Announcement: New bank explain release

I am so fed up with your "new features". When will you stop messing with the layouts and the way things look? Can't you understand your constant "improvements" make it difficult for people to use the software? Bank feeds again look alien and unintuitive. When will this stop? Why is it not possible to introduce the updates without changing the layout?

I am no longer able to select 'Trade Creditors' as an account when using the 'Create New Payment' option when using this new page, it's just vanished from the drop-down list. It has worked fine for years but it seems to have just stopped working. I decided to add this feedback here rather than create a new ticket, as I believe my issue relates to the introduction of this functionality.

I'm happy with this new layout and functionality, but would suggest you perhaps add some further navigation buttons to this page so you can more easily navigate between bank statement months.

Hi Graham

Thanks very much for your positive feedback on the new layout and functionality, and also the suggestion of navigation between statements. This is a great concept and will be considered for future updates.

With regard to the trade creditors account code no longer being available, the new bank explain page has a 'Save as unallocated payment' button which will post the payment to the selected supplier account, to be allocated later. This is all you need to do to record any payments on account, over payments etc. Trade creditors will be updated automatically when unallocated payments are recorded.

You can also partially allocate a payment, and/or create a new payment for part of the bank transaction amount, and use the same button to save the remaining amount as an unallocated balance against the selected contact.

For bank receipts, there is a 'Save as unallocated receipt' button which does exactly the same for the selected customer account.

Hi Peter

Many thanks for the help here, I did see the 'unallocated payment' button but was not certain if this fed through automatically to the Trade Creditors account. I assume this feature also takes care of the VAT treatment automatically?

Yes that's correct. Any unallocated payments and receipts will only affect the trade creditors or trade debtors account and the bank account. No VAT amounts are recorded.

Can you add an option so you apply a bank payment to a foreign currency invoice and it automatically writes off any Fx difference.

E.g. if i have a USD invoice for €9, when i auto post this it calculates the GBP at 7.10. Then when the payment appears on my bank, the GBP value is actually 7.15. I have to create a dummy invoice for the difference which is really long winded.

Especially with the explosion of online software subscriptions, so many of them are in USD and this is really frustrating and time consuming that Clearbooks doesnt accommodate this.

Hi Claire. Thank you for this suggestion. We will look into how we could accommodate this when explaining bank transactions.

In the meantime, rather than manually creating a dummy bill, if the bank payment is less than the bill GBP amount, you can allocate the full amount of the payment to the bill and then when viewing the bill, you can use the 'FX' option to write off the balance remaining as a forex movement.

Where the bank payment is less than the bill GBP amount, you can allocate part of the bank payment amount to the bill, and post the remaining amount as a new payment coded to the 'Forex movement' account code.