Stupid question on Bank Statements import

1

Our bank statements do not provide Payee nor REF Number columns but puts those all in the description field as in mock example below. We also have separate debit and credit columns but we just merge those with formula in spreadsheet so no issue there. Similar to reformatting the date. Our Bank only exports CSV or PDF statements so we use CSV. So far we have been copying from below “Payer”, ie ALI LAD into the PAYEE column and the final part of the REF: ie 72469188 into the reference column. You can imagine that this is a tedious job and we wonder if it is necessary at all as one can search for any transaction by any field in the description. So the question is can we leave the payee and reference number columns in the Manager template empty knowing that each entry will only have information on date, description and amount? This would save us tons of work as we have many small transactions per month. Thank you in advance for any good advise in the matter. By the way bank rules work well with information from the description column and does not need payee nor ref (the latter is unique in any case so useless for bank rules).

Example Description Column:
TRANSFER BETWEEN CUSTOMERS 0000162012311911410072469188|FBNMOBILE:COMPANY LIMITED/TR|637450387009||ALI LAD REF:0000162012311911410072469188

2

Reference numbers are optional to begin with. Leaving them in the description will do no harm at all. Leaving out the payer or payee on a receipt or payment has no financial impact. But if they are defined customers or suppliers, you will lose all ability to track and report their transactions. You will be using Manager much like a cash register, which does not maintain any record of retail customers in a store.

3

Dear @Tut, Thanks for the quick answer and explanation. We use a POS system for the customer and supplier details and use Manager for all further accouting (expenses, reports, loans, etc). So I am happy with your reply because it will save us tons of work.

4

Manager does not currently have the ability to internally automatically split a text entry into multiple fields.

If you valued this I would use a regex (regular expression) filter in a spreadsheet or other program to do the processing. This could be done prior to bank import or after with a batch update.