We are working on this at the moment.

Hopefully shouldn't be long before 'delete guards' are in the system.

What if my 'confirm delete' idea was combined with a 'batch delete' function so that multiple items could be deleted at once?

Strongly agree with this.

It might also be handy to keep a list of deleted transactions somewhere/somehow so they could be restored if need be.

Hi guys,

We have a new solution for this now.

The bank import tool is a bit smarter in the way it deals with duplicates. It will check whether the new statement imported has any payments or receipts which have the same amount,date and description (all three have to match) and delete these automatically.

So for example I have imported a statement for the 30th Oct as shown below:

I have then fully explained the statement (although this will work if the statement was left unexplained too).

I now import a statement with the same transactions for the 30th Oct plus a few more on this day and some from the 31st Oct too.

If I try to import this statement the system will tell me that some duplicates have been found and have been deleted already.

You can view the transactions that have been deleted by clicking on the See them here button:

Hope that all makes sense! If you have any questions just let me know.

Hi Dave (and others),

Just a quick update - we'll be introducing an accelerator to the delete guard:

By holding the alt key while clicking on the icon, the confirmation message wouldn't show, so it will behave just as now.

(So if you need to delete 10 transactions, you just hold alt and click on the X icon on 10 transactions - no confirmation will show).

Until we implement bulk delete, this is the least-effort solution we can think of.

Let me know your thoughts.

Yes. Similar to what Martin said, the same scenario is the current case with PayPal imports etc.

We are working on a way to make this aspect of the system more usable. But for the mean time...

On delete guards

The delete-guard (confirmation upon delete action) is going live this week (but not in this page, it will be tested in the delete quote operation):

So it should be easy to implement this for statement transactions in due course.

On batch delete

I also suspect implementing this won't be too hard, but this seems to be a good candidate for the new tables we're currently testing (where it should be even quicker to implement). I'll bring this up on this Friday meeting to see what others think is the best course of action.

On 'redundant' transactions

Notwithstanding, we are still looking at a more elegant way to solve this - seems clear that some transactions are 'redundant' - these should be automatically picked by the system and allow users a quicker handling compared to the two solutions above.

Roey, I may be able to help here.

My original request was for delete guards on banking transactions (i.e. before a transaction has been explained). Dave felt that could make dealing with imported statements take longer. But we agreed that if there was a batch delete option for transactions (and the delete guard then just asked "Are you sure you want to delete ALL these items?"), that would solve the problem.

With a batch delete option too?

Was just about to say that! Batch delete would be fantastic (as would the ability to batch move between nominals!!)

Thanks Dave,

I've marked this as a bug.

Hey guys,

Encountered first example it hasn't worked for:

JOSE MUÃ?OZ ALGABA

Seems the unusal characters prevented it from recognising it was a duplicate

Incredibly minor issue that I'm really not worried about - Just thought you'd like to know

Hey Roey,

Your formatting came out better than me, that is what I meant aye. Great feature :)

Hi Dave,

I've been discussing this with the developer. Currently that 'intelligent' part is not implemented, but we're pretty sure this can be done with relative ease.

Just to clarify, you are discussing this case:

Eventual Bank Statement (6th Dec)
T1 | 04 Dec 14 | Refund | 10p
T2 | 04 Dec 14 | Refund | 20p
T3 | 04 Dec 14 | Refund | 20p
T4 | 04 Dec 14 | Refund | 30p

First CSV import (4th Dec)
T1 | 04 Dec 14 | Refund | 10p
T2 | 04 Dec 14 | Refund | 20p

Second CSV import (5th Dec)
T2 | 04 Dec 14 | Refund | 20p
T3 | 04 Dec 14 | Refund | 20p
T4 | 04 Dec 14 | Refund | 30p
.

In this case, T3 won't be imported.

I'll add this as a requested improvement.

Nice feature John.

Hey John,

This popped up for me yesterday and I was very impressed! Double checked it of course and it was spot on which will save time daily. My one question is how does it deal with 2 transactions that look the same?

