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More Advanced Transactions

Correcting mistakes

If you make a mistake entering a transaction in Easy Books, don't worry: it's easy to fix!

 

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The first thing I want to cover is how to correct an error in a previous entry.

In the example I have entered a payment for printer ink. I thought I'd paid using the company debit card, which is linked to the bank account. But now I remember I used our credit card. Some accounts packages force you to add adjustments to correct errors, but in Easy Books, just open the transaction and make changes.

After you save the transaction, the affected accounts are highlighted briefly. The transaction no longer appears in the list for the bank account, it appears under the credit card instead.

You can change most things about a transaction, such as the date, linked accounts and so on. But transactions are locked when they are reconciled on a statement, or if making changes would affect a previous consolidation. When a transaction is locked in this way, a message appears on the form to explain why changes cannot be made.

Adding a split

A simple transaction is a movement of money from one account to another. To move money from one account into many accounts at once, use a split. Split transactions are commonly used to create sales invoices, but you might also split a transaction if you want to keep track of costs separately. In the video, we look at adding a split to separate the cost of postage from the cost of printer ink.

 

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Now let's look at how to record split transactions.

In the previous video I recorded a purchase of printer ink using the company credit card. In this video I'll assume we want to record postage separately, perhaps to keep track on how much the business spends on postage each year.

To do this, open the transaction from the credit card account. Now let's assume the purchase was made online and the receipt shows a breakdown with the inks costing £21 and the postage £3. To change the existing entry, I'll TAB down to the amount and change it to 21. Next, I'll add a split to the transaction. I'll set the postage account by typing the account. I can see I don't have an expense account set up to record postage, but Easy Books for Mac can create the account as needed. Now I'll set the amount paid. VAT was charged on the total, so I'll set the VAT account as before.

Saving the transaction will now record an amount for postage which appears separately on the Profit & Loss report.

Adding a split to a transaction is commonly used when entering sale transactions. You can create an invoice for your customer with each line item shown separately. Use the Detail field to record the text that appears on each invoice line.

Duplicating and repeating transactions

If you find yourself entering similar transactions often, make things easier by duplicating an existing one. If your transactions repeat (e.g. monthly) you can use Easy Books to create the recurring transactions for you. This video shows:

  • How to duplicate a milage entry to save re-calculating the amount, and
  • How to set up a recurring transaction to handle the regular monthly cost of a phone contract.

 

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Duplicating a Transaction

Let's look at how to save time by duplicating transactions.

If you are about to enter a transaction that is very similar to another, you can save a lot of time by finding the old one first. Just duplicate it, setting the new date and editing where necessary. Doing this will mean your entries are more consistent, and you don't need to stop and think about which expense account is appropriate for the entry.

Recurring Transactions

If a transaction repeats every month, we can tell Easy Books to create the duplicate automatically.

Businesses often have costs that repeat each month, for example a mobile phone contract may be billed using a direct debit linked to the bank account.

Create the first transaction as usual, or find the most recent one if you have been entering them manually each time. Set it to repeat monthly, using the dropdown options shown top right in the transaction form. When you save it, Easy Books will create the next entry for you as the date passes.

You can view a list of transactions set up to repeat by scrolling the Accounts Panel to reveal some additional options.

If you want to stop a transaction from repeating, edit it and set the repeat interval to None.

If a transaction has repeated before you had chance to cancel it, just delete the latest copy. Deleting the latest one will stop it from repeating