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Reconciling transfers between accounts
I have three accounts set up on FreeAgent: My company current account, Business Investment Account and Paypal account.
An issue has come up where I make transfers between the accounts.
If I import the bank statement for the current account, and explain some of the transactions as transfers, this then creates balancing transactions on the other account.
However, when I import the statements for the BIA or Paypal accounts, I end up with 'duplicate' unexplained entries for the transfers. This is made more difficult by the fact that - especially with Paypal - there will be a couple of days difference between the credit being applied to one account and the debit on the other account.
There doesn't seem to be an obvious workaround for this - if I delete the 'extra' transfer transactions, this leaves unexplained transactions on the source account.
My accountant will want to see each of the accounts reconciled to the appropriate bank statements.
Any suggestions??
Thanks,
Russell.
An issue has come up where I make transfers between the accounts.
If I import the bank statement for the current account, and explain some of the transactions as transfers, this then creates balancing transactions on the other account.
However, when I import the statements for the BIA or Paypal accounts, I end up with 'duplicate' unexplained entries for the transfers. This is made more difficult by the fact that - especially with Paypal - there will be a couple of days difference between the credit being applied to one account and the debit on the other account.
There doesn't seem to be an obvious workaround for this - if I delete the 'extra' transfer transactions, this leaves unexplained transactions on the source account.
My accountant will want to see each of the accounts reconciled to the appropriate bank statements.
Any suggestions??
Thanks,
Russell.
I’m frustrated
3
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Tell me when someone solves it.
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The more people who report this problem, the more it gets noticed.
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Inappropriate?Hmmm. What _should_ happen is that the second upload should recognise the existing ends of the transfers and reconcile them to the transactions.
Reviewing the code this evening, it looks like this does happen, but requires the existing transfer explanation to be within 1 day of the transaction. For completely unexplained transactions, a 7-day transfer time is allowed.
We should relax the time window for matching these up when there are existing explanations, it looks like.
In the meantime, you should be able to delete both transfer explanations. When you re-explain the current account end of that transfer from scratch, it should pick up the other end just fine.
Sorry for any inconvenience - this stuff is probably slightly overcomplicated at the best of times and we're thinking hard about how to streamline it.
Do let me know if that works for you or not. We are planning a release of software on Friday and could fit in some improvements then.
I’m optimistic, strangely.
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Inappropriate?Hi Ed,
OK - I think this is mainly an issue with Paypal or inter-bank transfers where the time lag could be 3 business days or so due to the bank clearing process.
Take a look at my account now and you'll see what I mean.
My current account shows two payments to Paypal dated 18 and 19 September, but the corresponding FreeAgent transfers to the Paypal account are dated 13 and 16 September respectively!
Presumably Paypal authorised the funds on 13 and 16 September when the original purchases took place, but didn't claim the cash from my bank until a couple of days later.
You will see another interesting problem with the Paypal account - I bought something for USD 8 on 28 September. This converted to GBP 4.07 - you will see the debit from my bank account for the 4.07 but you will also see a currency conversion transaction on the Paypal account where it credits what looks like GBP 8 and then debits it off again. The two transactions cancel each other out, but they are actually in US Dollars. I haven't "explained" these yet as I'm not sure how!
Thanks,
Russell. -
Inappropriate?OK, that should be fixed when we expand the window for finding the matching ends of transfers. That'll be done on Friday. You'll just need to re-explain the transactions, but this should be automatic next upload.
As to the currency weirdness, that sounds like a Paypal bug. You could possibly explain it as a Bank/Finance Charge payment and a Bank/Finance Charge refund.
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Inappropriate?I'm still a bit stuck on this one. My Paypal account (on Freeagent) still shows an erroneous balance of £121.82 because it hasn't matched the bank account funding to Paypal with the current account transfers.
Can you check this out? I've uploaded the statement again, but this hasn't changed anything.
If you look at the September transactions, you get the best idea of what's going on.
I’m frustrated
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Inappropriate?Russell - we can't access your statements inside FreeAgent like you can.
Could you just let us know - how far apart in days are the Paypal and current account ends of that transfer? -
Inappropriate?I've still got this issue. Basically it's the "Bank Account" funding transactions in Paypal that FreeAgent can't cope with. These are now on the same day as the transfers from the company current account, but they still appear on the Paypal account in FreeAgent as two separate transactions for the same amount, thus double-counting the credit and overstating the balance. See the screen shot below:
I’m confused
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Inappropriate?Russell,
Sorry you're experiencing problems with this. When you create a transfer from either end it should match up the other end with a transaction if one exists.
I don't know yet why it's not working in your case, but we're looking closely into it.
We'll aim to produce a fix for this in the next few days.
I’m confident we can get this working the way you expect it to
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Inappropriate?I too am having the same problem. When doing a BACS transfer, my bank merges them into a single bank entry. FreeAgent handles this OK, and allows me to split the items, but when I make the item a transfer to my credit card account, it doesn't seem to match the uploaded payment on my credit card statement.
I only have 1 item with this at the moment - the date of the bank item is 27/May/08 for £996.63 (Split to £166.00 and £830.63), I've marked the £166 item as a transfer to my credit card account, but the credit card statement items is dated 29/May/08. I have tried removing and retrying and doing the transfer from both sides, but it doesn't match up the transactions. The only soution is to create a manual balancing payment but I'm not happy at having to do this.
I really think the ability to manually select/change a matching payment is necessary. It's something I've been used to having to do in Microsoft Money.
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Inappropriate?Russell,
From the look of it your Paypal transfer entries are 4 days apart, whereas we expected a maximum of 3. It's the fact that the money appears before it's transferred that's the issue, for normal banking delays we allow up to 8 days.
We've now tweaked the code to be able to handle this wider date range, and you should be able to re-explain the transfers successfully.
Do let us know how you get on...
I’m hoping this now works for you, but plan on finding a better way of doing this...
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Inappropriate?Logic Labs,
Hmmm, at the moment we search for matching transactions based on the raw transaction value.
I think your solution is the best - to allow you to tie up transactions with existing entries.
Ironically we had this facility when we originally implemented the 'explanation' form, but we didn't think anyone would use it. Just goes to show how much we know...!
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