A banking rule lets you define a set of criteria the system can use for imported transactions to automatically categorize them. You can even set it to auto confirm and add the transaction immediately into the general ledger, thereby bypassing the need to manually review them.

To get started, go to Accounting > Banking > Rules from the left-hand menu and click on the "Add Rule" button at the top. Similarly, you can click on the name of an existing rule to edit it.

A pop up will appear with the following fields:

Name

Required. This is the name of the rule. Choose a descriptive name that will help you understand what this rule is doing.

Enabled?

If set to no, this rule will not be executed when transactions are imported.

Criteria

This section lets you define the exact criteria to use when determining if an imported transaction should be handled by that rule. As an example, say we want to create a rule that automatically captures credit card deposits from One Church Giving. This would be set up as follows:

This is saying to apply this rule to transactions where money is going into the church's checking account and the description contains the text "5/3 Bankcard".

You can add whatever criteria make sense for the transaction you are trying to capture.

Actions

Once matched, this section determines how it should be categorized. Continuing the example from above, let's say we want to categorize the deposit using the "4000 - Contributions Income" and put it into the General Fund. This is how that would look:

You can also indicate a vendor/payee to automatically set and a memo field. In this case, we put a memo indicating this was a deposit from Online Giving through Credit/Debit Card.

The field under Actions, named Auto Confirm?, determines if this rule should automatically move the transaction into the general ledger. If yes, it will perform the actions as indicated and then confirm the transaction thereby moving it into the general ledger immediately. However, if you set it No, it will still perform the actions, but it will keep the transaction in the "For Review" list where you can manually confirm it.

As you create rules, they will all be listed in the table on this screen.