Import and review bank transactions

Banking lists the bank and card accounts: accounts whose detail type is Bank account or Credit card, each with its balance in the books and how many transactions wait for review. The books start with Bank and Credit card. Add bank or card account adds another. The free plan includes 2 bank and card accounts, and Banking says how many more can be added; paid plans have no limit.

Import a statement

Download the statement from your bank or card's website as CSV. Open the account on Banking, choose Import statement, choose the file and Upload. Magpie shows the first rows and guesses which column is the date, the description and the amount, and the date format; change any guess that is wrong. A reference column is optional. Choose Separate money in and money out columns if the statement has two amount columns, and Purchases are positive amounts for a card statement that lists purchases without a minus sign. Then choose Import transactions.

A transaction already imported into the account is skipped, so importing overlapping statements adds each transaction once.

An upload whose columns were never chosen is listed under Imports on the account; open it to finish, or choose Discard upload.

Review transactions

Each imported transaction is listed under For review. Money in is positive. Choose what it was, then Add:

• an account, such as Sales or Software, to add it to the books;
• Transfer to or Transfer from another bank or card account, such as paying off the card;
• an entry Already in the books in this account with the same amount and a date within 10 days of the transaction's, such as a Stripe payout or an invoice payment, so it is not counted twice. Entries whose customer or supplier the description names are listed first;
• Payment for an open invoice, for money in, or Payment of an open bill, for money out: an invoice or bill in the books' currency that still has at least this amount owed. Choosing one records the payment on the invoice or bill, into or out of this account, and matches the transaction to it. A payment less than the balance leaves the rest owed.

When an entry already in the books matches, it is chosen and labelled as a suggestion. Otherwise an open invoice or bill owed exactly the amount is suggested when the description names its customer or supplier, or when no other one is owed that amount; otherwise a matching rule's account. Add all suggested adds every transaction that has one, as suggested.

After Add or Exclude, the row shows what happened and an Undo. Exclude leaves out a duplicate or anything that is not the business's. Under Done, Undo returns a transaction to review and reverses the entry it added, or removes the invoice or bill payment it recorded.

To attach a receipt to a transaction, open the journal entry it added under Done and attach the file there; see Keep books with Accounting.

Split a transaction

To spread one transaction across several accounts, such as a shop receipt that is partly office supplies and partly the owner's, choose Split across accounts under it. Add a line for each account with its amount, as a positive number, and a description if you want one; Left to split shows what remains. The lines must add up to the transaction. A contact, if you choose one, goes on every line. Choose Add split; it is added as one journal entry, and Undo under Done reverses it.

Record a deposit

Card, cheque and other invoice payments, and Store sales recorded by hand, wait in Undeposited funds until they reach the bank. A card company or a paying-in slip often puts several of them into the bank as one amount. A deposit moves those payments to the bank account as one entry, so the books show the same amount as the statement.

Under an imported transaction of money in, choose Record as a deposit. When one waiting payment is the same amount, or the payments received in the 10 days before it add up to it, they are already ticked. Tick the payments the deposit is made of. If the card company kept fees before paying out, enter them under Fees kept; they are added to Payment processing fees. The payments ticked less fees must come to the transaction's amount. Choose Record deposit. Undo on the transaction reverses the deposit and the payments wait again.

Without an imported statement, choose Record deposit on the bank account, enter the date, and tick the payments. The button appears while payments are waiting. The entry can be reversed on its journal page, and a transaction imported later can be matched to it.

A deposit can only include payments received on or before its date. The overview lists how many payments are waiting to be deposited.

If a payment changes after it was deposited, such as its date, the deposit still covers it. If its amount goes up, only the extra waits to be deposited. If its amount goes down or it is removed, the deposit took out more than the payments now hold, and the overview shows Undeposited funds is below zero until the payment or the deposit is corrected.

A bank transaction matched to a payment stays matched when the payment changes, unless its amount changes.

Rules

Rules, linked from Banking and from each account, choose an account for transactions whose description contains some text, such as GITHUB for Software. Capital letters do not matter. Choose Add rule, enter the text, the account and whether it is for money in, money out, or either.

A rule can also name a contact from Contacts, such as the supplier; the entries it adds then count towards that contact in Income by customer and Spending by supplier. Choosing the account a rule suggests by hand also names its contact. Click a rule's text, account or contact to change it.

Rules are checked from the top and the first that matches is used; drag a rule or use its arrows to change the order. A rule suggests its account for review, or, with Add automatically on, adds matching transactions as soon as they are imported. Remove rule leaves the transactions it already added in the books.

To check the books against a statement, see Reconcile a bank or card account. If a statement will not import, Contact support.