How to Organize Statements, Accounts, and Folders

The Four Tabs

The Statements page in the sidebar has four tabs:

• Statements: every statement you've imported, newest first.
• Accounts: each bank account and card, under the bank or card issuer it belongs to, with its statements.
• Folders: your own groupings, such as one per client, business, or family member.
• Imports: a way to Files, which now keeps the record of every import, live and finished, with what each one cost.

The Statement Library

Each row shows the statement, its bank and the account's last digits (like ··9012), when it was uploaded, its currency, money in and out, and its status (see reviewing a statement for what each status means). A card statement carries a Card chip beside its name. A statement that prints no account number, from a bank with more than one account, carries a Choose account chip: click it to say which account it is. Search by name, bank, or statement type from the search box, or press Ctrl/Cmd+F.

A click selects a row. Double-click it, or press Enter, to open the statement workspace. Right-click a row, or use its menu, to act on one statement:

• Open opens the statement workspace.
• Configure export… exports its transactions. There's also an export button right on the row.
• Send to accounting… builds the file your accounting software imports. See statements to accounting software.
• Analyse statement opens the one-screen analysis described below.
• Run risk analysis… audits it for lending risk.
• Set currency… sets the currency its amounts are in, or confirms the one Bankflow read.
• Move to folder files it in a folder.
• Change bank files the statement under a different bank, or none, when Bankflow read the bank off the file wrong.
• Choose account…, or Account ··1234… when it has digits, says which of the bank's accounts it belongs to. The statement takes the account's bank and number, and its type when one is set.
• Mark as credit card (or Mark as bank account) sets which way its balance runs and what a QuickBooks, Quicken, or OFX export of it describes. Bankflow recognises most card statements when they're imported, from the minimum payment, payment due date, and credit limit they print. Use this for the ones it didn't.
• Include in analytics or Exclude from analytics, Delete original PDF, Report a problem, and Delete.

Working with several statements

Click rows to select them, extend a range with Shift+click, or press Ctrl/Cmd+A to select every visible statement. A selection bar appears with actions for the whole set: run a risk analysis on them together, export them, set their currency, move them to a folder, change their bank, choose their account, mark them as credit card or bank account statements, include them in analytics or exclude them, or delete them.

Notices

Statements imported before account numbers were read can get theirs from the notice at the top of the page, Fill in account numbers, which reads the stored PDFs and uses no credits.

Another notice, Rows outside their statement, appears when a statement holds rows dated well outside its period. Those are usually worked examples from a card statement's terms, imported before such pages were skipped. When the statement prints its period, or you set one, rows more than a month outside it are listed, however many there are; otherwise a statement's rows are judged against the stretch most of them fall in. A row you approved is never listed. Review them and move them to Trash in one click per statement; only the rows listed move, and anything real can be restored from there. If it is the period that is wrong, set it by hand in the statement's workspace (see reviewing a statement).

Accounts

A bank can hold several accounts: a checking account and two cards, say. Bankflow tells them apart by the last digits each statement prints, and keeps each account as a record, made for it when its first statement arrives. The Accounts tab lists each bank with its accounts under it. Each account shows whether it's a bank account or a card, its name or last digits, the day it bills on, whether it is closed, how many statements and transactions it has, and the last day its statements cover.

Click an account, or choose Edit account… from its menu, to change its record:

• Name, such as Operating account. Without one, it is the bank and the last digits.
• Type: Bank account or Credit card. It applies to every statement of the account.
• Billing day: the day of the month a card's statements close. Left empty, Bankflow uses the day its statements keep to.
• Statements expected from: the day the account opened, or leave it empty to start from its first statement.
• A statement is expected every month: untick it for an account that is sent a statement less often.
• Closed, and the day it closed. No statement is expected after that day.

The record is what Workpapers and the monthly close judge a month by: an account owes statements from the day they are expected to the day it closed, so a closed account isn't reported missing ever after. A card's billing day is how the close tells a statement still to come from one that is missing.

