Bank Rules Contacts Field Feature Request

When you create a bank rule, there is no contacts field where you can put in Supplier or Client. Given that almost all (if not all) bank rules will be applied to the same supplier or client, it would make sense to include this so that when looking at the Receipts and Payments Tab, the contacts field is automatically filled.

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I agree being able to enter a supplier or customer in a bank rule is an excellent idea (for the reasons listed above). Supporting a Payee/Payer would be a partial solution in the interim. Lubos will need to organize the order of idea implementation as this idea maybe dependent on the following idea

Which in turn would enable solution of this idea Why do the costs on a journal entry show in the net sales column? - #27 by lubos and the related issue Goods return (Cash sale/purchase) causes Gross Sales error - #32 by Patch

Let’s just start with my simple little request lol before moving onto the big ticket issues. :grinning: I do agree with you though. I have always felt that Manager lacked a proper link between client/supplier and transactions in the way you suggested. Currently you have to create an invoice to properly link it.

Not following your comment, within a bank rule you can nominate a customer or supplier:
0000000 Bug 1 & 0000000 Bug 1a

Linkage between cash and credit transactions for the same customer /supplier is a separate matter.

Perhaps you need to clarify “Contacts Field Feature Request”.

@Brucanna I am referring to the column that is called Contacts in Receipts and Payments Tab. This field is empty for bank rule imports because there is no field in Bank Rules to add the name of the supplier/Client.

I assume you are referring to transactions for which an invoice is not entered into Manager. Which for me is a common situation

No I create purchase and sales invoices. I am not referring to the field next to accounts receivable or accounts payable as shown in picture. I am literally talking about the column in payments and receipts tab. The only place to enter that field currently is in the payments and receipts edit view

what format are you using for your bank statement import?
the Contact column is the Payee/Payer field in Receipts & Payments tab.
when using the CSV format, you do have a column Payee which will automatically fill the so called Contact column. no bank rules are needed for the same as Manager will automatically fetch this detail.

I don’t understand why nobody is seeing the same problem as me. I have downloaded both ofx and csv and there is no payee field in either format. Just the description.

If you ignore the file format and bank import, and go to Bank Rules - you will see that there is no payee/payer field in Bank Rules other than the accounts receivable and accounts payable - which does not populate the Contacts column in Receipts and Payments.

irrespective of what details your bank provides in their CSV file, Manager would accept only particular columns for import. so you will anyway have to reformat the CSV file accordingly as explained in the guide https://www.manager.io/guides/9240

the same is already explained as a Note towards the end in the above guide. i guess we will have to consider this as a small drawback when importing bank statements for entering transactions.

Hence my request. All that is really required is to create a new field in Bank Rules which people can populate with the supplier/client name. Then problem solved.

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Can this please be put in the Ideas category? Now the Payee/Payer update has happened to the receipts and payments form, I think it would be great to include this. This would make it much easier to generate receipts for transactions imported from bank statements. The receipt could then automatically include the customer details.

Bank rules cannot be defined according to what is on Manager’s form. They must be defined by what is contained in exported statements. Everything else must be added by editing the resultant transactions.

I agree with all you say.

That is not the case.
I write bank rules to detect transactions from a specific supplier. Typically the bank statement description is consistent enough to do this.

So for every rule I know the supplier (or regular customer) so for every such rule activation the Customer / Supplier status can be set. In addition for most rules a link to a specific supplier (or regular customer) can also be set.

Once the link is assigned all detail associated with the linkage could be used.

Hence the request to add specification of customer/ supplier and linkage to specific customer or supplier to bank rules. Doing so would remove the need to manually edit each transaction for which a rule had been created

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Sorry, I think you misunderstand. I want the bank rule to read the bank statement and use that information to write to to the Payee/Payer field, as well as assigning the transaction to an account in the chart of accounts. Currently, I can set a bank rule to do the latter. But not the former.
Ideally (now the Payee/Payer field is linked to the customer/supplier data) if I set up a bank rule for transactions to be assigned to “Accounts Receivable” > “Mr X”, then Manager would automatically fill the Payer field to say “Mr X”. Then when a receipt for the transaction is generated, Mr X’s details would appear on the receipt.

Not really. You write bank rules to allocate transactions to the subaccount in Accounts receivable/payable of a certain customer/supplier. There is a difference. The receipt might have come from someone else. The payment might have gone to someone else to satisfy the obligation of the supplier.

Now don’t light your hair on fire. I fully recognize that in most cases, it would be the same. The concept I was trying to express was that statement formats do not necessarily match Manager’s design. So bank rules cannot be based on Manager, but must be based on what is available in the various statement formats. The simple truth is that banks are not reliable about following format standards, and sometimes information is lacking, even when there is a possibility in the standard to include it.

No, I did not. See my comment above.

Actually entering purchases by importing bank statements is an efficient way of entering them in Manager, completely bypassing purchase invoices. In Manager terminology “cash” purchases. The effect is essentially the same as all the expenses entered into “Northwind”.

The recent Manager improvement allows these now to be also linked to specific suppliers. Doing so within the bank rule is a logical extension. The benefit so obvious that I would be extremely surprised if Lubos did not already have it on his to do list.

True, @Patch. I was addressing your comment that you write rules to detect a specific supplier. My point was that you are really writing rules to allocate to an account, and if this account is associated with a supplier, it will be Accounts payable.

You seem to be looking for a disagreement here. I have none. If customers and suppliers can be separated from bank statements and populated into receipts and payments, I am all for that. I was just stressing to @whosat originally that you are limited by what is in the statements, regardless of what is on Manager’s form. I’ve said that now several ways. So I withdraw from the discussion.

Cool
It’s just terminology.

You are correct bank statements do not contain links to Managers Suppliers. The art in writing bank rules is to recognize the the appropriate Manager contact anyhow. If I can’t do that I don’t write any rule.

In many of my business, I have not enable the purchase invoice tab, I do not have an account payable, but I do use bank rule to allocate purchase costs to an appropriate expense account. Tagging those purchases with specific supplier via bank rules would be useful.

Maybe Lubos will implement reporting of these transactions by adding dual entries in accounts payable. Effectively creating the purchase invoice and payment simultaneously. So in the future my payments maybe to account payable (as well as the appropriate P&L account). Currently the are just to the P&L account. Hence my confusion about the accounts payable reference.

OK, I lied about withdrawing, because you introduced a new issue. I don’t think what you suggest here would be necessary now that receipts/payments can be linked to customers/suppliers. There is no need to create a purchase invoice unless you are buying on credit. If the program can be modified to extract customers/suppliers from bank statements, doesn’t that solve the entire problem?