1. About
Finaloop automatically categorizes about 94% of your transactions but we’ll occasionally need input from you to help us accurately categorize the open transactions.
In this article, we'll walk you through how to provide us with the missing input we need to get all your transactions categorized.
2. Why are there open transactions?
Open transactions may relate to:
Unrecognized vendors that are very specific to your business,
Vendors we recognize but that may have different meaning to different companies, such as purchases from Amazon, or
Transactions that need specific information from you, such as loan details, account connections, tax payment breakdowns, etc.
For the first 2 types, we'll need you to provide us with a category so we can learn more about your business, for example, by categorizing the Amazon purchases as office supplies, or packaging supplies.
For the last type, we'll need you to complete a 'Smart Flow' which is a series of specific questions we ask in order to get the exact details we need relating to a specific transaction. For example, if we see a payment to the IRS, we'll ask you to provide us with details on specifically what type of tax this payment relates to.
3. Transactions waiting for your input
During onboarding, you received a ‘mission’ in the My Missions screen asking you to provide input on unrecognized transactions. We covered how to do this in the article Onboarding Part 2 - What to expect in your first month.
Once you’re up and running, there may still be occasions where you’ll receive a mission to repeat this process. So to save a click or two, we’ve set out the steps here too!
> To categorize unrecognized transactions:
From the menu pane, navigate to Transactions.
Click the Waiting for input only link (#1) to open a screen listing the transactions that need attention. Here you’ll see specific transactions, such as purchases from Amazon, where we’ll need your input to help us categorize it.
In the example, you can see that there are 6 Amazon Marketplace transactions that need input from you. Click Waiting for your input (#2). You can either do this on the group of transactions for this vendor, or you can expand the group to separately categorize each transaction.
After you click on waiting for your input, you’ll see the category screen. Add the correct category. In this case, we typed Office supplies.
You can also click More Actions to:
Split: Split the transaction into multiple categories. Note: You'll only see a Split option if you selected one transaction rather than a group of transactions. See "Splitting transactions to multiple categories" below for more details.
Spread: To spread or record an accrued or prepaid transaction to specific dates. Note: This is relevant only for accrual basis customers. To learn more, check out this article.
Click Apply once if the category only applies to this specific transaction. Click Apply always to assign all transactions from the same vendor to the category you’ve just selected.
If you aren’t sure which category to assign it to, just type using regular language to describe what it is. We can take it from there.
4. Transactions with additional input required
As mentioned above, you may also see specific transactions that say Additional input needed instead of Waiting for input.
These are transactions that are connected to Finaloop Smart Flows, or to a flow of specific information we need from you to categorize this transaction correctly. For example, if we see a payment the Virginia Department of Taxation, we'll ask for some specific details so we can make sure we add it to the correct account.
5. Reviewing transactions
We categorize your transactions based on ecommerce best practices, but you may choose to recategorize specific transactions or vendors to better fit your business.
> To recategorize a transaction:
From the menu pane, navigate to Transactions.
Locate the transaction you want to recategorize and click on the category in the blue bubble.
After you click, you’ll see the category screen. Add the correct category. In this case, we typed Product samples. You'll see both the previous category and the new category on the popup screen.
You can also click More actions and then Split to split the transaction into 2 or more categories (see "Splitting transactions to multiple categories" below) or spread (relevant only for accrual method customers) to spread or record an accrued or prepaid transaction to a specific date.
Click Apply once if the category only applies to this specific transaction. Click Apply always to assign all transactions from the same vendor to the category you’ve just selected.
6. Personal transactions
If one of the transactions are not related to this business and are either personal transactions or related to another business, move the toggle next to Mark as personal and add the name of the partner or shareholder on whose behalf the expense was paid.
When a transaction is marked as personal, it is recorded in the Due to/ Due from owner account on the Balance Sheet and excluded from the P&L.
7. Splitting transactions to multiple categories
You can now easily split a transaction in Finaloop by value or percentage, and break down other key details.
#1 Split by value or percentage
Easily toggle to split the transaction by value or based on a percent allocation.
#2 Split between positive and negative amounts
Sometimes you may receive a final transaction amount that is a combination of positive and negative value. For example, here you may have paid $488.64 to Amazon that was actually an expense of $498.64 with a $10 credit applied.
In this case, just toggle to split the transaction to a money out amount of -$498.64 and a money in of $10.
#3 Split equally
Easily split the transaction equally between multiple categories in one easy click.
With our transaction split tool, you can also:
Split a transaction in its original currency or in USD
Mark a portion of the transaction as personal to one or multiple people.
Note: The ability to Apply always to a split applies only to a percentage based split. When adding a percent breakdown for a specific vendor, you can apply always to use the same split for every transaction from this vendor.
8. Spreading transactions
To spread a transaction over a period of time or to record accrued or prepaid transaction to a specific date, check out this article to learn more.
That's it! If you have any questions at all, feel free to reach out to support at [email protected] for more help.