Approve explanations for bank feed transactions

This article explains how to approve imported bank transaction explanations that FreeAgent has automatically attempted to explain.

Transactions that are imported and explained by FreeAgent’s Guess feature will be marked 'For approval' in their own dedicated tab. You can differentiate a guessed transaction from other bank transactions because the text of the transaction will be coloured orange and it will have an orange ‘eye’ icon next to it.

Although these transactions behave like explained transactions, FreeAgent flags them for approval to allow you to easily identify and check that the explanations are correct.

If the initial explanation isn’t correct, but Guess has identified more than one category as a possible explanation for the transaction, FreeAgent will present these alternatives when you select a different category.

We strongly recommend that you approve each explanation to ensure that it’s correct and improve the chances that FreeAgent will be able to guess future imported transactions. 

Identifying transactions marked for approval

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.

Select the ‘For approval’ tab.

Sorting bank transactions alphabetically

You can sort bank transactions alphabetically in the ‘For approval’ and ‘Unexplained’ tabs.

To do this, select the ‘Description’ header within the ‘For approval’ or ‘Unexplained’ tab. Please note that it’s not possible to sort transactions alphabetically in the ‘All transactions’ or ‘Manually added’ tabs.

The alphabetical sorting will only apply to the most recent 1,000 bank transactions in the chosen tab. Sorting bank transactions in the ‘For approval’ tab will not sort the transactions in the ‘Unexplained’ tab unless you also select the ‘Description’ header within that tab.

Please note that sorting bank transactions by selecting the ‘Date’ header in any of the tabs will override the alphabetical sorting in the ‘For approval’ and ‘Unexplained’ tabs.

How to approve transactions

If the guessed explanation is correct

To approve the guessed explanation of a transaction that’s marked for approval, select the transaction and select ‘Approve & save changes’.

The transaction will then show as fully explained and FreeAgent will learn from this when guessing new transactions in future.

If the guessed explanation is incorrect

If the guessed explanation is incorrect, select the ‘Category’ drop-down menu and choose a different category to allocate the transaction to.

If Guess has identified more than one category as a possible explanation for the transaction, FreeAgent will suggest these alternatives at the top of the drop-down menu when you select a different category.

Once you’ve selected the relevant category, select ‘Approve & save changes’.

Approving multiple transactions in bulk

To approve multiple guessed explanations of transactions, tick the checkbox next to each transaction you want to approve. 

To quickly select all the transactions on a page, tick the checkbox for one transaction and then tick the box that appears to the left of ‘Date’, just below the time period drop-down menu. This will select all the other transactions listed on the page. 

Once you’ve selected the relevant transactions, select 'Approve explanations' in the bar that appears above the list of transactions.