For Example

Nov-22 Cash Withdrawal £10 Imported transactions here Nov-22 Cash Withdrawal £10

So when I imported on 23rd it sees Nov-22 Cash Withdrawal £10 Nov-22 Cash Withdrawal £10

One of which is already there - Will it delete both or intelligently delete one?

Fringe case but we frequently have test payments and refunds flying in and out of Amazons account which can result in a transaction with the same amount and description up to 7 times daily

Regards,

Ah yes that's true - the development team will be working on a solution to this particular problem in the near future.

Thanks John, but that doesn't really solve the problem here -

For example we imported a bank statement yesterday and explained everything, yet 3 transactions occurred AFTER the import. If when I do the import today I ignored all transactions yesterday, I would miss those 3 payments. Makes it necessary to import with an overlap and delete ones that are already explained, so that we can explain any that came in afterwards.

Best,

Hi Everyone,

There is a bulk delete option for unexplained transactions on imported statements that exists already -

While viewing the imported statement click on the Narrow Results link:

Next select the date range of the transactions that you want to keep i.e. any transactions not in the date range you select will be deleted:

Then hit the Narrow results button to complete.

Just be aware this is for unexplained transactions only.

Hi Dave,

There will still be a page refresh when you click on the X icon, BUT we are working to change this - we are currently working on stage A (a new component for all tables), then we'll work on stage B (the server API part) which is massively needed for many other parts of the system, but more important tasks are currently being worked on.

Anyhow, the bulk delete feature (which is a separate feature), means that there is only be one page refresh for all transactions deleted.

Sounds good - Will the page still refresh each time you click the X icon or will it be possible to do them all in one go?

Sounds like a good compromise to me!

That's a very good point Dave. Really helpful when users spell real use case scenarios like having up to 30 transaction a day to delete.

I'll bring this up on Friday meeting and see whether the developers can do the batch delete quickly. We won't be deploying the delete guards on that screen before that.

From my point of view: we import our bank statement everyday - An import on the 16th September for example includes the 15th September, and, as transactions occur throughout the day, inevitably some overlap no matter when you do the import. This ensures no transactions are missed and the duplicated ones are deleted. Sometimes this can be up to 30 transactions, which you're now adding a confirmation box to so this task would take double the time? I'm not sure that change is justifiable just to avoid mis-clicks - Unless you implement batch deletion alongside it

Hello Martin,

The transaction being duplicated is from the bank imports. There is currently no method to flag the imports list as showing the same amount for 2 imports.

You will need to explain one item on one import and then delete the duplicate in the second import.

As mentioned above by Roey, we are looking into having the delete pop up box for some areas such as this.

Vanish

From my point of view : if I have 2 accounts and I'm making transfers between them, I only want to explain the transfer once. So, I delete the transfers from one of the two accounts. Otherwise, I will be double accounting as each transfer will appear twice on both account.

From my point you view, it would primarily be used when the 'reconcile' function on an imported statement line is unavailable for whatever reason.

OK,

Before I provide a comprehensive answer, I've got one more question. It's an elementary one, and I probably know the answer, but understanding why you are doing what you are doing could help us provide better solutions:

Why would you need to delete transactions in the first place?

Thanks, Roey

Hi Martin & Dave, I have let Roey know that you have written to him and he will pick your messages up as soon as possible.

Thanks

Chris

Exactly what Martin said - when dealing with overlapping imports having to confirm every individual deletion would double the length of the time it takes - Being able to select all the transactions you want to delete, then a confirmation box making you check you selected all the right ones would be ideal for everyone :)

Hi Dave,

I'm not sure what you're asking - are you asking if delete guards will also be part of batch delete operations, or are you asking for batch delete option? Which page exactly are we talking about?

Hi Martin, Kevin and Dave,

Thank you all for opinions and ideas. I can see that this may be a popular opinion among our customers and already has a decent amount of likes. This feature may be a popular one as many customers do have the problem where they accidentally delete transactions and have difficulties retrieving them. So keep the support coming guys and Im sure our developers will take note of this.

Kind Regards,

Best of both worlds!

Disagree, this would make importing a statement with an overlapping date take twice as long