Table of Contents
2. Activating the preview feature
1. Introduction
Auto Explain compares new bank transactions with your Clear Books invoices, bills, existing bank records and import rules and explains them for you.
2. Activating the preview feature
Go to the Preview module (top left) of Clear Books, select the "Configure company wide features" tab, and select “Preview” button on the Auto Explain feature.
3. Using Auto Explain
When viewing the bank explain page, click the “Auto Explain” button at the top of the page.
Select which types of transactions to Auto Explain and click “Run now”.
Invoice payments will allocate bank receipts to unpaid sales invoices, where the bank receipt is the same amount as the outstanding amount of the invoice.
Bill payments will allocate bank payments to unpaid purchase bills, where the bank payment is the same amount as the outstanding amount of the bill.
Import rule matches will record new expenditure, income or transfers for any bank transactions that match an existing import rule, using all the settings on that rule. Read more about bank import rules here.
Reconcile with transactions already in Clear Books won’t create any new transactions, just match the incoming bank transaction with one you have already recorded in Clear Books.
Tip: You can run Auto Explain as many times as you like on a bank feed or bank statement. To get started, choose to run Auto Explain with just one option selected and when you are happy with those explained transactions, you can run it for another option.
Note: Switching on “Always run for this bank account” means future bank feed updates or imports will be auto-explained as soon as they enter Clear Books. You can come back later and switch this off, if you wish.When the process is complete, a success message will report how many transactions have been auto-explained and how many remain that need user action to be explained.
Note: Transactions explained by this process have an ‘auto-explained’ gear icon.
4. Review
The related Clear Books transaction is displayed in the Details column for any explained bank transactions. Float your cursor over the link in the Details column to see more information about that transaction.
Note: The related Clear Books transactions will be displayed for all transactions, including those created by Auto Explain and those created manually. You can also click on the transaction to view that transaction on a new browser tab.
Click the “Undo” icon to amend the explanation for any transaction. That transaction will become unexplained so you can change any of the details and save.
Select the “Summary” option to see a grouped overview of the bank transactions for a more focused review of that month or statement.
If you switch on the “Always run for this bank account” option, the bank feed balance will show a count of any new transactions that have been auto-explained since the bank explain was last viewed for that bank account.
5. Settings
Edit any bank account to view the Auto Explain settings for that bank account.
Note: These settings are displayed when choosing to run Auto Explain from the bank explain page, so you can choose different options each time if required.You can switch off the Auto Explain option under Settings > Configure system > Toggle features > Tax & bank import tool, by deselecting the “Auto explain bank transactions” option.
Note: This will remove the button from the bank explain page and the options on each bank account, but you will continue to see the other enhancements to the bank explain feature while the preview option is on.6. Bank feed balance
When viewing the dashboard you can see the latest available funds balance for any bank accounts with a bank feed.
Click on the balance to see the latest transactions imported for that bank account.
The latest bank feed balance is also displayed on the bank accounts list, which will also show the latest bank feed transactions when clicked.
