@rjames86 I was just searching the forum for Banktivity and came across your post re: the Banktivity regex matching. I've had it basically working for a while now.
First off, I agree - Banktivity is extremely painful but still probably my best option. I search for a replacement probably every year hah.
The default regex matching is atrocious and criminal even. For some reason in 2025 the incoming Bank info is still terrible: "PAYPL 99383 SRFFD 444" or whatever and the fact that Banktivity's 'default' matching inputs a regex that tries to match EXACTLY this quoted line is beyond impractical since it seems like all incoming transaction data is unique.
Anyhow, if you still are having issues, here's what I did. Please keep in mind this was a while ago and I can't remember the exact details because Banktivity is already a labyrinth.
The first thing I did was turn off the option in preferences to "Create Import Rules When Editing Transactions". This will just add useless rules to your import rules. Then I wiped out ALL my existing Payees (I don't believe this will change existing transactions - but of course backup your data file either way). Then I created a simple Spreadsheet with 2 columns. The left column had the Payee name how I wanted it and the right column had the Regex rule. I created a KM macro (which is now certainly out of date) to add all the Payees (copying the Payee from the spreadsheet then back to Banktivity to Paste etc). I think in Banktivity 5 or 4 even, you could create the Payee and create the rule on the same page but now I believe you have to create the Payee and then move to the "Import Rules" tab to edit the rules. So I think my Macro created the Payee and then clicked the "Edit" button and added the rule. In any case in can be done.
Then the Rules themselves were very simple:
(?i).*AT&T.*Mobile.*
(?i).*AT&T.*Wireless.*
etc.
Whenever I do a new Download I look at the existing Incoming Payees and then create additional rules with MY regex for those. At one point I would take note of all the new payees, then close the Banktivity Document without saving the new downloads. I would re-open it, add the new payees and then download the transactions again. This seems wonky though and made me wonder if even though the Data file wasn't updated, something else was making Banktivity think it 'already downloaded these transactions'.
In any case, years later I do very little Categorizing.
I've found that the "Account" and "Withdrawal" or "Deposit" sections of the rules do absolutely NOTHING. Which is really unfortunate because I'd like to have a rule for some Payees, where if it's on THIS account then it's THIS category, whereas this other account, this other category - but years later this is still not an option. They need Import Rules tied to different Accounts.
Anyway, hopefully this helps someone.