### Post date: [February 2, 2020, 11:20am UTC](https://community.emma-app.com/t/custom-categories-in-emma/1595/4 "2020-02-02T11:20:08Z")
“Bad choices”
That includes
Late night dirty takeaways
Any alcohol on weekdays
Impulse purchases of pointless stuff on amazon
You get the idea…
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### Author:  [@sebinsua](https://community.emma-app.com/u/sebinsua)
#### Post date: [February 4, 2020, 12:08am UTC](https://community.emma-app.com/t/custom-categories-in-emma/1595/5 "2020-02-04T00:08:53Z")
As you can see, I am trying to emphasize costly luxuries (takeaway, taxi, alcohol, coffee, work lunch) and perceive untaxed incomings and maintenance costs (invoice, tax, house). I also try to register the cost of providing for my wife and daughter (normally this relates to the joint account), however this I just do for fun.
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### Author:  [@Gaoler](https://community.emma-app.com/u/Gaoler)
#### Post date: [February 4, 2020, 12:50am UTC](https://community.emma-app.com/t/custom-categories-in-emma/1595/6 "2020-02-04T00:50:28Z")
> [@sebinsua](#):
>
> I also try to register the cost of providing for my wife and daughter
For a moment I went mad and thought these were all subcategories of Business 😂
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### Author:  [@Joel](https://community.emma-app.com/u/Joel)
#### Post date: [February 4, 2020, 10:03am UTC](https://community.emma-app.com/t/custom-categories-in-emma/1595/7 "2020-02-04T10:03:56Z")
I really do love this idea
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### Author:  [@Gaoler](https://community.emma-app.com/u/Gaoler)
#### Post date: [February 4, 2020, 1:11pm UTC](https://community.emma-app.com/t/custom-categories-in-emma/1595/8 "2020-02-04T13:11:45Z")
It’s a quick and dirty way of identifying the things you probably should be avoiding altogether - with an amount in black and white as well, so no hiding!
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### Author:  [@edoardomoreni](https://community.emma-app.com/u/edoardomoreni)
#### Post date: [February 6, 2020, 11:56am UTC](https://community.emma-app.com/t/custom-categories-in-emma/1595/9 "2020-02-06T11:56:24Z")
Love this setup! “Personal Development”. 😃 😃
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### Author:  [@Joel](https://community.emma-app.com/u/Joel)
#### Post date: [February 6, 2020, 12:15pm UTC](https://community.emma-app.com/t/custom-categories-in-emma/1595/10 "2020-02-06T12:15:11Z")
It’s not used a tonne currently 😅
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### Author:  [@edoardomoreni](https://community.emma-app.com/u/edoardomoreni)
#### Post date: [February 6, 2020, 3:14pm UTC](https://community.emma-app.com/t/custom-categories-in-emma/1595/11 "2020-02-06T15:14:11Z")
One Offs is genius. 😉
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### Author:  [@rebekah](https://community.emma-app.com/u/rebekah)
#### Post date: [July 27, 2020, 12:15pm UTC](https://community.emma-app.com/t/custom-categories-in-emma/1595/12 "2020-07-27T12:15:33Z")
I really need to up my game with custom categories! 💪
At the moment the only ones I have are Clothes, Gifts, Out Out and Side Hustle, but there’s some good ideas here!
@Joel have you added any more since you last posted?
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### Author:  [@Joel](https://community.emma-app.com/u/Joel)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2020, 8:52am UTC](https://community.emma-app.com/t/custom-categories-in-emma/1595/13 "2020-07-28T08:52:52Z")
The emoji for the tax 😂
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### Author:  [@Joel](https://community.emma-app.com/u/Joel)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2020, 8:56am UTC](https://community.emma-app.com/t/custom-categories-in-emma/1595/14 "2020-07-28T08:56:45Z")
> [@rebekah](#):
>
> @Joel have you added any more since you last posted?
Here are my updated custom categories
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### Author:  [@sebinsua](https://community.emma-app.com/u/sebinsua)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2020, 12:45pm UTC](https://community.emma-app.com/t/custom-categories-in-emma/1595/15 "2020-07-28T12:45:09Z")
I needed to make a joke about it. Tax is not fun.
Even though you don’t officially support business bank accounts, it turns out you actually do if your business uses Starling Bank. When I added the account, I started to track everything including business taxes.
Being able to manage everything in one is super useful by the way, since I then realised I could misuse the ‘Loans’ feature as a way of making huge future costs very clear to myself.
By the way, it’d be cool if you could create an extra tab for these future costs so I can stop misusing ‘Loans’.
Edit: Sorry for taking this off-topic.
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### Author:  [@rebekah](https://community.emma-app.com/u/rebekah)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2020, 2:32pm UTC](https://community.emma-app.com/t/custom-categories-in-emma/1595/16 "2020-07-28T14:32:07Z")
Heeyy @sebinsua
I know very little about business taxes haha, so have you just added these as manual accounts to tally up how much you will have to pay in taxes at the end of the year?
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### Author:  [@sebinsua](https://community.emma-app.com/u/sebinsua)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2020, 2:38pm UTC](https://community.emma-app.com/t/custom-categories-in-emma/1595/17 "2020-07-28T14:38:03Z")
Yes. I use manual accounts. Very useful for self-employed people because it allows you to put money away for these future costs rather than getting wrecked in January and July with Self Assessment Tax you’d not priced into your spending.
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### Author:  [@rebekah](https://community.emma-app.com/u/rebekah)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2020, 2:46pm UTC](https://community.emma-app.com/t/custom-categories-in-emma/1595/18 "2020-07-28T14:46:25Z")
I see! ✌
Another tab listed as “Tax” or something could be a good idea - I’ll mention it to the team!
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### Author:  [@sebinsua](https://community.emma-app.com/u/sebinsua)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2020, 2:58pm UTC](https://community.emma-app.com/t/custom-categories-in-emma/1595/19 "2020-07-28T14:58:24Z")
Yes, or ‘Future Costs/Expenses’. It could be used for other things – like, for example, fuzzy costs like impending repairs/maintenance, MOTs, etc. Basically to try to be ‘real’ with oneself about whether you’re prepared for future costs!
Like, within this thread people created a one-off category. The kind of thing I try to do is to take a look at the average cost of all ‘one-off’ transactions each year, and then use that to work out how much money I should have set aside to deal with problem at the beginning of each year.
The next step is is to create separate Saving Pots on Monzo with money to pay these costs and then mark these as ‘hidden’ in Emma so that when you look at the summary you don’t see an inflated net worth but you’re prepared for these annual costs.
That’s one of my current strategies right now: make future costs explicit; take money out for these future costs and hide it; etc. I’m trying to do it with non-business costs as well now – for example, I worked out how much money I spent on groceries a month, and how much money I spent on rent/mortgage, and I created hidden pots that buffer these. (Although realistically most couldn’t buffer such large costs, if you’re self-employed it’s the sensible thing to do, since your earnings could be very high for a while but you could lose work at any point and if that happens you need to be prepared to continue to pay your living costs.)
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### Author:  [@rebekah](https://community.emma-app.com/u/rebekah)
#### Post date: [July 29, 2020, 8:49am UTC](https://community.emma-app.com/t/custom-categories-in-emma/1595/20 "2020-07-29T08:49:06Z")
This is a really interesting idea, and like you said could be used in a few different ways 🙌
There’s a huge amount of self-employed people in the UK too so this could be quite a cool feature.
I’ll add it to the OP on the Most Wanted Features thread 🕶
[Next page](https://community.emma-app.com/t/custom-categories-in-emma/1595.md?page=2)