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Bank Transactions — A Guide from Scratch

Every sum that moves through the bank is a collection from a business partner, a payment to a supplier, a bank fee or a transfer between your own accounts. Turning them into receipts one by one while reading the statement takes hours and invites mistakes. The Bank Transactions window reads the statement file, works out from evidence whom each transaction belongs to, finds the open invoices and, with your approval, writes the receipt in one click; a wrong one is undone in one click too.

1. What this window is for

The window has five tabs: Import (the wizard that loads a statement file), Transactions (every imported transaction plus the suggestion panel), Unmatched (transactions waiting for your decision), Rules (rules that link a transaction automatically) and Accounts and profiles (bank account settings, saved file profiles and the automatic receipt setting). The top strip shows how many transactions are in each status.

2. Supported files

How the MT940 description field is read

Each transaction starts with a :61: line (value date and booking date, debit/credit sign, amount, transaction code, bank reference). The :86: lines that follow use one of three layouts depending on the bank; the program recognises all three:

• Subfield layout: ?20…?29 are the description lines; ?31–?33 are the counterparty's IBAN and name.
• Coded layout (most Turkish banks): the value after tags such as /NAME/, /IBAN/, /VKN/, /REMI/ is read.
• Free text: when there are no tags, the program pulls the IBAN (with its country code, e.g. 26 characters starting with TR) and a tax number written as "VKN 1234567890" out of the text itself.

3. The import wizard — four steps

1. File and account. Choose the file in the Bank file (MT940, CSV, XLSX) field and choose the Bank account. An MT940 file carries the account number; if that number is linked to an account on the Accounts and profiles tab, the account is picked automatically. Tick the box if you are loading a DBS list. Press Continue; with MT940 the second step is skipped.
2. Column mapping. Pick a profile from the Profile list or leave Auto-detect (from header). Choose which column holds each field (transaction date, value date, amount or debit/credit, direction, description, counter IBAN, counterparty, tax identification number, bank slip or reference no., balance, invoice number); change the decimal separator and the date format if needed and press Apply mapping. If the same bank will send a file every month, type a name and press Save profile. Then Go to preview.
3. Preview. You see what the file will bring before anything is written: how many transactions were read, how many were already imported, the incoming and outgoing totals and a match forecast for each transaction (how many exact, how many suggestions, how many unmatched). With MT940, if the opening balance plus the transactions does not reach the closing balance, you are warned that the file may be incomplete; unreadable rows appear in a separate list with the reason. The Import … new transactions button writes only the new rows.
4. Result. It states how many transactions were imported, how many duplicate rows were skipped and the matching outcome (exact / suggestion / unmatched). Go to transactions takes you to the transactions awaiting your decision; Import new file restarts the wizard.

4. The duplicate guard — the same file is never written twice

A fingerprint is made for every transaction: account + bank reference + date + amount + direction. For rows where the bank gives no reference, the description and balance are used instead. If the fingerprint is already stored, the row appears faded in the preview with "Already imported"; it is not written and the result counts it as a skipped duplicate row. Loading the same month twice by mistake, or the overlapping days of two statements, does no harm. If you change the account in the first step, the check is run again for the new account.

5. The five statuses of a transaction

6. The Transactions tab and the suggestion panel

The list is filtered by status, bank account and a search box (description, counterparty, amount); each row shows the date, account, amount (incoming in green +, outgoing in red −), description, status, target and score. Clicking a row opens the suggestion panel on the right: the suggested target and its type, the score, the source of the evidence, the invoices to be linked (each with its remaining balance), the amount not linked to an invoice and Other candidates. Clicking a candidate makes it the target. If none is right, open Select target manually, pick the target type (Account collection or payment / Bank charge or commission / Transfer between my own accounts / Cheque or note collection) and its value, and press Save target. If rules or business partner details have changed, Re-match re-evaluates every waiting transaction.

