Bank & Credit Card Registers

Your Bank and Credit Card Registers manage all your bank and credit card accounts associated with your business.  These Registers help you reconcile the balance in the your financial institution with the balance in your financial system. It’s easy to lose sight of your money with all the income and expenses going in and out of your accounts.  An essential part of your business and financial awareness is knowing how much money you have in the bank or charged on credit cards at any given moment.  These Registers are an easy way to monitor multiple accounts, in real-time, and stay on top of your Cash Flow.

Quick Summary:

1. How to Access your Bank and Credit Card Registers
2. Add a New Financial Institution (Bank or Credit Card Account)
3. Bank/Credit Card Register Dashboard
4. Add a New Transaction
5. Assigning Unassigned Transactions
6. Reconciling Balances
7. How to Clear Transactions
8. How to Import Transactions

Step-by-Step Guide:

1. To access/review your Bank Register - Click on the 'Financial' → 'Banking' → 'Banks' tab.
   

   

2. Add a New Financial Institution (Bank or Credit Card Account)
   To add a new bank or financial institution, click the ‘+ Add Bank’ widget and follow the prompts.
   
   
   
3. Bank/Credit Card Register Dashboard
   It's important to maintain an accurate view of the balance(s) in your account(s) to protect your Cash Flow.  The Bank and Credit Card Registers provide easy access to these balances and help you know what actions need attention to keep your accounts aligned.    
   
   Clicking on each account will activate the register for that account.  The yellow circle in the account represents actions needed to balance the accounts.  You’ll also see correlating yellow bars to the left of the records that need the specific attention.  If you see a checkmark to the far right, that indicates the transaction has been cleared and your records are aligned with your financial institution's records.  If you see a yellow circle, this indicates that you have not yet specified that this transaction has cleared your financial institution.
   
   To quickly see a list of all your outstanding (uncleared) transactions in an account, click on the yellow circle in your specific bank account that indicates the number of outstanding transactions.
   
   
4. Add a New Transaction 
   To add a new transaction to a bank or credit card account, be sure to have the correct account selected when adding a New Transaction. To add a new transaction, click on the ‘New’ button and select a transaction type from the drop-down.
   
   
   

   Selecting Invoice Payment or Bill Payment will add a transaction that is tied to a specific invoice or bill payment.  Selecting Transfer will create a new transfer transaction between bank accounts.  This transaction will show up in both bank accounts and will be linked together.  Changing this transaction in one account will affect both accounts.  Note: Transfer and Invoice Payment options are not available for Credit Card Accounts.

   Memos, or notes, can also be added to each transaction by clicking on the note and adding any necessary comments.  Transactions with notes are indicated by a filled-in note.  These notes will show up on the invoice if the specific transaction is assigned to a job.
   
   The Job selector allows you to assign bank or credit card transactions to specific project expense categories so the expense can be included on an invoice to a client.  If you check the 'Bill' checkbox, then this amount will show up as an expense on the draft invoice for the selected project.  If you uncheck the 'Bill' checkbox, this expense will be associated with the project as an expense, but will not be included on the invoice.  However, this expense is accessible from the draft invoice if you would ultimately like to include it on the invoice.

   
   
5. Assigning Unassigned Bank Transactions
   Transactions that are marked "Paid" (such as invoice payments or bill payments) in the Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable screens are immediately assigned to the Unassigned Bank Account.  To assign these transactions to their appropriate bank or credit card account, follow these steps:
   1. Select the appropriate bank account.
   2. Select the 'New' button above the table.
   3. Select Invoice Payment or Bill Payment.  Note the number in parenthesis indicates how many invoices or bills are unassigned.
   4. Select (by "checking" the box to the far left) each transaction you want to include in the Register transaction.  For example, if you select three invoice payments, those three payments will be grouped together to create a single register transaction for the combined amount (if, for example, all three were deposited together at the bank).
   5. By default, the new transaction date is set to today.  You can adjust the new transaction date in the register to correlate with the actual or desired date once the record is created.  This date will affect your accounting/financial reports.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Once you've completed these steps, those selected and now assigned transactions will now show in the designated account and will no longer be tracked in the Unassigned Bank Account.
   
   
   
6. Reconciling Balances
   The SQUAVA Balance includes the balance of all transactions, whether they have cleared the financial institution or not.  The Bank or Credit Card Balance includes the balance of only the transactions that have cleared your financial institution.  The number of transactions that still need to be cleared are shown in the yellow circle next to the balances.
   
   
   
   Note:  With modern technology, reconciling accounts is not required (unless you bank with an institution that does not provide online access to real-time account information) like in times past when you received a  statement in the mail and online access was not available.  SQUAVA evaluates your records, based on transaction status, to help you keep the two aligned.
7. How to Clear Transactions  
   Two options are available to clear transactions.  First, you can “check”, or select, one or more transactions and click on the ‘Actions’ button and select 'Mark Cleared'.
   
   
   

   Second, click on the small circle (likely highlighted in yellow) to the far right of the row and select Cleared when prompted.
   
   
   

8. How to Import Transactions
   Importing transactions from your financial institution is a simple process.  You can do this in four easy steps:
   1) Download your transactions in CSV format from your financial institution.
   2) Upload your CSV file into SQUAVA.
   3) Match the columns in your CSV file to the columns in SQUAVA.
   4) Finish importing your transactions!
   
   Click the import button on the register.
   
   
   
   Choose a file to upload.
   
   
   
   SQUAVA will show you the header row of your uploaded file (if it has one) and the first two rows of transactions in columns 'Sample Row 1' and 'Sample Row 2'.  Match the columns in your file to those in SQUAVA by selecting the dropdown next to each Column.  If you don't want a specific column to be imported, then leave the selection blank.  Click 'Import' to import your transactions!
   
   
   
   After a moment, you will be returned to the corresponding register and see a confirmation pop-up showing the number of transactions that were successfully imported.  You can then assign each new transaction to its respective account. 
   
   Alternatively, you could input these account names into your CSV file to automatically match these accounts to your transactions.  Note: if you have accounts that are sub-accounts it must follow the format 'ParentAccountName: ChildAccountName' in your CSV file.
   
   
   

SUCCESS!!!

You have successfully learned how to manage your Bank and Credit Card Registers! If you have other questions related to the Bank or Credit Card Register, see the other articles in our Accounting 101 section.  Can't find what you're looking for?  Try the main knowledge base search at https://support.squava.com.  If you’re still unable to find what you're looking for, give us a call, submit a request ticket, or send us a chat message.