How to edit a bank transaction explanation

This article explains how to edit a bank transaction explanation in FreeAgent.

You’ll need your FreeAgent account to have level 6 access or above to edit bank transaction explanations.

If your business is VAT-registered and you edit any explanations for transactions that appear on a VAT return that you’ve either filed or marked as filed, the VAT return will be locked, so FreeAgent won’t apply any changes to it. Instead, the effect of editing these transactions will be deferred to your next open VAT return. Please double check that the VAT rate or amount is correct after editing a bank transaction.

For information on how to remove a bank transaction explanation, please see this article. For information on how to delete a bank transaction, please see this article instead.

Navigate to the relevant bank transaction

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.

You can either edit the explanation for a single bank transaction, or multiple bank transactions in bulk.

How to edit an explanation for a single bank transaction

Select the name of the transaction that you’d like to edit. Make any relevant changes and select ‘Save Changes’.

If you're editing a manually added bank transaction, the process is the same but the colour of the transaction will be purple.

If you’re editing a transaction that has been explained as a transfer between bank accounts, tick the checkbox to the left of the relevant transaction instead of selecting the transaction description.

Then, select ‘Remove 1 explanation’ from the panel on the right hand side to remove the transfer explanation. This will allow you to re-explain the transaction to the relevant category.

Once you’ve updated the explanation, a record of the explanation being changed will appear in your Audit Trail report.

How to edit multiple transaction explanations

If you need to edit multiple transactions, tick the checkboxes to the left of the relevant transactions. Next, edit the transaction explanations in the panel on the right-hand side and select ‘Explain X transactions’.

Please note that you can edit multiple ‘money in’ explanations or multiple ‘money out’ explanations at the same time, but you can’t edit a combination of the two. Instead, you'll need to edit one type of transaction first, then the other.

You can select both manual and imported transactions to edit at the same time.

A record of the explanations being changed will appear in your Audit Trail report.