Use the ProperConvert app to convert your transaction files to required by FreeAgent file format (OFX, QFX, QBO, QIF are supported, but OFX provides the best results).
You could get a transactions file from your Online Banking and if FreeAgent does not import it right away, you may convert ot a comtablie and correct OFX format, using ProperSoft converter. For example, if your have a PDF file for bank or credit card statement, convert it to the OFX format first.
OFX, QIF, or CSV files must have the Payee names, as with any Online accounting system. It's not necessarily exactly the same, as in your accounting system or even if doesn't have any names, like "Payment". You have to categorize or match that specific transaction to a vendor record, and an expense or income account:
When you start working with your transactions, the system can guess next time, when you import an OFX file, because you already match certain descriptions to certain Vendors or certain Payees. So you can guess next time.
QBO (also called QuickBooks OFX) files are similar to OFX files with additional Quickbooks related details. These additional details do not matter for FreeAgent. If your QBO file is not imported directly by FreeAgent, convert it first to a compatible QBO file (or to the OFX file described earlier). The steps to import QBO files are identical to steps to import OFX files.
QFX files, also known as Quicken OFX files, are similar to OFX files but include additional details specific to Quicken. These extra details are not necessary for FreeAgent. If your QFX file is not directly imported by FreeAgent, you can first convert it to a compatible QFX file or an OFX file. The steps to convert QFX to QBO files are the same as those for importing OFX files.
Let's say you have a CSV file with transactions, created manually, you've just typed it in Excel and saved it as CSV or you download from your bank.
And now you want to import a CSV file into FreeAgent, and the starting steps are similar to described earlier for OFX files with some differences:
These steps are identical to OFX import:
The Next step is different:
We can check 'Guess explanations for my bank transactions'. In all accounting systems, when you are importing the transactions, you have to know the system what it is, for what expense account, for which Vendor, for which Payee in your accounting system. And the file you upload not always following your accounting settings, your accounting Vendor names, your expense accounts. So, the FreeAgent calls the process "Explaining". You could tell the system to guess, if it is like Home Depot or Shell, that this is a certain Vendor. Better to use this function 'Guess explanations for my bank transactions' later, once you have a couple of statements imported and categorized.
Then we click 'Upload Statement'. But there could a problem with our file upload, the CSV file is not supported. Let's learn more about it.
FreeAgent says that you have to have three columns: column A - date must be by the certain way only, column B - must be the Amount, column C - must be the Description. They should haven't included a header column.
If you still cannot import your CSV file into FreeAgent (we could not), your next step would to use the ProperConvert app to convet the CSV file to the OFX file and then import into FreeAgent.
Once the file is converted, go back to FreeAgent, select an OFX file, which is just created. Then click 'Upload Statement'.
And now it works! Because OFX is a determined format, but there is no issue for the FreeAgent - to parse that file before it gets everything in an expected way, like a CSV file. Click 'Review your transactions'.
QIF files (also called Quicken Interchange File) are different from OFX/QFX/QBO files. You need to pay attention to the date format (MM/DD/YYYY vs DD/MM/YYYY) and the decimal separator for amounts (dot vs coma), also the amounts should not the thousand separator to bring less confusion to FreeAgent.
Your QIF file may not be compatible with FreeAgent. Use the ProperConvert to convert your QIF to OFX and the import created OFX file into FreeAgent.
To import transactions from a PDF file into FreeAgent, convert it first to OFX format using the ProperConvert app. The app extract date, amount, description, check number from PDF files for bank and credit card statements. The payee name is extracted from the transaction description by removing common known parts, dates, numbers and other things. You may use included renaming feature to further detect certain payee names and set the payee name to match closely the vendor name in FreeAgent.
Let's say you realized that you did many typos or this is the incorrectly chosen imported OFX/QFX/QBO/CSV/QIF file, so FreeAgent has a good function to undo last upload:
It is very important when you are starting or making some conversions, let's say you are using the converter from one format to another and you realized, that imported something wrong, some fields are not as they should be and then you could do undo easily with this accounting system.