FreeAgent returning doubled-up bank transactions

1

Hello!

I have seen a few hundred bank transactions doubled-up over the past few weeks when I import from FreeAgent. By doubled-up I mean FreeAgent returns two bank transactions with the same bank_account, dated_on, amount, and description – but different urls.

When I subsequently check the two instances, one no longer exists in FreeAgent.

This is causing me a problem because my system thinks there are two transactions when there is only one.

I use the url as a unique key but since the doubled-up transactions have different URLs there is no uniqueness violation. Do you think these doppelgangers would have the same transaction_id?

Also can you think why FreeAgent might be doing this?

Many thanks!

Andrew Stewart

2

Hi Andrew,

I suspect this was caused by an issue we had with Barclay’s bank services. On 27th March around 1pm they made a change to their API that resulted in duplicates being generated on FreeAgent’s side for GBP accounts. We caught this change the following day and disabled all Barclays imports around 3pm on the 28th. We then proceeded to apply a fix on our side and delete the duplicates, which would be why one of the pair transactions on your side no longer exists on FreeAgent’s side. Unfortunately Barclays doesn’t provide transaction_id values, but you could verify this is the case by checking:

  1. That the bank account of the bank transaction is a Barclays one (bank_code field on the bank account API response)
  2. That the missing transactions were imported by you between approximately 1pm on 27th March and 3pm on the 28th March

Non-GBP Barclays accounts were similarly affected and we addressed those the following week with duplicates being generated between approximately 5pm on the 29th March and 3pm on the 5th April.

If the affected accounts are not Barclays let us know and we can look further into this.

Kind regards,
Bogdan

3

Hi Bogdan,

Thanks very much for the detailed reply.

I did some more checking and found:

  • 0 “phantom” records in April;
  • 120 “phantom” records in March (on 22nd, 25th, 26th, 27th);
  • 13 “phantom” records in February;
  • 1 “phantom” record in January.

These were not limited to Barclays accounts.

Before I delete these from my system, do you want me to send over any further information, e.g. bank transaction URLs?

Yours,
Andrew

4

Hi Andrew,

Sure, please send me a direct message with any non-Barclays bank transaction URLs and I can run a check on them.

Kinds regards,
Bogdan

5

Hi Andrew,

Thank you for sending those over, I had a look and indeed the majority of the duplicates were caused by the Barclays issue I mentioned above, with a small number from other providers or from Paypal accounts. This is in line with what I expected to see so I think you can go ahead and delete the duplicates on your end.

Kind regards,
Bogdan

6

Hi Bogdan,

Thank you very much for investigating these and letting me know what you found. I appreciate it!

Yours,
Andrew