Bank statement import ignores Payee column

Hi there,

Been doing few statement imports and notice that Payee column is being completely ignored. Is that new feature or I am missing something?

The file
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The result

S

Show the Edit screen of one of these transactions from the Uncategorized Transactions page (before it has been created).

This is on purpose. Payee content should be simply added to description. Then bank rules can be used to link receipt or payment with specific customer or supplier within Manager.

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May I ask why? Bank statements after import requires a lot of manual work and this one adds even more - not only to manually enter Payee, but even to choose its role (which I also don’t get why) - can’t all this be done by a program?

Bank rules, which suppose to do the job, are very basic, almost useless (correct me if I am wrong) - no logical conditions, transactions split, application patterns etc. and serve only to post to the account. The job that takes less than a second to do manually, but not for the boring repetitive job, that can easily be automated by the program.

For me bank import covers over 90% of transactions automatically.
For the remaining few transactions editing the imported data is much faster and less error prone than completely manual entry.

Bank rules now have the ability to include a customer or supplier. As my rules are all specific enough to only apply to a single entity, I now have a “payee” database link automatically included with zero user effort.

In summary they work well for me, sad that you can’t make them work for you.

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Sorry Lubos, didn’t see your post, that it’s been moved to a Rules. I’ll check that.

So receipts and payments can be associated with customers and suppliers. This was a recent major improvement to Manager that was anticipated for years.

No, because the bank statement does not contain the necessary information.

First, they do have logical conditions: identity of the bank account and content of the description. Second, they can not only allocate to an account, but to subsidiary ledgers. And because of the recent change, they can identify the payer/payee, even when the bank’s statement does not include that information. Third, it is application patterns that allow the second capability.

Then by all means, do them manually. You don’t seem to like bank statement imports, so don’t use them. They are entirely optional. For some businesses, they are more work than they are worth.

Can I have more information on that? I’ve seen this change and presumed it’s function, but it never worked for me. Don’t understand why.

Cannot agree with that. If statement contains information sufficient to human to identify and process it, then it is sufficient for the program as well, but the point here is elsewhere - time of processing. Setting up Payee during import was much quicker process than setting it up manually.

Adding this feature to a bank rule is a good thing, but retaining old way would be more beneficial in my case.

This is why I am saying it is very basic - there are only two elements it identifies - Account and Description and the only function it can perform - posting to the account (now add Payee). That’s really not much. Tut, I am sure you are experienced enough and must be seen many accounting systems, so you know that identifiers also can be: date, amount, debit or credit, payee, transaction type, reference and different combinations if these, that transactions can be split by a proportion or fixed amount and those splits can have different taxation, custom descriptions can and new payee be added during rule application. Not saying Manager should have all that implemented, but adding some of them could improve the rule application.

Sadly, but I do this more than I would like to.

What never worked? If you choose to enter a customer as payer, a dropdown list of your customers appears. The address of the chosen customer automatically populates the receipt, as one example.

Not necessarily. You know the full context of your relationship with payers and payees. The program does not. Suppose you have a customer who is also a supplier. Their name in a deposit transaction does not tell the program whether a transaction relates to their Accounts receivable or Accounts payable ledger. A withdrawal from the bank could be payment to settle a purchase invoice, or it could be discharging a refund from a credit note. The posting accounts would differ.

You can still do this exactly the same way you could before.

Bank rules are applicable across changing values of all these identifiers. A bank rule for a single date or a specific reference number makes no sense. Bank rules require common parameters that can be recognized from transaction to transaction.

How? I’ve just done the import with Payee column and its’ been skipped during import. Lubos said that’s been removed - means no longer available? Did I miss something?

I’ll tell that to Xero and QB developers :smiley:

What’s the purpose of that?
If receips and payments are associated with customers/suppliers, at least I would expect to see these transactions on any of the Customers/Suppliers statements, but neither of them appear:
image

image

And that makes adding roles to payee not only useless, but just another waste of time.

cheers

Edit the transaction before doing the Batch Update. You said you were setting up payees during import. This was the only way to do it before, and it is the way to do it now. What has been removed is the ability to import a payee directly from the bank statement, because—as I’ve already said—the necessary information is not contained in the statement.

