CenterPoint^® Accounting - Import Bank Account or Credit Card Transactions into CenterPoint

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This process allows you to import transactions into CenterPoint that were downloaded from a financial institution (bank, credit card company/fund, etc.), thus saving you the time of entering the transactions manually. The file downloaded from the financial institution must be a comma delimited/csv file. When imported, the transactions will assign accounts based on either the last transaction entered for that vendor/customer, transactions will be imported into a batch, which allows you to review the transactions prior to posting/ finalizing.

There are three steps to the processing:

Step A - Create Financial Institutions (One-time Setup per Institution)

Step B - Import Financial Institution Transactions

Step C - Maintaining Financial Institutions (Periodic Process)

Prerequisite

You must have a file containing transactions downloaded from your financial institution prior to beginning Step A.

Step A - Create Financial Institutions (One-time Setup)

On the Setup menu, point to Accounts, and then click Financial Institutions.
Click New.

In the Institution Abbreviation box, enter up to ten characters of optional information that you can use to easily identify the financial institution by.
In the Institution Name box, enter up to 30 characters of required information that describes the financial institution.
Select the CenterPoint Company/Fund this financial institution's transactions should be imported into. If there is only one company/fund in the database, it will default rather than requiring you to select a company/fund.
Select the CenterPoint Account to import this financial institution's transactions into. This would normally be a bank or credit card account.
In the Institution URL box, enter the web address that transactions should be downloaded from. For example, www.mybanksname.com.
Define a date range with theTransactions may be # days before and # days after CenterPoint Transaction date. This date range will be used when checking for duplicate transactions.
The Last Imported Date displays. To view past imported transactions, click Display History.
Click the ellipsis button, and then select the Download Folder to import the transactions to, and then click Select Folder.This needs to be unique for each financial institution.

Note: If you want to create a new folder to download to, click New Folder , enter a name for the folder, and then click Select Folder to download to the new folder.

Determine if you want to Display the transactions before processing rules for this financial institution.
Determine if you want to Display the rule processing results before final transaction creation for this financial institution.
Click the Column Mapping tab. The tab is used to define the columns in the file downloaded from the financial institution to the columns in the database. It also defines how the amount data is formatted in the file and what transactions should be created when debits or credits are detected.

Note: You must have a file downloaded from your financial institution prior to completing the Column Mapping tab.

Within the File Path field, select the file of transactions you have downloaded from your financial institution.

Note: The transactions in this file will not be imported at this point. The file will simply be used to define what information is found in each column.

Click Load Import File to display the contents of the imported file. The data in the file will be displayed.

Review the data displayed from the file and make the following selections:

If the first row is labels/descriptions (instead of actual data), then select the First row contains column labels field.

If the table contains a column that has transaction numbers (for example, check numbers) then select the Table includes transaction numbers field.

Specify which column the transaction numbers are displayed in Transaction numbers are in field.

In the Transaction dates are in field, specify which column the dates are displayed in.

The financial institution normally includes a column of data that displays the payee for non-check transactions. Specify that column in the Vendor/Customer description is in field.

Depending on the financial institution, amounts can be displayed a number of ways (separate columns for debits and credits, amounts in one column as positive or negatives or the amounts in one column with a separate column that specifies if it was a debit or credit). Review the data displayed and choose the correct option in the Amount in field.

Depending on what option was chose in the Amount in field, additional fields will be displayed ( Negative values, Positive values, credits are in, debits are in, etc.). These fields are used to specify what the amounts signify. Complete all displayed fields.

Click the Transaction Exclusion Rules tab to define the kinds of transactions downloaded from the bank or credit card companies/funds that you do not want CenterPoint to create GL transactions for. An example might be a payment transaction downloaded in a credit card file. You may want it excluded because it also appears in the bank download file and you want to process it from the bank.

Note: if you want all transactions imported, then this screen can be skipped.

Click Add to start a new rule. Enter a Rule Name, for example Deposit (if you don't want deposits imported).
The This rule excludes transactions where fields allow you to define how these transactions can be recognized and excluded. Define the specifics about the location of the exclusion in the import file, for example, you may want to exclude all transactions in Column 3 that equal Payment and the case of the description must be matched.

Click the Vendor/Customer Matching Rules tab to create rules that match characters in the Vendor/Customer column in the import file to CenterPoint names in the database. And allows you to specify what accounts should be affected by this transaction. Normally you'll want to create a rule for the vendors and/or customers that are commonly included in transactions for this financial institution.
Note: You do NOT have to create a rule for every vendor and customer. During the import process you can create additional rules or you can specify the CenterPoint vendor or customer to use on each transaction.

To create a rule, click Add.

Choose a commonly used vendor or customer in the This rule matches the CenterPoint name field.

Review the data in the Vendor/Customer Description column and find how the financial institution describes this vendor. Specify that information in the To import rows where the Vendor/Customer column field. Using the Contains option will give you the best opportunity to find a match, but if you have multiple vendors with similar names, than you may want to select Equals instead. Specify if it should Match case also.

