Sleeter Article: Why Aren’t Receipts Automatically Matched to Bank Feed Transactions?

Greg Lam for The Sleeter Group writes: In online accounting software, there’s still a lot of human interaction required where there shouldn’t be.  

One of the most promising areas in which work can be cut down in with business accounting is with bank feeds. These are hookups to your bank account transactions that automatically get pulled into your accounting software. Most software can use the descriptions associated with the bank transactions to guess at what the transaction might be and enter it for the user. For example, if the description on a credit card transaction came through as “STARBUCKS STORE #2348” it can recognize that this transaction is for Starbucks and categorize it as a meals and entertainment expense. Starbucks does sell other merchandise, but it’s a good bet that meals and entertainment is the proper categorization.

However, this simplified rule, based on using the description to parse out the vendor name and thus account categorization, doesn’t always work. Take an item was purchased at Staples for example, which could be a computer (asset) or some office supplies (expense).

So, transactions entered purely using bank feeds are not going to be completely accurate. That’s why another source of information – receipts – need to also be used in conjunction with bank feeds (not to mention the fact that all purchases need to be backed up by source documentation). [snip]. The article continues @ The Sleeter Group, click here to continue reading.....