Purchases

Bank-Led Payment

Turn imported bank withdrawals into vendor payments without leaving the banking screen.

A bank-led payment starts from an imported bank statement line, not from a vendor record. When you import a bank statement and reconcile the period, the withdrawals your book never recorded are sent to the Classification tab of that bank account, where they sit in Uncategorized Expenses — a holding account, not a real expense. You turn each one into a payment voucher for a vendor, or post it straight to a ledger account, and the line leaves the worklist.

Bank-led payment is the preferred workflow when your bank account is the source of truth. Every line on the statement is accounted for before you close a period.

Finance › Banks & Cash › account › Classification: select a withdrawal, convert it to a payment for one vendor, then match it to bills.

The Five-Step Process

Import your bank statement

Finance → Banks & Cash → select the account → import. Upload an Excel (.xlsx, .xls), CSV or PDF statement. The lines are stored as statement lines for the period.

Reconcile the period

On the Reconciliation tab, match statement lines against what the book already has. Whatever the book never recorded is sent to Classification with Send N to Classification — those lines post to Uncategorized Income or Uncategorized Expenses.

Open the Classification tab

Classify uncategorised money lists the lines by direction: Money out · expenses, Money in · income. Each row shows Date, Description, Amount and Category. Rules from the Rules tab may suggest a category; suggestions are offered, never applied for you — Apply N suggestions takes them all at once.

Convert to payments

Select the withdrawal(s) and click Convert N to payments. Choose one vendor (and optionally a center) for the selected lines. Each line becomes its own payment voucher, created in the background with the bank amount.

Match the bills

The new voucher carries no allocations, so its status is Unmatched. Open it from Payment vouchers and use Match Bills to allocate the amount to the vendor's open bills. Vouchers created from bank lines cannot be edited — void and recreate to correct one.

Journal Created

The journal created by a bank-led payment is identical to a manual payment. The source (bank statement vs manual entry) does not affect the accounting — the cash leg is the Uncategorized Expenses line that the import already posted, now moved to Accounts Payable.

Bank-led payment — 8,500 withdrawal converted to a vendor payment

Account	Debit	Credit	Description
Accounts Payable	8,500.00	—	Vendor obligation reduced once the voucher is matched to bills.
Uncategorized Expenses	—	8,500.00	The holding line is cleared; the bank leg was posted at import.

The line disappears from Classification and the voucher appears in Payment vouchers.

Categorizing Without a Vendor Bill

Not every bank withdrawal has a corresponding vendor bill. Bank charges, government fees and direct debits may have no bill in the system.

Withdrawal Type	How to Categorize
Vendor payment (bill exists)	Convert to payments → choose the vendor → Match Bills on the voucher
Vendor payment (no bill yet)	Convert to payments → choose the vendor. The voucher stays Unmatched; match it when the bill is recorded.
Bank service charge	Pick the Bank charges account in the row's Category and click Post this line (the built-in rule suggests it for fee-like descriptions).
Government fee or tax payment	Pick the appropriate ledger account in the row and post it — or set it on several rows with Move to ledger → Set all.
Salary payment	Pick the salaries account and post, or run it through Payroll.
Owner withdrawal / dividend	Pick the drawings or dividends account and post.

How Suggestions Work

The Classification tab offers three kinds of help, all of them suggestions you accept or ignore:

Your bank rules — Rules tab. Deterministic, in priority order, first match wins. A rule sets the suggested category on matching lines.
The built-in bank-charge rule — descriptions containing words such as commission, charge, fee, levy, stamp duty, SMS or maintenance are suggested to your Bank charges account.
Document matches — a background matcher compares lines against open documents and labels a row "Looks like BIL000123 · vendor · high" when it finds a likely candidate.

💡TIP

Write rules for the vendors you pay every month. If the bank shows "TRF MERIDIAN SUPPLIES" for payments to Meridian Supplies, a rule on that text saves you choosing the vendor every time.

Reconciliation Target

Bank-led payment is part of the month-end reconciliation workflow. The goal is an empty Classification tab at period close — the screen says All categorised when nothing is left.

Reconciliation Check	How to Verify
All withdrawals categorized	Classification → Money out · expenses shows no rows
All deposits categorized	Classification → Money in · income shows no rows
Bank balance matches	Banks & Cash → account balance equals the closing balance on your statement
Converted vouchers matched	Payment vouchers list shows no Unmatched vouchers for the period

Allocating the voucher the conversion creates: Matching a payment to bills.
Why a bank-fed voucher cannot be edited: Voiding a payment.
Where the unclassified lines come from: Uncategorized transactions.
Recording a payment by hand instead: Manual payment.