Enter a bank transaction manually

This article explains how to manually enter bank transactions into FreeAgent.

You may need to add manual bank transactions if your bank account doesn't yet support online banking, if you're recording petty cash or if you have uncleared cheques coming in or going out at the end of the month.

If you're unsure whether to record a particular business cost as a bank payment, an expense or a bill, take a look at this article for more information.

Entering and explaining transactions manually

Navigate to the 'Banking' tab at the top of the screen and select 'Bank Accounts' from the drop-down menu.

Choose the relevant bank account from the list of accounts.

Then navigate to the ‘More’ button and select ‘Add Transaction’ from the drop-down menu.

Transaction Type

The first field to choose is the 'Type'. Choose from the types under 'Money In' and 'Money Out'.

I'm going to put in a payment that's not for a bill that I've already entered into FreeAgent, to pay for the rent at my downtown office space. So this would be type 'Payment'.

When and how much?

Put in the date and the amount of the payment.

Category and VAT

You may need to break the amount down if this payment covers more than one category.

Choose the category for the payment. Choose carefully and if you're registered for VAT, make sure that you choose a category in the right area, standard or zero VAT, if you want FreeAgent to automatically calculate the VAT for you.

You may want to put in a new category if none of these suit you.

I'm going to choose Rent, which is usually standard-rated for VAT.

If you need to put something in a category and manually alter the VAT, usually because you're not entitled to claim some input VAT on a particular transaction, look at the VAT drop-down menu.

The default is that FreeAgent automatically works out the VAT depending on what category you've chosen. But you can set the VAT to any of the UK rates, or, if you need to enter the amount manually, choose 'Amount', and type the VAT into this box here.

Description and image

Enter a description for the payment. This is in case your accountant needs more notes or your books are inspected by HMRC.

You can upload a scanned image of the receipt by choosing 'Select a file' from the 'File to attach' area. If you used the FreeAgent mobile app to capture an image file and save it to the Files area of your account, select 'Choose from saved files' in the 'File to attach' area instead and follow the instructions. 

Once you've finished entering the transaction, select 'Create and Add Another' to save this transaction and enter another transaction, 'Create and Finish' to save this transaction and stop entering transactions, or 'Cancel' if you don't want to save this transaction.

That's my first transaction. What about the rest?

If you're recording all your bank transactions manually, you'd then need to work through your bank statement entering each transaction in turn.

When you've finished, check the closing balance in FreeAgent here, against the closing balance on your bank statement, to make sure they are the same.

If they aren't, then you've entered a transaction incorrectly and you'll need to go through your transactions and look for the wrong one, then select it and edit it so that it is correct.

It is much quicker to enter bank transactions by uploading them from online banking, so we do recommend that you use this method for entering transactions wholesale. If your bank doesn't support online banking, you might want to consider switching to one that does!

The only situation where this would not be possible is if you're dealing with cash.