I’m new to Manager and it is great so far but I can’t seem to find an easy way to categorize imported transactions. Using linux appimage, I go to payments and then click the uncategorized link which takes me to the “suspense” account transactions. From there I’m unable to select multiple transactions and then batch categorize them to an expense account. The program won’t let me select the check boxes and there is no batch button even if I were to leaving me only able to select the edit button for each transaction! Since I’ve just imported imported hundreds of lines, even after rule matching this leaves too many to do individually. The workaround I’ve found is to go to payments, click “find and recode” at the bottom, and then search for the “suspense” tagged lines. This unfortunately doesn’t allow me to show more then the default 50 lines or to select anything other than expense categories so I am unable to tag them to special or capitol accounts! I feel like I am missing something stupidly simple since this is a basic function of any accounting program. Any advice is welcome
Welcome to the forum @mymind,
In order for you to be able to batch categorize bank transactions, you first need to setup your Bank rules.
See this guide for more detail:
Thanks @Ealfardan I’ve already set up the bank rules, there are still way too many transactions that a bank rule won’t help. For example, different restaurants would all be under a “Meals” expense account but have completely different transaction names so they can’t use rules for recognition. I normally would select/check all of the boxes next to them and batch categorize but there doesn’t seem to be a way to do this and they must be opened individually which takes exponentially more time.
The only way to batch categorize bank transactions is by applying Bank Rules, however, for transactions where rules don’t apply, you have two options:
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Manually Edit them individually
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Go to Receipts or Payments tab > Find & recode where you can batch recategorize transactions based on free selection.
For more details, see the following guides:
Understood, thanks for your help
Why not create bank rules for it it? Not sure what’s stopping you from making a bank rule?
Find & recode is an old feature that will need to be replaced with something better. That’s why it’s so limited at this time.
How exactly does one create a bank rule for transactions that have completely different names?
McDonalds
Sibylla
Dairy Queen
What rule would categorize these into a Meals expense so that I wouldn’t have to do them individually for hundreds of lines?
I have a similar issue with ‘meals’ and I use bank rules and set one up for McDonalds, Sibylia, Dairy Queen (to use your examples) and over a relatively short period of time you capture most ‘meal’ transactions.
I hope this isn’t the only way. Thats just a horribly inefficient way to do something so simple. I’ve never seen an accounting program which doesn’t allow a person to select more than a single transaction at a time to set an expense account because it is such a common usage. There are even banks that record similar transactions with varying naming conventions which break categorization rules. I had a hundred or so transactions for a tiny business that would require individual rules, I can’t imagine the time it would take for a large business. I’m astounded if this is the case for Manager
Please actually try it.
Bank rules need to be specific enough to be correct almost always (low false positive)
For different companies that will always require a separate rule.
Rules are useful for recurring transactions. One off transaction are best handled individually.
For manual actions on a group of transactions you could try find & recode, but I strongly recommend you try just manually editing one off transaction with bank rules for repeated transactions.
That is what Batch Update is for,
As a new user you should trust more our experience with businesses larger than yours and also in the hospitality and food sector. Rather than immediately importing many bank statements it would have been better to first think of as many bank rules you can setup as @Paul_Andersen already indicated. Once set you can forget and most accounts will be properly populated when importing statements. Also the longer you use the program the fewer new bank rules are needed. Then those few in suspense account can easily be cleared and if needed assigned a bank rule so next time they would not appear.
Alternatively you move on and look for an alternative accounting application that will suit your needs. Unfortunately you decided to criticise Manager without really using it as intended and trying to appreciate how and what it does and get experienced with it.
@eko Being a new Manager user doesn’t mean I’m new to accounting of which I have years of experience with multiple companies and accounting software. For hundreds of 1-off non-repeating transactions, what you propose is hardly a solution and every other software I’ve ever used, paid, free, desktop, saas, or otherwise allows selecting multiple transactions to set their accounts simultaneously because this is basically a required feature to be usable without costing tens of hours of work. I was trying to avoid any negativity towards the project since it is free software, but to not acknowledge this and the people on this forum to suggest I’m doing something wrong or to trust you and your experience because I don’t want to categorize hundreds of non-repeating transactions individually is laughable. For those looking for a workaround, the best way I’ve found is in my first post to use find and recode but it is limited.
