When classifying bank transactions on Quickbooks Online, it can be useful to recall how expenses with a particular vendor were classified in the past. QBO allows you to easily search the vendor’s Categorization History from the Banking Screen directly.
Consider the following bank transaction:

Quickbooks has identified the vendor in this transaction as Kristen Colter, a payee that has been used in the past and is already entered into the system. The problem is that the transaction is currently “Uncategorized” and it has been a long time since this particular vendor appeared in the bank transactions.
Instead of opening up a new screen to find the vendor and look for how they were classified in the past, you can easily find the vendor’s history using the “Categorization History” option. Click the transaction to open the options and at the bottom, you’ll see Categorization History with the clock icon (shown in the blue square below).

This will pull up a pop-up screen with the vendor’s name and prior categorizations. In this case, the vendor is a hair salon that has only ever been categorized using the same account (“Other Household Expenses: Hair/Beauty”).

If you want to see more information about the two transactions where this categorization was used previously, click “Details.” As you can see, this same vendor appeared once in April and once in September, each time for $32.00. Our transaction this time is $88.00, so we really should verify that the same thing has been purchased as in the past. It is best if the receipt has been uploaded and is being matched; then we could verify the expense as well.
If we wanted more information about the vendor themselves (e.g., is it a Gas Station or a Drug Store), you can click the second listing of the vendor’s name on top (across from the date). This will bring up a new page with a Google Search for the vendor’s name.
Assuming that perhaps we just got a particularly amazing hair cut with highlights, we can go ahead and choose the same categorization by clicking the round checkbox beside the classification and choosing “Assign Category“.
It is possible (particularly with larger businesses) for the same vendor to have multiple prior categorizations. For example, Sam’s Club offers various goods and services that may fall under different categories. In the case below, the purchases have previously been classified as Groceries, Supplies for an AirBnB property, and just various Miscellaneous Household Expenses.

You can sort the categorizations by “Most Used” or “Last Used” and again find out more information about the transactions in each classification using “Details.” Once you are certain which categorization currently applies, select the round checkbox and click “Assign Category.”
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