Manage Pending Bank Transactions
Background
You can import your bank transactions and quickly create journal entries so activity from your bank account or credit card can be recorded in your accounting software. First, you’ll need to either connect your bank accounts to automatically check for new transactions or manually import a CSV file. For more details, see Connecting Your Bank Accounts for Accounting Journal Entries or Manually Importing Your Bank Transactions.
Things to note with automatic bank imports:
After your bank accounts are connected, you will begin receiving notifications of your pending transactions from your bank account or credit card account. You will then reconcile these transactions by accepting or dismissing them from being posted to your account.
- When you connect your account for the first time, transactions will be imported back to the date you select, up to two years ago.
- Most banks only send information once daily, so a transaction posted to your bank may not appear until the next day. Other banks send information up to four times a day.
- Only transactions that are actually posted to your bank will appear as pending transactions in the accounting software. Pending bank transactions will not appear. One exception is some smaller, regional banks may show duplicate pending transactions and the same posted transaction in the accounting software. The word “pending” may appear in the description. If you happen to notice this, you can dismiss the duplicate. This should be rare.
- Look for matching amounts near the same time, but that does not always mean they are duplicates.
- Payroll integration and imported transactions can also be a cause for duplicate transactions. The same payroll could be posted twice in their general ledger due to having the accounting software integration set up (Settings > Payroll Settings > Payroll Integration Options) and having the payroll transactions be imported from their banking activity. Typically we recommend deleting the imported bank transactions for these since the accounting integration does a better job of breaking down the payroll into the appropriate accounts.
- The same contractor payment could be posted twice in the general ledger due to entering the payment directly in the accounting software and accepting the payment imported from the banking activity. In this case, delete the imported payment from their bank, and keep the payment entered in the software. Otherwise, the 1099 info could be changed if you delete the payment entered in the software.
- Payments applied to invoices, bank transfers, and liability payments can follow a similar principle as outlined above.
You can either click the “View Transactions” link in the notification alert that appears at the top of your Accounting Home page or go to Accounting > Financial Tasks > Manage Imported Transactions in the left navigation menu.
Reviewing and Categorizing Bank Transactions
Once you have imported your bank transactions by either connecting your bank account or uploading a CSV file, you will be able to categorize or dismiss transactions on the Manage Imported Transactions page.
Notice automatic expense account suggestions? That’s our Smart Suggestion feature, aka machine learning, in action.
Tip – If you have many transactions and the page is slow to load, try using our Filter Transactions by Month feature to view fewer transactions at a time.
Here are more details on the Manage Imported Transactions page. Take a moment to be familiar with them so that you can take advantage of each timesaving feature:
Checkbox (far left) – Accept transactions by clicking the checkbox. Details – This is the date the transaction was posted to your bank and what account it was posted to. For example, “checking” or “savings.”
Description – This is from your bank/credit card transaction description. Clicking the description will expand the view so you can:
- Assign a transaction to a vendor (withdrawals). Click + Add New to add a new vendor.
- Assign a transaction to a customer (deposits). Click + Add New to add a new customer.
- Select a department (This will only show if you’ve set up departments). For more information, see our help article, “Managing Accounting Departments.”
- Select transaction options
- Edit existing rules – See our help article, “Setting up Rules for Imported Transactions,” for more information.
- Split transactions – See our help article, “Split Imported Bank Transactions,” for more information.
- Dismiss transaction – Clicking the trash can icon will dismiss the entry, so a journal entry will not post to your general ledger. However, if you dismiss and later change your mind, you will need to enter this manually. See “Recording a Journal Entry” for more information.
- Mark unpaid bills and invoices – If you have any outstanding bills or invoices matching the transaction total, you’ll be able to mark them paid on this page.
- Attach files and documents to the transaction by clicking the Add an Attachment link (Accounting Premium customers only). To upgrade to Accounting Premium to get this feature and more, go to Settings > Company Settings > Add or Cancel Software).
- Icons: The icons floating to the left of the “Post to Account” column indicate how the software has automatically categorized your imported bank transactions. You can hover your mouse over the icon to reference the automatic categorization.
Post to Account: Select the account from your Chart of Accounts to show what this transaction was. This will be the other side of your journal entry, as you already selected the asset/liability account to use when you first connected your bank and/or credit card accounts. Once you have repeating transactions, the software will recognize descriptions and pre-select the account based on what you selected the last time. You can change the account if needed.
You can also set up rules to select the correct account. See Setting Up Rules for Imported Transactions.
To create a new account for your chart of accounts on the fly, click the +Add New link by the “Post to Account” column.
Amount – The amount of the bank transaction.
GEAR icon: Click the gear icon to get quick access to transaction options without expanding the transaction.
- Assign to Vendor/Department (if a withdrawal
- Assign to Customer/Department (if a deposit)
- Add an Attachment (Accounting Premium only)
- Edit an Existing Rule
- Split Transaction
- Dismiss Transaction
Accept and Dismiss Transactions
To accept transactions, click the checkbox on the far left of the transaction. Dismiss any transactions you don’t want to include by selecting the Dismiss Transactions link. You’ll dismiss transactions that you have already posted in the software so it is not recorded twice.
- Duplicate? If a new imported transaction matches a transaction already posted in your account, it will show a possible duplicate warning, even if the description is different. This duplicate warning will appear if the two transactions have the same external account (e.g., Savings, Checking, Credit Card), the same dollar amount and the date of the new transaction is within seven days of the posted transaction. If it is actually a duplicate transaction, dismiss the transaction. If it’s not a duplicate, then assign it to an account and accept it as usual.
- Save Your Progress: You can save your progress any time and come back to this page later to finish posting your transactions.
- Post Transactions: When you click “Post Transactions,” you will see a Transactions Summary page showing the date, description, debits, and credits for the transaction. If needed, you can void this journal entry right away from this page.
Viewing Posted Transactions
Go to Reports > Accounting > Financial Reports > General Ledger. You can now see the imported bank transactions posted as journal entries
Voiding Transactions
If you decide later you want to void a journal entry that you have previously accepted, you can do this from your General Ledger report by clicking the “gear icon.”
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