Transfer between bank accounts
This help guide article covers how to record transfers between bank accounts (and what to do if you're having an issue with a transfer between bank accounts not matching), and explains why transfers between bank accounts don't show up within your financial reports.
Note: It's a common accounting misconception among churches and charities that they need to: (a) have a separate bank account for each restricted or designated fund, and (b) have to try and keep the bank balances of such bank accounts aligned with the already correct fund balances within your financial reports (you don't!)
For further information about this, click here.
How to record transfers between bank accounts
When money is being moved between two bank accounts, there is no need to record the transfer within ExpensePlus upfront (instead this is done at the point of bank matching). You should therefore follow these steps after the transfer has been made.
- Upload the bank statements for BOTH bank accounts the money has moved between.
- On the match transactions screen of one of the two bank accounts, select the bank transaction on the left-hand table, then click the + button
- Within the popup that appears, select the transaction type as To Bank / Card Account (or From Bank / Card Account option in the transfers section of the popup).
Important: Before you can do this, you need to ensure that you have uploaded bank statements for both bank accounts, otherwise, the bank transfer transaction you want to match will have nothing to match to (i.e. if you are trying to match a £250 payment between Bank Account A and Bank Account B you need to have uploaded both statements (A+B) with the same £250 transaction on each, see image above).
Overcoming common issues
If you have uploaded all bank statement transactions and you are still unable to bank match, go to the account the money has come from / gone to and double-check that the transaction is still showing on the account as unmatched, and therefore hasn't been incorrectly matched to something else by mistake.
The most common reasons why internal transfers won't match are:
- Not all bank statements have been uploaded, so there is nothing to match to (which can easily be solved by uploading the missing bank statement)
- The statement for the other account has already been matched, and the income/outgoing bank transfer has been matched incorrectly (this can be resolved by going to the view statement screen for that bank account, and then unmatching the transaction using the button right of the transaction on that screen).
- The statement for the other bank account doesn't include the transaction - it is common that .CSV credit card statements don't always include the incoming transfer from your main bank account.
- One of the bank statements has been incorrectly uploaded e.g. with the 'Paid In' and 'Paid Out' columns around the wrong way - unless you have selected to manually set your own import format this won't happen, and if you have done this incorrectly, you should have spotted this at the point of bank uploaded (if you didn't, you will need to read this help guide article).
Why don't transfers between Bank Accounts show within financial reports?
It's a common accounting misconception among churches and charities that they need to: (a) have a separate bank account for each restricted or designated fund and (b) have to try and keep the bank balances of such bank accounts aligned with the already correct fund balances within your financial reports (you don't!). For further information, click here.
If you want to move money between funds, you don't need to make a physical transfer to do this - what you do need to do with the adjustments screen in ExpensePlus is record either:
- A Fund-to-Fund transfer, or
- A Transfer between Categories
Moving money physically between bank accounts won't change the fund balance of any of your funds - remember, just because you might think of the money in a particular bank account as belonging to a particular fund, this isn't how fund accounting works and you could indeed have all of the money from all of your funds in the same bank account.
In summary, there isn't an issue with doing bank-to-bank transfers; you just need to bear in mind that these are neither income nor expenditure, which is why you won't see these in your income and expenditure reports. If you wish to move money between funds, you need to do so via either a fund-to-fund transfer or a transfer between categories.
To better understand the Bank Reconciliation module, please view the module overview video here.