The next two fields allow you to specify how the system should assign accounts for the non-banking side of the general ledger transaction. The fields displayed next will change depending on what type of a financial institution (bank or credit card) is being setup. Bank accounts will display the following transactions:
The Transactions that Debit the account and create Cash Receipts for this name use field will be used for transactions that increase the balance of the bank account.
The Transactions that Credit the account and create Cash Payments for this name use field will be used for transactions that decrease the balance of the bank account.
Credit Card accounts will display the following transactions:
The Transactions that Debit the account and create AP Invoices for this name use field will be used for transactions that decrease the balance of the accounts payable balance. For example, if you return an item that was purchased with a credit card, this would create a negative ap invoice.
The Transactions that Credit the account and create AP invoices for this name use field will be used for transactions that increase the balance of the accounts payable balance.

Click Save to complete the financial institute setup.

Step B - Import Financial Institution Transactions

The import process allows you to bring transactions from a file into CenterPoint. The transactions are brought into a batch and can be verified by printing the Imported Financial Institution Transactions (Summary or Detail) reportafter they are posted at the end of the process. The import process creates payments and receipts transactions if the financial institution is a bank account. AP invoices are created for imported credit card transactions.

Select Processes > Periodic > Import Financial Institution Transactions.
Click Create New.

Select the Financial Institution you want to import transactions for.
The Downloaded Files grid displays files that have been previously downloaded from the institution's website. The Status column specifies what has been done with the file in CenterPoint:
- Downloaded files are files that have been downloaded, but not processed
- Imported files have been imported into CenterPoint.
Click Download New File to go to the financial institutions website to download any available import files.
Follow your financial institution's instructions to download files.

Note: The file must be a comma delimited or CSV file. Save the file with a unique name to the location you specified in Setup > Accounts > Financial Institutions.

Select a file from the Downloaded Files grid that you want to import into CenterPoint.

The Starting Reference Number and Starting Check Number boxes display the default sequence numbers for cash payments and accounts payable invoices.
Enter a Batch Comment for the transactions that will be imported.

Click Process Selected File to process and create transactions from the downloaded/ imported file based on the selections and rules you selected for this financial institution.
- If you chose the Display the transactions before processing rules check box on the financial institution, the transactions will display prior to being processed. Click Continue Processing.
- If the Display the rule processing results before final transaction creation check box on the financial institution, the results of any defined rules will display. If you want to change the rules, either select Update Customer / Vendor Rules or Update Exclusion Rules to add, change or remove the rules and change the processing results when you click Save (the rules will also be updated in Setup > Financial Institutions) or click Continue Processing.
The Detail tab displays the transactions from the downloaded file.
Click Create Transactions.

Successful transactions will display a green Edit button.

Unsuccessful transactions will display a red Edit button. Click the Edit button to enter the necessary information to complete the transaction and then click Save. Repeat for all transactions with a red Edit button.

Manual Entry transactions will display a gray Edit button. Click the Edit button to enter the necessary information to complete the transaction and then click Save. Repeat for all Manual Entry transactions. Manual Entry transactions that do not display a green Edit button will be skipped when posted.

To change the Entry Type of a transaction, click into the Entry Type field for the transaction to display a drop-down list:

Invoice Paid - If the transactions pays an existing invoice, click Choose Invoices to select the invoice the transaction pays.

Recall - Searches for the last transaction for this name.

## - For Recurring transactions, the name of the recurring transaction will display in the list.

Manual Entry - Necessary information to complete the transaction is required for the transaction to be successfully imported.

If you had Exclusion Rules setup in Setup > Accounts > Financial Institutions, the Exclude check box may be selected. To include excluded transactions, unselect the Exclude check box or change the Exclusion Rules by clicking the Exclusion Rules Financial or Customer/Vendor Rules buttons.
Once all Edit buttons are green, click Post to create the transactions in CenterPoint.
Processed transactions will display on the List tab. Click Review to display the transactions that were imported into CenterPoint.
If you determine that the transactions should be deleted, click Delete and determine if the transactions should be marked to allow re-import.

Step C - Maintaining Financial Institutions

Edit/Change Financial Institutions

Select Setup > Accounts > Financial Institutions.

Select the Financial Institution to be changed and click Edit (or simply double click on the appropriate Financial Institution). Edit the details as needed.

Click Save to save the Financial Institution and return to the List tab, or click Close to save the Financial Institution and close the Account screen. Note: To return to the List tab without saving, click Cancel.

Delete Financial Institutions

Removing a Financial Institution will remove all of the vendor/customer mapping rules, the exclusion rules, the download history, and the imported data. Removing the imported data does not remove the CenterPoint transactions created from that imported data.

Select Setup > Accounts > Financial Institutions.

Select the Financial Institution to be deleted and click Delete.

At the Are you sure you want the item delete? message, click Yes.