Inter account transfer enhancement

1

I was helping a client enter data into Manager.io and we encountered a problem. They are a church and they usually transfer money from their local bank account into bank accounts of the head office for various projects. In an advice they list the bank accounts and the amount to be transferred.
The problem we faced was that, Manager.io can only transfer between two accounts. On one bank advice there was a transfer from one account into 6 different accounts and we had to enter all of them separately.
I’m therefore requesting for the ability to add multiple recipient cash/bank account to make things easy just like a compound journal entry.

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Better still the account making the transfer could be made to be divided too,

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it in agreement to double entry accounting and it saves time and energy.

Further application.

Transferring of cash from various tellers/sales desks/ cash vaults into a cash pool.

2 Likes
2

as far as i know, even a bank can make money transfer to only one account per transaction.
transfer to another account will be a separate transaction with a different reference number.
we do not write a single check for different beneficiaries.
correct me if i am wrong.

3

You can always tell the bank to make deposit to many Accounts. You do not need a cheque for that. My client don’t issue a cheque for these transfers, they just give the order and list all the recipient Accounts.

In a company having many projects for which every project has a cash account, a single transaction can be used to transfer cash to all project accounts.

The current process is limited. I didn’t know until I had to transfer cash into 6 different bank accounts on a single bank advice.

Even with a cheque you can always transfer funds into many other bank accounts in a single transaction. You just have to order the bank on a letter and get the right signatories to sign

4

i see.
personally i have never come across such a thing so i guess i learned something new.

5

I suspect the bank, in following your instructions, would enter multiple transfers. My experience matches @sharpdrivetek’s: I have never seen an electronic funds transfer between banks, online transfer between accounts at a single bank, broker transfer, or any other mechanism that allows direct entry of multiple transactions. I don’t claim universal knowledge, but each withdrawal or deposit is going to need a separate reference number for tracking purposes and must come from somewhere and go somewhere else. You would have a nightmare for reconciliation and auditing if only part of a transaction ended up somewhere.

6

In my country, with a single payment advice (with or without a cheque) you can order your bank to make deposits into bank accounts from one bank account.

I do this every month when I’m paying salaries.
With a payment advice with a long list of workers bank accounts and a cheque, I’m able to send money into various workers accounts as their salaries.

7

Let focus on what happens in our books.
If this wouldn’t break any accounting rule, it will just make users work faster.

8

Yes, but that is a Spend Money to third parties not an internal transfer between your own accounts where you are both the payer and the payee.

However I do agree that you can do one withdraw and have the bank do multiple deposits to other accounts as a counter service - this is not applicable to user created online electronic funds transfers.

Therefore your suggested enhancement only needs to have a 0 Add Line - one button added to both the “Paid from” and “Received in” plus Journal Entry like balancing indicator for added input control.

I will convert this to Ideas Category.

2 Likes
9

I agree with your first point that it would be useful, but I’m struggling to understand how this would work.

If you’re taking 100 out of Account A, and 200 out of Account B … it’s not clear which source account paid which destination account. There is no way for Manager to know how to record it accurately.

Example:
AccA - Spend 100
AccB - Spend 100
AccC - Receive 50
AccD - Receive 75
AccE - Receive 75

Did the $75 for AccD come from AccA or AccB … or a bit from both? etc.

10

You don’t have to worry about that. it just like a compound journal entry. Think of it like two or more accounts combining to feed other accounts with funds.

If adding more lines to the spending accounts is not possible at least adding more lines to the receiving account side will be easy.

11

Yes. In hindsight, I think I was making it a bit more complicated in my mind than it actually was.

I had a thought on this / just brainstorming the idea - did you consider editing?

Either this interface you’ve proposed would just be a shortcut to creating multiple regular transaction records… and you would then edit them individually after that. Or, the more complex approach would be that you can edit it in this mode again afterwards (similar to a journal entry).

I assume that both of the above methods would suit your requirements… and I wonder, if this were to be implemented, which option the developer would choose.

12

No, but i thought about cloning. Inter account transfer doesn’t have cloning. Maybe if it did, my owrk would have been easier and I wouldn’t have made this suggestion.

The narrations were the same I only needed to change the amount and receiving account. So @lubos please add cloning capability to inter account transfers please.

13

This was already added to Ideas months ago: Clone inter account transfers.

14

Great

15

Well, what is happening on a bank statement?

You instruct bank to transfer 1,000 from bank account A and deposit 200 each into bank accounts B, C, D, E, F?

Then on bank statement of bank account A, you will see single withdrawal of 1,000 or five withdrawals of 200 each?

16

Yes, the teller (technically) withdraws 1000 from A and makes individual deposits into the other accts.
If the instruction is accompanied by a cheque, then only one withdrawal occurs.

17

There will be a withdrawal of 1000.00 on account of A.
Because the bank will withdraw the amount into a suspense account and distribute from there with a narration that the funds is coming from A.