Please note that we explained that using receipt and payment rules correctly you would avoid this. Whatever application you would use you have to let it “learn” which accounts the payments and receipts belong to. Manager has an excellent implementation of this and will save you hours of work everytime you import a statement.
I still think that you do not understand how to use Payment and Receipt rules. These are perfectly suited to deal with non-repeating transactions but you indeed have yourself to learn how best to create a rule that captures what you want allocating. @Paul_Andersen already indicated that you can have many non-repeating ones categorized to where he wants it.
@mymind Maybe Find and Recode could well assist with your issue … there will be a portion of the description that is likely to be common across many of the ‘meal’ transactions that will allow you to search on and then select all those transactions and then Recode … give it ago, Manager,io is very flexible and you usually find an effective way to meet your needs.
Bank rules can also be ordered most specific first then more general later to automate & optimised transaction classification.
As stated in my original post “even after rule matching this leaves too many to do individually”, I’ve already set up all the bank rules for every re-occurring transaction after import. This is what reduced the transactions from thousands to hundreds of non-reoccurring ones.
@eko In response to “using receipt and payment rules correctly you would avoid this.” How would the program “learn” which account and payments they belong to without me telling it? Yes I think Managers rules work just fine but rules cannot be used for transactions without a common name. I find it hard to believe your clients don’t have any transactions which don’t fit in a rule unless they don’t mind being charged for hours of work for something that can be done in minutes with other programs. You say “I still think that you do not understand how to use Payment and Receipt rules.” Please explain how one would use rules to categorize the example I gave above of McDonalds, Sibylla and Dairy Queen. Maybe Manager is using advanced general AI that I just don’t know about instead of just matching names like every other program does. This obviously isn’t just my issue because only a few days later someone asked the same question Batch Update Accounts Section in Checking Account and I pointed them back to this topic. When converting to use this program, the first thing a user will do is import a year or so’s worth of bank transactions like me and be left with possibly hundreds of 1-offs that don’t fit bank rules. On a monthly basis this might be easy enough to take care of individually but not when there are hundreds. The functionality is already there on other screens to select multiple lines, if just need to be implemented on the find and recode screen. Nothing against Manager since its FOSS, I assume its being worked on but i hope what @lubos said “Find & recode is an old feature that will need to be replaced with something better. That’s why it’s so limited at this time.” I really hope isn’t true. That would leave no way to work around the problem and prevent many people from adopting Manager in the first place.
Paul_Andersen unfortunately there is no common description that would allow a rule to fire.
Patch Thats good to know but unfortunately wouldn’t help in this case. My meals example isn’t the only category that has 1-off transactions so a catch all would only mis-allocate them.
bank import is normally done regularly such as once a week or once a month. If you have 1000’s of transactions each week or month then perhaps Manager is not the product for you. If you just have this number at start up when importing the last 1-2 yrs of transactions then imo just doing it by hand is the most efficient.
In the longer term you may find find & recode or it’s planned update addresses your desire better.
Maybe you should start giving us some screenshots with examples where you show both the bank statement line and the bank rule that you created for it, which allocates it to the account you want. Please do that for two different items (a payment rule and a receipt rule). Then show us also for each an example of the bank statement that should be assigned but where the rules that you have shown do not capture them.
There has recently been in influx of people migrating from QB and unfortunately some expect Manager to work the same and thereby not appreciating enough the different approaches that are often better when becoming familiar with them. Of recent an in my view backward change was introduced to allow Bank & Cash to be done via Journal entries that thus no longer protects someone from making really silly mistakes that will be difficult to discover and help with, but so be it.
You are also right that Find & Recode when improved could help with what you seek but only for those entering in Suspense. The idea of the Payment and Receipt rules is to prevent as many of them to end-up there and as mentioned from experience it initially requires setting up loads of these rules (there is no limit).