From an account's menu:

• Mark closed… sets the day it closed, from the end of its last statement. Reopen clears it.
• Merge into… is for two accounts that are the same one, such as when one statement was read with no number. Its statements move to the account you pick, and it is removed.
• Delete removes an account with no statements.

Add account, at the top of the tab, records an account the client has that no statement has arrived for yet. Pick its bank and give its last digits; the close lists it as missing until its statements are in.

Assumed closings

When an account's record is first made and no statement has arrived for it in over three months, it is taken to have closed with its last statement, and shows Closed with (assumed) beside the date. Open it and save to confirm it, or untick Closed if the account is still open. The monthly close asks too, with Account closed? beside a missing statement, and a missing month in a Workpapers engagement offers The account closed….

Picking an account

Wherever you pick statements, in books, in the Transactions filters, and in Workpapers, you can pick an account instead of statement by statement. Every statement of that account is included, later ones too.

Banks

A bank in Bankflow groups the accounts and statements from one bank or card issuer, and each statement belongs to one. When the same bank gives you a checking account and a credit card, both sit under that one bank on the Accounts tab, each with its own digits and type. Bankflow usually creates the bank for you when it recognises a statement, with the bank's logo where one is available. You can also add one yourself with Add bank.

The open button on a bank's row shows its money in and out over time, and every statement linked to the bank. From a bank's menu:

• Manage bank changes its name and icon (a logo, a custom image, or an uploaded one), sets the Account type for new statements Bankflow can't classify from the page (spreadsheets, scans, and cards that print no summary), and sets the Pages to skip on every import (see importing statements).
• Analyse bank opens the analysis for every statement from that bank.
• Delete removes the bank. A bank that still has statements linked to it can't be deleted; move or delete those statements first. When you delete several banks at once, any with linked statements are skipped.

To move a statement from one bank to another, use Change bank on the statement.

Folders

Folders group statements across banks. An accountant might keep one folder per client, a household one per person. Create one on the Folders tab, then move statements in from each statement's menu, or select several statements and move them together.

Open a folder to see its statements, or use Analyse folder for a summary of all of them. Edit changes the folder's name, icon, and colour. Deleting a folder doesn't delete its statements; they become unfiled.

On the Transactions page, the Folder filter narrows the ledger to one folder, so you can export or review a single client's transactions without the others in the way.

Imports

Every import is listed in Files in the sidebar, beside the documents and commission statements that came in. Each file says where it came from (an upload, a forwarded email, Capture, the API, or a client's upload link), who added it, when, and the credits it used. It also says when pages were skipped as terms, and how many balance breaks were fixed, with the detail in the tooltip, and marks a statement deleted since. Filter by status to see what's Waiting or Failed: an import paused for lack of credits can be resumed once you've topped up, and a failed one can be retried. Imports being read also show in the tray at the foot of the screen. If a result came back empty and you believe the statement has transactions, use Report a problem from the statement's menu; credits for a result we got wrong are refunded.

Analyse a Statement, Bank, or Folder

Analyse on any statement, bank, or folder opens a one-screen summary of just those statements. Along the top are money in, money out, net, and the number of movements. Below them are six tiles:

• Cash flow: the running total across the period.
• Money flow: where money came from and went, by category or by merchant.
• Spend map: spending grouped into bubbles.
• Largest movements: the biggest transactions in and out.
• Top merchants and Top categories.

Click a tile to see it full size, and All tiles to go back. The picker at the top narrows the scope, so a bank can be cut down to two of its statements. Open in ledger takes you to the same transactions on the Transactions page.

Icons and Colours

Banks, folders, contacts, categories, and tags all use the same Icon and colour dialog. Pick an icon, choose a colour from the palette or enter your own, and choose a background: Solid (a white icon on the colour), Tinted (the icon on a wash of the colour), or None (the icon alone, in the colour). Banks and contacts can also use a custom image instead of an icon.

Next Step

See how the statements you've organised become one ledger in working with transactions, or check that every account has every month in the monthly close and in Workpapers.