Splitting transactions

kellyeliz07

Splitting transactions in the new Wave interface has become very difficult- I am unable to individually label each transaction within a split, nor am I able to include both an income and an expense. Both of these features were available in the previous version of Wave, and they are vital to my bookkeeping process. Will they be made available in the future? If not, I am afraid I will have to change accounting software

Samd

Hey @kellyeliz07, my apologies about that. At present there isn't a plan to re-add this ability, but I will submit your feedback now. In terms of splitting transactions, you should still be able to label each piece of the split as a different category, but they do share a notes section.

IanM

@samd @kellyeliz07
I am in a similar situation. I need to be able to completely split a transaction to set separate descriptions. Why has this feature been taken away?

Gonzo1982

I find it ridiculous that you take away features that were useful when doing an upgrade that frankly has made it much more cumbersome. The split feature was 85% of what I did with a transaction. Now because of this nonsense I have to delete an import and manually add it split the way I need it split. I’m giving this a month to see if the feature gets added back. If not, deuces, I’ll find a different site.

Ryan_W

@Gonzo1982 I traced back to this based on your comments in the other thread about splitting transactions; I respect that these changes may have shifted your usual workflow.

Do you mind expanding on what you used to do with transaction splitting, exactly? Both of your posts gesture towards "fixing it", but you haven't really explained what your exact pain points are. I know this is a pretty old comment, but seeing as you took the time to comment on that other thread more recently it sounds like you're still using Wave so I'm happy to talk about this!

Gonzo1982

@Ryan_W the ability to split imported transactions without having to delete them and manually enter split. For example, I have rental houses and a pest control service auto withdrawals the monthly bill from our bank account. When they get imported into Wave it’s all one bill, as it is in the bank account. Before the change I was able to split this one transaction into several with a different description so that I can keep track of the expenses for each property. Likewise when I make loan payments I have to split those into principal and interest for each property.

The only way I can do this now for the transactions I have to split is delete is manually enter the way I want them.

My frustration back then was the sudden change to my workflow from something that work great before and couldn’t understand why it would be changed.

I’ve adjusted but would love it if it could be added back.

Thanks

Ryan_W

@Gonzo1982 ahh, gotcha gotcha, thank you for taking the time to expand on that!

So it's ultimately the description field not being broken out into each individual part of the split eh? That's good to know; you're not the first to mention that, and it's a fair assessment of the changes based on what you'd have been used to back then.

For what it's worth, containing all parts of the split within a single transaction was done with the intention of making reconciliation simpler; basically, if your Wave transactions--despite being split--can reflect your bank statement on a line-by-line basis, it makes it a lot easier to compare to your bank statement 1:1. Before, if they were split into their own separate transactions you'd need to do the mental work of knowing "oh yeah, these 5 separate transactions actually make up this single transaction on my statement". I don't know how important that is to you directly, but I figure it's worth knowing the reason behind the change.

I suppose you can still use the single description field on a split transaction to denote the meaning of all of the splits, if that helps. For example, you could create a numbered list of notes which reflect each split transaction in a matching sequence. I know it's not as slick as it would have been before, although it's worth trying out to see if it helps keep things more organized in your day-to-day bookkeeping.

As for splitting out principal and interest, does my workflow in the other thread help? As in, you can use it to track the expense lines of a split transaction? Let me know if I'm misunderstanding that part. I'm about to sign off for the evening so I won't get back to you as quickly, but I'll make sure to check back in!

Gonzo1982

@Ryan_W I'll try to split the principal and interest categories after I make my next loan payment in a few days. I'll check back in to let you know how it goes. I suppose I could also create separate categories for each property and split that way, but that would require a lot of work to go back and change everything from 2-3 years so that the reporting etc. is accurate. Still, just wish I could have a description box for each split. You could make it an optional field. If you use it cool, if not it functions the way it does now.

