Creating Split Payments / Uploading Statements

1

Hi there,

I’m looking to create a split payment via the API - e.g. received amount in
the bank account is £30, which is made up of £50 sales and £20 bank/finance
charges.

A question in two parts:

  1. Is the only way to create a split payment by doing a statement upload
    and then explaining it? It seems that when I create a transaction manually
    (POST bank transaction explanation specifying a bank_account), if I later
    change the explanation it changes both the transaction and the
    explanation. I’m assuming this is because is_manual is true.

  2. If uploading a statement is the only way of achieving this, is the
    processing of the uploaded statement completed before the POST returns, or
    does that happen asynchronously? I’ll need to add explanations once the
    processing is complete.

Thanks in advance!

Chris

2

Hi Chris,

You’re right in your analysis that split transactions are only available on
uploaded transactions (or those which have arrived via one of our bank
feeds). Because a standalone (manual) explanation is not linked to a
transaction, changing the gross value of the explanation will also change
the notional transaction value. You will also see this behaviour in the
FreeAgent web application when you add a manual transaction.

When a statement is uploaded it is queued for background processing as some
statements are too large to process in-request. This does mean that when
your call to upload a statement returns, the transactions may not yet have
been entered into your bank account.

Might I suggest if you need to create a sales transaction along with an
associated bank charge via the API you could create two separate manual
transactions. The accounting effect would be identical, and these could
later be reconciled against an uploaded statement if required (see our
knowledge base article here
http://www.freeagent.com/support/kb/banking/match-a-manual-entry-to-an-uploaded-transaction)

Hope that helps,
Paul.On Monday, 17 November 2014 22:49:33 UTC, Chris Wood wrote:

Hi there,

I’m looking to create a split payment via the API - e.g. received amount
in the bank account is £30, which is made up of £50 sales and £20
bank/finance charges.

A question in two parts:

  1. Is the only way to create a split payment by doing a statement upload
    and then explaining it? It seems that when I create a transaction manually
    (POST bank transaction explanation specifying a bank_account), if I later
    change the explanation it changes both the transaction and the
    explanation. I’m assuming this is because is_manual is true.

  2. If uploading a statement is the only way of achieving this, is the
    processing of the uploaded statement completed before the POST returns, or
    does that happen asynchronously? I’ll need to add explanations once the
    processing is complete.

Thanks in advance!

Chris