7. Matching — how the program finds whose money it is

For every transaction the program collects evidence. Each piece of evidence gives a candidate (a business partner, a fee, one of your own accounts or a cheque) and a score:

• Evidence adds up: every additional independent piece of evidence pointing to the same business partner adds +3 (up to 99). A business partner code and a name match taken from the same text count as one piece of evidence.
• Amount check: once the business partner is known, if the amount equals the remaining balance of an open invoice or the total of invoices counted from the oldest (±0.5%), the score rises by +4 and the panel reads "The amount was verified against open invoices."
• An exact match needs four conditions: a score of 90 or more, the second candidate at least 10 points behind, a definite target and, for a business partner, the amount fitting (an open invoice balance, a sum of invoices, or a payment not above the balance of an invoice named by its series number) or strong evidence independent of the text (IBAN, rule, cheque). A name alone or an invoice sequence number alone stays a suggestion unless the amount fits.
• A score of 50 or more with one condition missing becomes a suggestion; below 50 stays unmatched.

Which invoices are closed

Once the business partner is known, the amount is spread over the open invoices in this order:

1. Invoices whose numbers appear in the description are closed first.
2. Otherwise a single invoice whose remaining balance equals the amount is looked for (±0.5%).
3. Failing that, FIFO: starting from the oldest invoice; the last invoice may be closed partly.

In a collection, any amount left over after the invoices is written as an advance; the panel says so in advance: "… not allocated to an invoice is recorded as an advance."

8. Writing receipts — what "Write receipt" writes

For a suggestion or an exact match the panel shows a Write receipt button. What gets written depends on the target:

The receipt's description starts with the bank reference and the counterparty name, so the Bank and Account Card windows show where the transaction came from. Receipts go through every gate of ordinary receipt entry (write permission, over-collection approval, final document number, audit trail). If some are written and some fail, the written ones are kept, the errors are listed, and when you retry with the same button the ones already written are not written a second time.

9. Undo and ignore

• Undo (a transaction with receipts): all receipts in the transaction's receipt trail (each invoice in a multi-invoice collection) are deleted, a cheque collection is reversed, the invoices' remaining balances reopen and the transaction is matched again. If the trail cannot be found, undo is refused with a warning; a transaction is never reset without deleting its receipts.
• Ignore: for transactions that need no receipt (e.g. the incoming leg of a transfer, a collection already entered by hand). A reason is mandatory; type it and press Confirm ignore. The reason is shown in the panel.
• An ignored transaction also returns to the waiting ones with Undo.

10. Rules that learn

When you choose the business partner manually for a transaction and write its receipt, the program learns this as a rule if the transaction has a counter IBAN: the next payment from the same IBAN is suggested for that business partner with 96 points. If the rule already exists, its usage counter goes up. On the Rules tab you can also add rules yourself:

11. Accounts and profiles

• Bank accounts: for each bank account, the IBAN, the MT940 account ID (the account number in the statement; it selects the account automatically during import) and the fee account (the business partner to which bank fees and commissions are written; if empty, the linked account on the cash/bank card). If your own accounts' IBANs are correct here, transfers between them are recognised automatically. After a change press Save on that row.
• Saved profiles: the profiles you saved in the column mapping step; remove an unneeded one with Delete. The list of built-in sample profiles is shown below them.
• Automatic receipt: writes the receipts of exact matches during import; OFF by default, only an administrator changes it (section 8).

12. Accounting

The receipts this window writes are posted to the journal by the existing accounting rules, with no extra work. The only thing to do: map the fee account to the bank expenses account on the Accounting › Mappings tab — 780 in Türkiye, the beban bank account in Indonesia. If it is not mapped, the fees land on that business partner's ordinary account.

13. Permissions

A read-only user sees everything but gets no buttons; the screen reads "Read-only: writing receipts requires bank receipt permission."

14. On the phone

• On screens smaller than 7 inches (the Garden + Steps interface) the window opens with two tabs: Approval queue and Import. The queue has the Unmatched / Exact match / Receipt written filters and a card for each transaction (amount, date, account, description, status badge, suggestion).
• Tapping a card opens the steps: Summary (suggestion and invoices) → Target (another candidate or a manual target) → Approval (Write receipt / Ignore / Undo). When done, you return to the list. The large touch buttons are made for one-handed use.
• In the Pulse interface the Queued section shows a "… bank transactions awaiting matching." row; tapping it opens the window on Unmatched (see the Mobile guide).

15. Frequently asked questions

Related guides: Finance · Reconciliation · Accounting · Account Card · Mobile.