Explain bank transactions in bulk

Feature Requests
#1

I have bank statements with 1000s of entries. As a result, I want to be able to programatically explain these transactions.

At the moment I have to make 1 API request for every single explanation, which when combined with the rate limits is just a painful experience.

It would be great to be able to provide an array of bank transaction explanations in one API request.

E.g.

POST https://api.freeagent.com/v2/bank_transaction_explanations

{"bank_transaction_explanations": [
  {
    "bank_transaction": "...",
    "category": "...",
    ...
  },
  {
    "bank_transaction": "...",
    "category": "...",
    ...
  },
  ...
]}
#2

Good idea – this would be pretty useful to have.

#3

Hi Darryl and Andrew,

Thanks a lot for this suggestion, I can certainly see how this could be a
useful addition to our API. I’ll pass it on to our Product Manager for triage as a feature request.

With all the best wishes for the new year,

Ewa
FreeAgent Englineering Team

#4

We do automated bank transaction allocation in our app but we simply map the allocations in our own data and then have a process one by one push them into FreeAgent. Problem is with your approach that you might get errors per transaction, so FA would have to return a list of those which I haven’t seen done in the API anywhere. Everything tends to work on a single entity basis.

#5

Well, when you upload a bank statement you are uploading a list of bank transactions, any of which might be invalid. I think FreeAgent handles it in an all-or-nothing way, i.e. all of the transactions in the statement are created or none is. FreeAgent could take the same approach for lists of explanations. It would the client to handle a rejected list; perhaps fall back to uploading the lists’ explanations individually.

Update: I was wrong about the all-or-nothing:

Your data has been uploaded successfully. However, this does not indicate whether or not your statement has been imported correctly - please make another request to list your currently imported transactions

Source: Uploading a bank statement: Responses

Anyway, the wider point stands – that FreeAgent could take the same approach for lists of explanations as for bank statements.

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