October 10 2009
Importing Payee Rules
When importing your transactions, most times the bank will give you a payee that starts out with the name of the place you made the purchase at and ends with a long tax id or bank id. To automatically import the correct payee, we have 2 methods in place. The first is to go to Payees page and click on Payee Rules. This allows you to define Payee names to search for when they come in and automatically import them as the name you choose. The second we do automatically. Whenever you change a payee that was imported, we’ll track the change so that if it comes in again, we’ll update it for you. Note that if the payee has a tax id or a unique number, this will need to be added to the Payee Rules to be changed.
Where is the Payee page? I’m using the trial version, which is so crippled that I can’t get the feel of how this will work, and one of the key features that I must have is the ability to download directly or import data from bank files (i.e. qif in this case). The limited version does not allow you to actually import any transactions; it just shows a demo screen of the import. Your post indicates that there is such a thing as a Payee Rule table and I want to see it in action. What I want to know is if this is built into the import function, i.e. I have some funky payee string and want to change it to a real name and assign a category. Can I do that right then and there? Or do I need to import the transactions, then walk through the register doing them 1 by 1?
Related: I assume that I can split a transaction between multiple categories. Is this intuitive within the register? Again, I can’t see this in the trial as I cannot import any data.
Thanks.
When you’re on the Finance Tab, click the More… link and you should see Payees. The Import QIF allows you to import up to 5 transactions to try it out. We’ve also added in CSV Import to allow 5 transactions as well now. The Rules for importing transactions are at the top of the Payees page. When you select a category next to one of your payees, it will automatically be the selected category when imported into the system.
Yes, for split transactions you can assign multiple categories. To split a transaction, select the category drop-down when entering a new transaction and choose Split from the bottom of the list.
Kyle,
Interestingly the QIF file that I download from my bank doesn’t import to the application. An error is displayed “Not all Transactions were saved due to a error. Please verify all fields have a valid date. If you find this in error, please email service@budgettracker.com and attach a sample row of the data being imported.” I tried a CSV file but the Importer states that I must choose a QIF.
So, I tried an OFX and it imported correctly.
A few thoughts: It would be nice (how many times have you heard that phrase!) if I could create a payee rule on the import view OR within the transactions register, rather than needing to leave that view to go to the Payee screen. It would also be nice to be able to do inline editing of transactions rather than needing to press “edit”, which goes to a separate screen, make changes, save, then return to the transaction register. I’ve been using Quicken (on the PC, not online) and the style of data entry (importing, editing, rule generations, memorized payees, etc.) is all on the same screen making it quick and easy.
In terms of the trial version: The reports only show a “demo”, not a report with actual data from my transactions, categories, etc. I’d like to see real data.
thanks,
tom.
Thanks for the feedback. We’ll look into adding the rules to the import page as well. For Csv files, you need to click the csv button at the top of the qif import page. If the qif file has errors, please email the file to service@BudgetTracker.com and we’ll investigate the errors.
For reporting graphs, this is a subscription feature,we’ll look into providing a free version (possibly the data without the graphs) instead.