How to work with transactions

This tutorial shows how to work with transactions.

Once transactions are extracted from a source file, there are several things you can do to manipulate them:

Set the output format
Edit transaction details (see a separate tutorial)
Set the view date format
Include or exclude transactions from conversion
Highlight multiple transactions as a range or individual ones and manipulate them
Change the year for all or selected transactions
Change the amount sign for all or selected transactions
Add a new Transaction

Start the ProperConvert app and select a file to load. It could be a CSV file, PDF file, or any other supported file. Then, you would see transactions inside the application.

Set the Output Format

The first thing you should do is to select the Output format because the Output format defines which fields or which columns you can work with.

For the QBO, QFX, OFX files - there is no category column. The specification for these formats does not describe a category as a transaction detail. These files are online banking files, and your bank is not aware of your bookkeeping details. The categorization is done after transactions are imported inside the accounting software.

But there is a category column for the QIF files. Please be aware about Quicken limitations for QIF imports with Category matching an account name in Quicken. Quicken does not import income transactions when the category is set as the account name.

There is also an additional Split Name column for the IIF files. Set the Output format as the first thing.

Edit Transaction Details

You can edit any cell in this table, so you can edit it any way you like. Dates should stay Dates, Amounts should stay Amounts, and for Names and Memos, you can enter anything you like. That's it about working with transactions inside the application.

Set the View Date Format

The next thing is this control - 'Show Dates as', which defines how dates are shown inside the application. In your source file, like a CSV file or PDF file dates could be in a different date format.

They could be in date/months/year format, they could be just months/day format, and it's not how you expect to see dates usually inside, let's say Quickbooks or other financial application, so, it could be quite confusing if dates are not shown in an expected format. So, this control defines, that dates regardless of how they are presented in the input file, they will be shown always the same way inside the application.

Include or Exclude Transactions

Checkboxes define if a transaction will be included in the Output. If you want all transactions to be included - make sure all of them have checkboxes checked off.

If you want some transactions excluded - just exclude one or more rows.

You can use this header of checkboxes to quickly check or uncheck all transactions.

Highlight Multiple Transactions and Apply action

When you work with transactions, you would want to do certain things to a group of transactions, so for this, you have to first highlight them. If you click on one transaction left-click, then you would highlight this transaction, and you click another one - you highlight this one.

If you want to highlight a few of them, let's say the range, click the first one, hold the 'Shift' key on your keyboard, and click the last one to select the transaction range, so those are highlighted ranges.

You can click one and then hold 'Ctrl' and click another one and that would make them those two highlighted.

Once you highlighted them, you can right-click on any highlighted area to bring this menu. This will apply to highlighted transactions, so you can check them, you can uncheck them, and you can change +/-, you can add the year.

So, this is useful if, let's say, you have a statement, that goes over year-end and the year-end is not detected. Then you would have a few transactions for December 2015, then transactions for January 2015, which should be 2016. So, what would you do - is just select those January dates, and then right-click and then say 'Year +'.

Adjust the Year

If you have a missing year in your CSV file or the year cannot be determined, you can quickly change the year of dates, without touching month, year and day. So this way you could adjust it without touching other parts of the date. Click on the 'Set year' arrow buttons to adjust all dates loaded inside the application or with the popup menu adjust year only for highlighted transactions.

Adjust year for crossing year statement

Let's say, you have a statement, that goes over year-end and the year-end is not detected. Then you would have December 2015, December 2015, then January 2015, which should be 2016. So, what would you do - is just select those January dates, and then right-click and then say 'Year +'.

Change the Amount Sign

Another button that works similarly is a 'Change +/-' for all. It applies to all transactions loaded inside the application and some CSV files may have a reverse amount sign like especially Credit Card files - they could have expenses as positive numbers and payments to the account as negative numbers. Expenses must be always negative and payments to the account must be always positive. So, to quickly adjust that, click the button once profile.

Add a New Transaction

The next thing you can do is to click 'Add Transaction' to add just an additional transaction, as part of your conversion. Sometimes you need to do this quickly add a couple of transactions and this button allows you to do that.