How to match a manual entry to an imported bank transaction

If you've created a manual bank transaction in FreeAgent and then uploaded your bank statement with that transaction on, you may need to match the two together.

To do so, 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.

First, you'll need to create the manual transaction as normal.

Then upload the bank statement as normal.

Once you've done that, if you look at the month view for the month during which those transactions were dated, you'll see both entries. To match these together the uploaded one must be showing as unexplained. Select the unexplained uploaded transaction, the red one of the two.

Choose 'More Options (alternatively, you can hold down the 'alt' key on your keyboard while you select the transaction) to access the 'Edit a transaction' screen. FreeAgent will give you the option to use the existing manual entry.

If you have more than one manual entry, make sure that the correct one is ticked. FreeAgent will look for manual entries within a few days of the uploaded entry, if they don't have to have the same date. You can also explain multiple manual entries against an uploaded transaction by repeating this process.

Then select Use Selected Entry.

When you look at the month view again, you'll see that the transaction is showing as one explained transaction.

If you choose to auto-explain transactions when you upload them, you may find that FreeAgent automatically allocates an uploaded transaction to a matching manual one, saving you these steps.