Thanks

Crafty_Zombie

The inability to label split transactions individuality makes this software useless to me. I have been using it for years for my personal business and just set up an account for a non-profit. We are a maker space and have donation jars around the space for different supplies. For example: we collect donations for water/soda, 3D printer supplies, etc. The other day I deposited cash donations from these jars, along with a membership dues check. When I went to split the transactions, I could not label where each donation was from, and all but the dues are the same category. I need to be able to track where are donations are from throughout the year, not just the total amount of donations overall. Making a separate category is overly burdensome, especially seeing that we also do different events throughout the year where we collect donations.
I also discovered that the PayPal integration does not download subscription dues activity. This is the only reason we use PayPal, to collect membership dues.

For my personal business, I sell items at art shows. I then deposit all the cash and split the transactions by each individual sale invoice #.

Having one note, that can only be seen when you are logged into the account and click on the transaction is useless. I need this information to show up on reports that I can print out. How am I supposed to share this information with the other board members? Or god forbid my personal business is ever audited.

Without the ability to label my transactions and without proper PayPal integration, it is actually more efficient for me to just input the data in a spreadsheet. I liked your software for the integration and the ability to print various reports.

AlexL

Hi @Crafty_Zombie . Thanks for your detailed feedback on this.

As Ryan said in his lengthy post above, the original reason for making the software this way was to make it easier for you to reconcile your accounts. As a workaround, you could use the single description field on a split transaction to denote the meaning of all of the splits, but this obviously isn't as clean as you'd like it to be.

With this being said, I totally understand your use case here and how this could complicate your workflow. I'll be sure to pass this feedback along to the team so they have an understanding of how Wave's formatting affects your business.

In regards to the PayPal integration, it should be automatically importing any transactions that hit your PayPal account, including subscriptions. We have seen issues with the PayPal integrations before though. Is it importing transactions at all?

Crafty_Zombie

@alexlewiszarkos
The only thing information it imported from PayPal was the starting balance and a transfer from PayPal to our bank account. We have PayPal activity almost daily from our subscriptions and none of those transactions are importing.

I had found the following posted by another admin: "Recurring payments, like subscriptions, won't be imported into wave. This is due to how Wave's integration system works." Here is the link https://community.waveapps.com/discussion/402/paypal-integration

For my business Wave account, the connection to PayPal keeps breaking. I connect PayPal and it will import, but it will not keep updating and when I login at a later date PayPal is no longer connected and I have to reconnect it.

We were already able to reconcile accounts because when you split transactions the splits have to match the total exactly. My bank statement already says what the total deposit was, why do I need another program to do the same thing? I need a program to show detailed reports of my income and expenses with descriptions. Like I said, I can now more effectively do my bookkeeping with a spreadsheet than with your program.

Don't get me wrong, I've used Wave for years for my business and my husband's freelance business and was very happy with it. I also understand it is free which means it may not be as robust as some paid programs, but our businesses are so small that paid software is not an option. Nor is it an option for the tiny nonprofit. I'm just greatly disappointed that I cannot use your software for the nonprofit books.

Miss_Dori_Tutoring

Is there a way to automate or copy split information for a recurring transactions? I have a recurring transaction for the same amount, with the same fees, every week. I currently have to manually split it to show the fees every time. I would love to have Wave automate this each time the transaction come through. If automation isn't possible, then at least a way to bulk edit to add the splits to the identical transactions? Or a way to copy and paste the split info? Thx.

Aaron_E

@Miss_Dori_Tutoring Yes I am having the same issue. Whether I import transactions from Stripe using Zapier, or upload them in bulk from a csv file or google sheet add-on, I cannot get the transactions imported in bulk as a split transaction. Most of my transactions are net with a sales amount minus a merchant account fee, and manually splitting each transaction this way after importing is not very efficient. Additionally, the bulk categorization feature in Wave does not allow for splitting transactions with these two categories. It is an unfortunate limitation of this software that I would hope they could correct.