Customer/supplier statements incorporate transactions processed through Accounts receivable/payble. I did not say associating receipts and payments with customer/suppliers would necessarily result in their appearance on statements. But they can and will, if the posting account in the bank rule is Accounts receivable or Accounts payable.

So where is the point to assign role to a Payee? where is the benefit of adding additional processing operation to the transaction?

@Solnce, my role as forum moderator is not to justify the program’s design to you. I have explained it. If you do not like it, you are free to use one of the other programs you seem to prefer.

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So does this mean now Payee is no longer working I can not do a tax transaction report and see who paid the tax amount can this be done by custom report

Tut it seems as if you do not understand our frustration with this topic. If I cannot see the Payee information after importing bank statements the program will no longer work for me since all the transactions in my environment is cash and there are daily new and different people we are buying from and paying to. I cannot even see the payee information when editing the transaction. to manually add names after importing bank statements is impossible.

Why do you think I do not understand?

You replied on a previous conversation my “role as forum moderator is not to justify the program’s design to you. I have explained it. If you do not like it, you are free to use one of the other programs you seem to prefer”
It is not this easy I’ve been using this program for the past 3 years and it worked well for my application. All my information are here. All we ask is to be able to see the payee information in a report form and not just by editing the bank account on the summary. If it is there so why can’t it reflect in report form. The suppliers and customers appear on a custom report. Why not the “other”. Surely you can convey this message to those who design the program and they can do it since it was possible in the past. I do need that for my purposes and so do other people as well. Even if you enter it manually on receipts and payments it is still not available in report form. It is also clear that you do not understand why we need that in report form. For me to explain to you why will take a lot of space but let me mention 2 examples. First of all the tax report need to reflect to whom Vat was paid and that is not always customers and suppliers on the system. We also do the payroll on an external program and need to match the payment to the employees on the bank statement to those on the payroll. I therefor need to see the names of the employees salaries was paid to in a report. These names appear under Payee other. I hope you understand that different people use the program for differently. Why they changed the program in the first place that you cannot see the names of Payees on the ledger no one knows. From an accounting perspective it makes no sense at all.

@Louis_Kriel, you have added much to expand on your own frustration. But nothing you have said addresses why you think I don’t understand. The fact is you have no reason to think I don’t—except your own frustration. But just because you are frustrated doesn’t mean others don’t understand. My explanations of the program are not indicators of any lack of understanding.

Your explanations of the program are clearly a lack of understanding of what the customer’s needs are. The fact that you keep on laboring the point is clear indication thereof. So please just get down to business and solve the problem. I do not have time for this. I explained to you clearly why we need the Payee field in the report. So can you please just convey the message to the right people.

If you would like to dictate the feature set of a program you will need to employ a programmer and develop your own product.

There is no commercial software product where program users do that occurs. All firms would go broke and generate a rubbish product if they tried to implement what every user requested.

There are currently 176 ideas listed on the forum, all of which have merit in addition to many other good ideas document on the forum outside that category.

As for your current grievance, the underlying issue is the lack of standardisation in the data available for export from the hundreds of different banks Manger user download from across the hundreds of countries Manager is used in. Supporting every banks format would be poor use of resources in my opinion.

Maybe some enhance functionality in bank import would be as useful some of the 176 other ideas however you have very different priories to me if you imagine the current or even short term programming tasks should wait until your needs have been met.

The value of the forum is mostly to get the maximum user benefit from the existing software product. That is what the moderators strive to achieve.

All users have ideas on how the product could be change to better meet their particular use case. Based on the quality of Manager, NG Software are obviously very aware of what is important in their market and where they want to position themselves in that market. That is achieved by listening to all customer and NG Software’s vision.

In summary criticising moderators for not doing what you want them to do is not useful. NG Software almost certainly been aware of you idea, it’s merit and limitations within the fist half a dozen posts on this thread.