Journal Entry Data Import

Hi,

I want to ask if there is a feature where the user can import data, specifically Journal Entry. Something like, a user can create a csv of excel file (will be imported to csv) of journal entries, and then import it on managers app. So, user can add journal entry faster.

Thanks.

No, besides Journals should be rarely used, only for making adjustments - not day to day transactions.

Hello,

I am new to manager and looking to populate my data which was traditionally on excel.
I see there is a post to discourage the use of journals. What is the recommended practice ?

What is the easiest way to migrate from ‘Excel based accounting’ to manager ?

If you are just concerned with the current year’s accounting, then setup your chart of accounts and enter the starting balances. Then continue with the entries for the current year.
See here Enter starting balances | Manager

If you want to have prior year accounts for comparison, then they can be entered en bloc using a journal entry and the starting balances from the first year.
See here Prepare a quick profit and loss statement | Manager but you will have to include B/S accounts as well

It is going to be a manual entry

Thanks Alot Joe.
I’m a startup and will therefore just avoid the journals entirely and work with receipts & payments section for now.

I’d like to raise the ability to import a journal entry again.
I understand that they should be rarely used but, in my case, importing a payroll journal entry is what I’d like. Since Manager doesn’t have a dedicated payroll module, payroll may often be imported into the program from another dedicated payroll program.

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You can Batch Create journal entries. See https://www.manager.io/guides/9572.

Yes, it does. See the payroll section of the Guides.

That is true. But you would probably not be using journal entries. If using a third-party processor, you would use payments to record amounts transferred to the payroll processor for various purposes. If just using another program to compute payroll amounts, you would still use Managers to record payments to employees.

Just what type of journal entry are you thinking of?

Thank you for responding. For example, I have created my own payroll module in Excel that calculates statutory payroll deductions, prints the cheque and posts the transaction to the employee ledger using Excel VBA macros. To integrate that Excel payroll module
to Manager would save a lot of time.

I am, however, going to look at the “Batch Create” ability in Manager which may answer my concerns. I was not aware of this. Give me some time and I will come back to post an update.

Much appreciated!

As you already have a payroll application, I suggest that you only import totals into Manager. Presumably, you can get the Excel application to give you totals for each payroll run

For example,

Create a payment for the total amount paid out and assign the amounts to the various expenses and liability accounts

You could also setup an dummy employee record and post the total gross earnings, deductions and contributions, etc

Yes, I plan to import totals into Manager and I’m currently experimenting with the batch import feature. When you go to journal entries and click on batch import, I get the fields required to be populated for the import. However, does anyone know which field is the General Ledger Account field? I can’t get that field imported correctly. Also, what is the correct syntax for that field ie. account number and account names? like “500 Wages” ?

First, if you are entering totals, Batch Create is more work than a basic entry.

Second, why are you using journal entries? In Manager, they cannot be used for movement of funds.

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I think setting up an employee called "All " and using the payroll entry features of Manager would be much simpler - admittedly you would have to manually enter the monthly/weekly totals

You could use the batch create to enter the payslip data - but you still have to figure out the approriate UID values

This post may help you How to batch import in manager - #11 by Patch

I agree that would be more sensible than batch creating journal entries.

Have you tried recurrent payslips, not as flexible as batch create but maybe enough see Payment amount from payslips - #9 by Patch

Thank you everyone for your help and guidance. Obviously, Manager has much more functionality than I realize and I’m going to have to take some time to further educate myself in some of the suggestions placed forward.

Ok, so I’m continuing this thread again and am back at asking a question about the journal entry batch create function. I’ve been experimenting with this and have figured out how to obtain the UID value for the account code. It all works well except that every line in my batch journal entry, which is basically one balanced journal entry, becomes a number of journal entries for each line. Each row in my batch journal entry is posted as a separate journal entry and they are, obviously, all out of balance because there is no matching debit or credit.
Is there a way to post a batch journal entry that may consist of several lines as one journal entry rather than divided up into a journal entry for each line? Maybe there is a particular field that must be completed to identify it as one journal entry.

Each row of the spreadsheet is a single transaction. Notice all the variables with names starting with Lines.*. Such a variable contains all the content for every line in the transaction corresponding to the *. That could be descriptions, accounts, quantities, etc.

Hi Tut and thank you for your response. Each journal entry must have at least two lines or two transactions. That is, there must be a debit to one account and there must be a credit to another account for the entry to balance. How is that achieved with the batch create function?

Here’s an example - 2 debits 1 credit


Excel file has following

Note that one cell has the 3 account uid’s together

Not sure how easy that is to set up in Excel

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Joe91, thank you very much! That worked when I merged the excel cells together and copied the information. The resulting journal entry was exactly what I was looking for. Thanks again!