Categorizing bank statements in Excel - excel

Question

I'm wanting to categorize a bank statement from a list of rules in excel. I've tried using a vlookup but I would like to be able to have non exact matches and as far as I know vlookup is not suited to this.
For instance if my statement looked like this and was located in worksheet "Statement"
Date | Transaction desciption | Amount
7/3/2013 | The Home Depot | $345.00
7/4/2013 | McDonald's #27 | $4.50
And I had a list of rules located in worksheet "Rules"
Rule | Category
The Home Depot | Home improvements
McDonald's * | Fast food
Is there a simple way to add another column using vba to the sheet "Statement" called Category that uses the rules to generate categories for each transaction?

Answer 1

Simple, no. I've done something similar in the past, this is how I did it.
1) Setup a rules page, I've called mine 'Patterns'. These patterns are setup with with the A column (from A2 on) being the 'name' and the B column being the regex pattern.
2) Load these into a public variable with the following code (I put a button on the patterns sheet to run this macro and load them into memory.):
Option Explicit
Public Patterns() As String
Sub LoadPatterns()
Dim cell As Range
Dim bRow As Range
Sheets("Patterns").Activate
'select column A, and load into first dimensino
Range("A2", Sheets("Patterns").Range("A" & Sheets("Patterns").Range("A:A").Rows.Count).End(xlUp).Address).Select
ReDim Patterns(Selection.Rows.Count - 1, 1)
For Each cell In Selection
Patterns(cell.Row - 2, 0) = cell.Value
Next
'select column B and load into the second dimension
Range("B2", Sheets("Patterns").Range("A" & Sheets("Patterns").Range("A:A").Rows.Count).End(xlUp).Address).Select
For Each cell In Selection
Patterns(cell.Row - 2, 1) = cell.Value
Next
End Sub
3) Create the following UDF, load the VB regex library as a reference in vba (Microsoft VBScript Regular Expressions 5.5, see http://www.macrostash.com/2011/10/08/simple-regular-expression-tutorial-for-excel-vba/) and call it on your transaction description as a formula after running step 2:
Public Function rxBanking(sName As String)
Dim x As Integer
'Get & load Patterns
Dim regex As New VBScript_RegExp_55.RegExp
Dim match
For x = 0 To UBound(Patterns)
regex.Pattern = Patterns(x, 1)
regex.ignorecase=True
match = regex.Test(sName)
If match Then
rxBanking = Patterns(x, 0)
Exit For
Else
rxBanking = "Unknown"
End If
Next
End Function
so for example, after you've loaded a pattern such as:
Category | RegEx pattern
--------------------------------
Home loan | INTEREST[\s]CHARGED
If your transaction data was in cell D1, then you could categorise it using the formula
=rxBanking(D1)
If you reload your pattern, you will need to re-copy your formulas down on the spreadsheet, as it doesn't automatically recalculate.
For help using regex (which even if you are familiar, you might need) I find a great testing ground is http://regexpal.com/