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In BankTree Online Personal Finance transactions are added to Accounts. Depending on the Type of Account you have you can add different types of transactions. For Cash Accounts you can add Income, Expense and Transfer transactions. Income & Expense transactions can also be Split in to separate categories. There is a separate article detailing Investments and investment transactions. This article will deal with transactions for cash accounts only.

To add a transaction click on the Add Transaction button either on the Dashboard, the top menu or the account screen, for your selected account. You can select your account from the ACCOUNTS side menu.

The Add Transaction dialogue is shown:

Type

The available options are Income, Expense and Transfer. The main premise of the software is that no mater what cash account you have selected, whether you are entering a credit for a credit card, or cash purchase. An Income type transaction will increase the account balance and an expense type transaction will decrease the account balance. A transfer will create two transactions, the first transaction is an expense (paid out) for the Account From, and the second transaction is an income (paid in) for the Account To.

Amount

The amount or value for the transaction, you do not need to enter a minus sign for an expense, as the transaction type will determine what sign to use

Date

The date for the transaction.

Account

Select or enter the account. The selected account, is the account selected for the account page or the default account if no account page has been selected

Category

BankTree Online is populated with pre filled categories, you can also enter your own. To pick an existing category or enter a category of your own you just start to type the name of the category. The category selection will search for the category in the parent category list, the subcategory list and in the combined parent and subcategory list. To search the combined category list you need to enter the parent category separated with a colon (:) and then the subcategory.

Payee

To search your own payee list or add a new one you can just start to type the name of the payee, and the suggestion list will become populated.

If the Account has been selected and you have yet to enter details of the Amount and Category, as you tab or lose focus form the Payee field the last used payee is used to populate the Amount and Category fields for you.

The fields entered so far will provide the minimum fields required to create a transaction the following fields are optional. By pressing the MORE link further options are available

Apply Tax

If the selected category has been set up with an accompanying sales tax / VAT tax category, then checking this tick box will automatically create a split transaction with the appropriate net amount and tax amount

Currency Calculator

Next to the Amount field, is the currency calculator button. By clicking this option, you are able to calculate the Amount in a different currency. The currency dialogue allows you to select the currency. On selection the exchange rate is shown and the amount is calculated in the selected currency. You can overwrite these values. Pressing OK, will write back the conversion to the Amount field.

Description

Add a description / narrative for your transaction

Ref

Add a reference or Cheque Number

Status

This is the status of the transaction; the options available are Uncleared, Cleared and Reconciled. You can also set a default value for the status field. Go to the Settings icon in the top menu bar and select Application. You can then change the default status to one of the options available.

Repeat

By making a selection for Repeat, details for the schedule item can be entered, thus creating a schedule based on the current transaction. For example, to have a monthly recurring transaction select Monthly for repeat, you can then select the duration. The schedule can be created forever or for a number of events. If you select "events" you will then need to pick the number of events the schedule will run, before ending.

Attachments

By clicking the attachments link you can add attachments, such as receipts or documents to the transaction. Once attached you can view them in the viewer or download them.

After SAVING a transaction, the transaction is shown on the account it was assigned to. For transfers the transaction will be available on the Account To, and the Account From.

Join Transfer

There is also an option to join two transactions together. This button will only be available for a normal transaction, which does not already have a transfer or split items. The Join Transfer dialogue will allow you to select the account you are making the transfer to, you will then see a list of transactions that meet the criteria:

The transaction amount must be the same value but opposite sign to the original transaction, ie if your original transaction is an expense for £10.00 the listed transactions will be for income for £10.00, and vice versa.

The date of the transactions shown are within 14 days before and 14 after the date of the original transaction.

Select the transaction listed, and save the transfer. 

Inline Edit Menu

In the Account transaction screen there are further options available by editing the transaction, inline. Click on the drop down arrow for the transaction row that has been added. This will show the inline menu buttons EDIT, COPY, SPLIT and DELETE

EDIT

This will show the EDIT dialogue allowing you to edit the transaction.

COPY

The transaction is copied to the current account.

SPLIT

The SPLIT transaction dialogue is shown allowing you to add further categories and amount for the split transaction

DELETE

Select this to DELETE the transaction

Inline Editing

This is available as an alternative to the EDIT menu option, and allows you to change the details of the transaction within the grid. By clicking a transaction within the grid you can amend the selection such as Flag, Account, Date, Payee, Category, Ref, Description, Amount and Status. After making the change click the Tick button to save the change for the transaction row.

The grid is also flexible allowing you to increase or decrease the number of rows that are show from 10 to 100. You can also enter a search text for the grid and all matching entries for the current account will be found.

Bulk Editing

This allows making changes to a number of transactions in one go. You first select the transactions, just by clicking the row, so the row becomes highlighted. To select ALL; check the tick box for the header at the top. After making your selection the SELECTED EDIT drop down menu will become enabled. The bulk edit menu will allow you to EDIT, COPY, MATCH and DELETE. The functionality for this is the same as that previously discussed for the inline menu options. The MATCH option is used to match imports that have been pattern matched. Selecting this option will accept the match made during the import.

Selecting the EDIT menu will bring up the BULK EDIT dialogue, this is slightly different to the EDIT and ADD dialogue as it allows you to select ONE or MANY options to be applied to the selected transactions.

Editing Columns

Next to the ADD TRANSACTION button is the columns setting cog, by clicking this you can hide or show columns for the transaction view. You need to have at least one column visible - after making your selection press the SAVE button.

Transactions are normally ordered in chronological order by Date. You can also change the ordering by selecting a different column and ordering by that column, by just clicking the column header. The direction arrows on the column will show which column the transactions are ordered by.