Setting Up Rules for Imported Transactions

Background

As an Accounting Basic or Premium customer who imports your bank transactions, you can add rules to automatically assign your transactions to your accounts and departments, if you have set up departments.  This prevents you from having to select an account and department for each transaction you import.  For more details on importing transactions, see the following help articles:

• Connecting Your Bank Accounts For Accounting Journal Entries
• Manually Importing Your Bank Transactions

How to Set Up Imported Transaction Rules

You can add rules from your Settings page, or you can add a rule from an imported transaction.

From Settings:

• Go to Settings > Accounting Settings > General Settings > Transaction Rules.
• Click “Add a Rule.”
• In the “Include” box, add the text or alphanumeric characters that regularly appear in your transaction description that you want to include. You can enter more than one word in this box.  Each additional word will be looked at as an “AND,” so the transaction would need to include each word you add. You can also enter partial words, if needed.
• If you want to add criteria to have the rule look at the text previously entered “OR” other text, click “Add Additional Criteria” and enter the additional text.
• If you want to exclude text, enter the text in the “Exclude” box
• Add a name to your rule.
• Select the account to post these transactions.
• If you have set up departments, assign a department.  This is optional.
• If there are any existing transactions already posted in your ledger that match your rule, they will appear in the Matching Transactions list.  This will show you the types of transactions that your new rule would apply to in the future.

From an Imported Transaction:

• Go to your main Accounting menu > Financial Tasks > Manage Imported Transactions.
• If you have transactions waiting to be posted, either automatically from your bank, or a manual spreadsheet import, they will appear here.  
• Choose a transaction you want to set a rule for.  Click the gear icon at the end of the row, and choose “Create a new rule for this transaction.” Follow the same steps as above to create the rule.
• You can also add this transaction to an existing rule you have added.  Click the gear icon at the end of the row, and choose “Add this transaction to an existing rule.”  Select from your rules you have set up and click “Continue.”

When your bank transactions are imported, and a rule is applied, you will see a magic wand icon at the beginning of the row.  If you hover your mouse over the icon, you’ll see the name of the rule this transaction is assigned to.  If needed, you can override the account and/or department that the rule assigned.

If you have created more than one rule to which a transaction applies, the most recently created rule will be applied to the transaction.

If you are automatically importing your transactions and see a clock icon at the beginning of the row, we are using your history to determine the correct account, based on what you have previously categorized.  You can choose to set up a rule for this type of transaction, or allow the history to determine the account.