Import and reconcile a rental statement

This article explains how to import rental statements into FreeAgent for relevant categories to be suggested for the income and fees transactions. It also explains how to undo an import.

Banking is one of the most important features in FreeAgent. The software prepares your accounts based on the explanations given for the money paid into and out of your bank and transaction accounts.

You can follow the steps below to import your rental statements and let FreeAgent capture your rental statement transactions and automatically assign them to your properties and accounting categories for you. You can import rental statements in a number of different formats. These include .PDF (recommended), .csv, .jpeg, .jpg, .png, .xls and .xlsx.

FreeAgent will automatically create a rental statement bank account specifically for your rental statement transactions after your first import. This is different from regular bank accounts in FreeAgent as it’s solely used to record the details of income and fees from your agency statements. You can use one account to track income and fees from multiple properties.

Automating the categorisation and reconciliation process for landlords removes the manual workflow that leads to errors, ensuring your property accounts are always accurate and up to date.

1. Navigate to Banking

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

If you're uploading your first rental statement, select the ‘Upload a letting agent rental statement’ link below the list of bank accounts.

If you've already uploaded a rental statement previously, select the 'Rental statement transactions' bank account.

Then, select ‘Upload statement’ in the top-right.

2. Import the rental statement

You can import a rental statement by either uploading a new file from your device or by selecting one from the saved Files area within FreeAgent.

Once you’ve selected the relevant file, select ‘Upload rental statement’.

FreeAgent will then import the rental statement and extract data from it.

If the import is taking a long time or you’re importing multiple statements within a single file, you may wish to split the PDF into multiple PDFs.

3. Review the rental statement

Next, review all the details that FreeAgent has extracted from the rental statement.

Transactions related to property income are listed as ‘Money in’ line items and transactions related to property costs are listed as ‘Money out’ line items.

Transactions are also grouped by property. If FreeAgent is unable to match transactions to a property, they’ll be listed under ‘No property set’.

The payments to and from letting agents and landlords are grouped in a separate ‘Payments’ section.

If you need to, you can add additional line items to the upload. You can also edit or delete existing line items on the upload.

If you’re happy with the line items, you can skip to importing the rental statement.

4. Adjust the line items

Edit a line item

To edit an existing line item on the upload, select the ‘Edit’ button next to the relevant line item.

Make all the changes you need and once you’re happy, select ‘Save changes’.

Delete a line item

To delete an existing line item on the upload, select the red cross (’X’) button next to the relevant line item.

Select ‘Yes, delete this line item’ to complete the process.

Add a line item

To add a line item, select ‘Add line item’.

Select the type of transaction you want to add, choose the property to allocate it to (if you’re adding an ‘Income’ or ‘Expense’ transaction) and enter a description.

Choose a date, enter the value and select ‘Add item’.

5. Import the rental statement

Once you’re happy with the rental statement, select ‘Import statement’.

Please note that you won’t be able to edit the dates or values of the transactions once the statement has been imported. To make changes, you’ll have to undo the rental statement upload and import it again.

6. Approve the explanations

Finally, once the statement has been imported and FreeAgent’s Guess feature has assigned the transactions to accounting categories, you can approve the transactions.

You can choose to attach the file to the payout transaction in your FreeAgent account, or leave it in the Files or Smart Capture area if it was uploaded there first.

The payout will be recorded as a money out transaction in FreeAgent because the money is being transferred from the rental statement account to your main bank account.

Payments transferred from the rental statement account to your main bank account can be explained as transfers between bank accounts. If you haven’t added your main bank account to FreeAgent, you can explain the payments as ‘Money Paid to User’ and 'Drawings'.

When the transaction imports into the main bank account via a bank feed or statement upload, you can match it to the transaction created by FreeAgent.

Rental statement bank account

After you have imported your first rental statement, FreeAgent will automatically create a bank account for your rental statement transactions. Please note that the ‘Rental statement transactions’ bank account only includes transactions uploaded from your rental statements.

If you have more than one property and use several agencies, you can upload all statements to the single rental statement account.

To upload rental statements going forward, navigate to the new bank account.

Select ‘Upload statement’ in the top-right and follow the steps above.

Undo an import

If you accidentally import the wrong rental statement, you don't have to delete all the transactions individually. You can quickly remove all the transactions from the last import by selecting the ‘More’ button and choosing ‘Undo last upload’.

Select the 'Delete these transactions' button.

You can repeat this process if you've imported more than one incorrect statement. FreeAgent will undo the imports in reverse order, taking out the statement you imported most recently first, and then going backwards from there.