Another new-user question… Looking to understand the best process for handling this in Manager. Please note that I am not asking for any changes to Manager, I’m just trying to understand what the best practice would be here…
Thanks!
Issue
I have an inter-account transfer already recorded.
I go to Bank and Cash Accounts and “Import Statement” for both the sending and receiving accounts.
I see the previously recorded inter-account transfer listed as “Uncategorized”
– In the sending bank account it’s listed as uncategorized payment and in the receiving bank account as an uncategorized receipt.
What is the correct Manager process for clearing or matching these transactions?
Is it best to just delete the duplicate transactions or is there a way to “match” them to the existing inter-account transfer?
I can see where it would be simple to create a receipt/payment rule to process many of our incoming transactions, but, with multiple bank and card accounts, we generally would upload transactions 1x or 2x per month… and we would be recording each payment/receipt in Manager as they happen. If we do things normally/correctly, every transaction in the bank statements would “match” to an existing transaction already in Manager.
Don’t manually enter inter account transfers if you are importing bank statements. (That recommendation is the same as for regular payments and receipts.) Read the Guide: https://www.manager.io/guides/17304.
The same question would arise for previously recorded receipts and payments…
If we have a dozen bills paid and another dozen payments received, when we upload the bank transactions we’ll have 2-dozen un-categorized transactions in the registers, in addition to those same/matching/duplicate transactions that have already been entered during normal course of business.
Looking now at a payment we made to our credit card… I see…
– manually entered payment in the payment register
– manually entered matching transaction in the credit card register
– uncategorized transaction in the bank account register after importing
– uncategorized transaction in the credit card register after importing
I cannot avoid manually recording these transactions prior to importing bank statements… we would risk not being able to track unpaid invoices, cash balances and credit limits in between bank imports… and importing bank statements daily is a time sink…
Yes, you can. That is an operational choice you make.
True, but that is the tradeoff you make if you want to import bank statements. The question is how timely you need your accounting records to be. Many, many businesses, for example, are satisfied with monthly transaction entries. And some don’t make any entries at all until just before filing annual tax returns.
That is your judgement to make. But I doubt it takes more time than manually entering all those transactions, which you are already doing. Businesses with large transaction volumes almost always gravitate towards frequent statement imports and cannot imagine people making manual entries. Businesses with low transaction volumes frequently decide that current, manual entries that keep records up to date are more convenient. Some businesses fall in the middle and accept the necessity to delete duplications, thus having the benefits of both timeliness and accuracy at the cost of a little extra work.
The point is that Manager allows for all options and preferences. Sometimes the choice is driven by ease of entry, sometimes by timeliness, sometimes by the desire to include information on transaction forms that does not come with an imported statement.
I’m ok, of course, with this reality and will have to make some decisions accordingly.
If anyone knows how to get Chase Bank to auto send me daily QBO files for all of our accounts, that would be awesome.
What you refer to, @Velociter, akin to a live bank feed. The developer has so far chosen not to accommodate those, because in many places around the world, they involve a paid service through a third-party provider.
Sorry if I was unclear… I’d like to have Chase send me daily QBO files… to then upload via the upload statement button. Not a live link… I understand that is not available or planned and the why of that. No worries.
I’m certain Chase won’t do this, since it requires sending confidential bank data via email.
The time sink for me is having to go into each account at Chase (3 checking and 2 credit cards) and manually ask Chase to send me a file that can be uploaded… QBO files work great for uploading to Manager, but it takes time to tell Chase what date range to use for each QBO file… times 5 accounts.
Hmm. Perhaps I’m missing something in this discussion. Imports without duplicates is possible.
I manually enter most of my payments and transfers, and some receipts.
When I import my bank file (which I do every time I want an update), step two of the import process compares import file entries to existing Manager entries. If the ‘date cleared’ in Manager matches the date on the bank file entry, Manager doesn’t import the transaction. Only ‘new’ transactions are imported.
I am trying to understand your comment clearly… Please forgive me, I’m new on Manager.
When you say you are importing the bank file… What file type are you importing (QBO or other?) and where in Manager are you doing the import? (I assume Bank and Cash Accounts → Import bank statement…?)
When you say “date cleared” in Manager… where do I see this date? and what process are you using to “clear” the transactions, prior to importing your bank file?
Looking in my Payments, Receipts and Bank Accounts registers, I do not see any “date cleared” column… only “Date”. What action are you doing to “clear” a transaction?
Apologies again for the language questions… I’ve been handling the accounting for several small businesses for 20+ years… Using Quickbooks… I’m good with the books but still struggling a bit with the terminology used in Manager…
When you setup a bank account that you need to reconcile, you need to check the box the says
Can have pending transactions
Once you checked this box, the cleared status will appear whenever you select that particular account in Receipts, Payments and Inter Account Transfers.
You can refer to the following guides for more details:
Thanks @Ealfardan
I have my bank and CC accounts set up this way and don’t have any problems with reconciling.
What I’m trying to figure out in this thread is the best way to handle matching receipts, payments and other cash transaction with transactions that I upload via bank statements.
If I enter a payment manually, then later I import a bank statement, the same transaction appears twice (manual and uploaded)…
It seems from Tut’s helpful replies that the best answer is to pick one way or the other and not do both… but… I am hopeful that possibly @BegaValleyBeekeepers has a different solution… maybe?
@Velociter, I think you need to read the relevant post more carefully:
@BegaValleyBeekeepers appears to have missed the point of the discussion. They state that they import the bank statement every time. Yes, Manager tries—emphasis on tries—to catch duplicates of prior imports. But that requires exact congruence between entries. Practically speaking, that means only duplicates of prior imports are discovered. And sometimes, those can be missed, especially if you have edited them.