18

This discussion points out potential problems, regardless of how any specific bank would enter a multi-account transfer.

First, many users do not understand debits and credits, frequently reversing the two in their minds. That reversal comes from experience seeing bank transactions and statements, where the terminology is from the bank’s perspective rather than the business’ perspective. So different terminology would be required, probably withdrawals and deposits. So this problem is relatively inconsequential, and could be overcome through design of the entry form.

Second, things seem straightforward when you use an example of Withdraw from A and split Deposit to B, C, and D in the same institution. But what happens when B, C, and D are with different banks? Now you need to add the requirement to designate the bank associated with an account within Manager so the program can determine that a split transfer from A can go to B or D, but not to C. You cannot rely on the user to understand and make that distinction. And if you allow someone to enter such a transaction, you now have transaction amounts that cannot be reconciled with statements, regardless of the fact that the financial effect might be the same as multiple, separate transfers.

Third, think about what happens when you add the capability to withdraw from A and B and deposit to C, D, or both. The program needs logic and additional data to determine not only whether A and B are at the same institution, but whether the accounts are of types such that withdrawals could be combined. One might be a certificate of deposit and another a demand deposit account, for example. A bank is very unlikely to be able to combine those transactions. But determination will rest with the bank’s specific procedures, not some generic account categorization within the program.

Fourth, split transfers of either multiple origin or multiple destination accounts must obviously be balanced. The program could prevent creation of an unbalanced transfer, but once you put in the ability to choose more than one account on either end of the transaction, you have the potential for irritating arithmetic errors, etc. Compare this to the current implementation: you enter the origin account withdrawal amount, and as soon as you choose the destination account, the amount is filled; if you change the destination amount, the origin amount is modified to match.

To me this seems unnecessarily complex for very little utility. Since some, if not all, banks would split such a multi-account transfer into individual transfers to actually process a complex transfer, why not leave things that way in Manager? Adding the cloning capability will dramatically speed up entry anyway. It will probably be faster to clone and edit three or four transfers than do all the selection and entry necessary for a multi-account transfer. And it means you don’t need all the bank and account characteristic information and logic that will be required to prevent errors.

1 Like
19

I think that one in over thinking and creating problems which don’t exist - study the Inter Account Transfer form

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Point one : the terms Debit and Credit aren’t used - in fact the current terminology is extremely clear.

Point Two : Currently different institution accounts can be specified without any issues, including ones in different countries

Point Three : (lost for words) The user is specifying the actual institution account to be used - so no additional logic is required. The User is simply instructing Manager how they want to move the funds within their bank / cash accounts, how the banks play with the tiddly winks is relevant.

Point Four : The required controls would be absolutely no different to the current Journal Entry methodology.

Because you continue to confuse a user’s basic instruction within Manager - shift these funds - and how the banks may function.

EG: “One might be a certificate of deposit and another a demand deposit account, for example. A bank is very unlikely to be able to combine those transactions. But determination will rest with the bank’s specific procedures”

If these accounts are setup as Manager Bank / Cash accounts, then they are equally available for the same misuse via both Receive & Spend Money.
If these accounts are not setup as Manager Bank / Cash accounts, then they can’t be specified for Inter Account Transfers.

NOTE: My mother-in-law does this type of transaction at the bank teller counter every fortnight - withdraws a lump sum from one account, deposits some to the credit card account, some to other specific purpose accounts and the balance into her pocket. Managing her accounts would be far simpler (26 times a year) if this enhancement was available.

20

That’s true with regard to current form. But @Abeiku’s illustration used those terms. As I said, it’s a small issue.

Yes. But now you’re limited to one origin and one destination account. Problems arise when you start doing this with multiple banks, and no bank is going to process a multi-bank transfer as a single transaction. They couldn’t do it.

The user is only specifying the accounts according to what he or she has named them. That doesn’t guarantee the accounts are or are not in the same institution. So the logic is required to prevent entry of transfers that cannot happen in real life. It isn’t an issue until you raise the possibility of multiple banks on either the origin or destination end.

I don’t confuse them at all. I’m just predicting that users will be confused and have difficulty correctly entering transactions that, in real life, cannot occur the way they’ve been entered in Manager. The program is filled with features that are there only to try to prevent errors. (Think of the prohibition on bank/cash transactions in journal entries.)

Your mother-in-law example illustrates what I’ve been saying all along. She withdraws one lump sum, then she makes deposits to other accounts. From Manager’s perspective, that would be a spend money transaction from the origin account. The teller’s counter serves as a clearing account. The multiple deposits would be individual receive money transactions in the destination accounts. What do her teller vouchers look like? Does she end up with just one or are there several? And what would she do if she wanted to transfer some of that money to the bank next door where she took out a credit card because their rate was better? She would not be able to combine such a transfer.