How do I transfer a transaction to another business in my Wave Account

Donza

I can't find in the new update how to transfer transactions from one business to another. It only allows me to transfer to other accounts.

AlexL

Hi @Donza . We took away the ability to transfer transactions from one business to another due to the some of the larger underlying implications of this that users were unaware of. You can always recreate the transaction in the appropriate business that it belongs to, or you can categorize it as "Owner Investment/Drawing" if it's coming / going to the personal side.

Kiwipom

Thanks Aleks L. This functionality is a major loss, as I now have to duplicate all the transactions for my rental business that go through my normal bank account. I had it worked out fine before, with the other side of each entry going to Owner drawings. Please can I put in a plea for the ability to transfer transactions between businesses to be reinstated? Many thanks

JordanD

@Kiwipom Thanks for your feature idea. It's definitely something that other Wavers have mentioned and something that our team is actively looking into. I appreciate you sharing your insights and if we are able to release a feature that would address your need, we will be sure to update this thread.

Donza

I second that, I relied on that feature to move transactions around. Please bring it back. I have a smalll business and an investment property, so there are transactions going all over the place, it was so easy to organise my books with this feature, now I have to manually put them in. It seemed to work so well before. Please keep us updated.

kennethyim

I third that. Very useful in my businesses.

khfurletti

Absolutely gutted that this has been taken away. I have 3 accounts - a personal, a business and a rental property. Some of the expenses are shared, sometimes we buy items for the rental property with a personal card. This just created so much more accounting than I hoped for. All of the recent so-called improvements have me looking for a replacement. What a shame because it was good for so long. Hate to have to go back to Quickbooks... Also, who is any software company to say how a customer uses its software? Wouldn't an accountant be the one to determine implications?

ConnorM

Hey all. Thank you for your ongoing feedback in this thread. This is definitely something that we're aware is a great want/need within the software, and we will be sure to keep you all updated if we are able to address this.

SeanAust23

Hi Wave developers. I'd like to add my voice to the call to bring back the ability to move transactions between businesses. I operate two businesses from one bank account and the loss of this functionality has had a very negative impact on my accounting. There must be plenty of others in the same boat as we that have bothered to post on this thread. It was such an important feature for me that I'll also need to shift accounting programs if it isn't going to be restored. Thanks for your time

ktrow

I strongly support and require this feature to manage all my credit cards and personal accounts from one personal Wave account and just transfer transactions from that Wave account to my Wave business and Wave rental accounts. HUGE LOSS! Less business owners and accountants decide if there are any negative implications, but add back this feature!!!

ktrow

@khfurletti said:
Absolutely gutted that this has been taken away. I have 3 accounts - a personal, a business and a rental property. Some of the expenses are shared, sometimes we buy items for the rental property with a personal card. This just created so much more accounting than I hoped for. All of the recent so-called improvements have me looking for a replacement. What a shame because it was good for so long. Hate to have to go back to Quickbooks... Also, who is any software company to say how a customer uses its software? Wouldn't an accountant be the one to determine implications?

@khfurletti Have you moved back to Quickbooks and which version of Quickbooks allows you to overcome this issue? Your guidance would be greatly appreciated!

ktrow

This should be an option under Categorize Transaction so that transactions can be moved from one Wave account to another, plus it would allow this step to be automated.

khfurletti

@ktrow said:

@khfurletti said:
Absolutely gutted that this has been taken away. I have 3 accounts - a personal, a business and a rental property. Some of the expenses are shared, sometimes we buy items for the rental property with a personal card. This just created so much more accounting than I hoped for. All of the recent so-called improvements have me looking for a replacement. What a shame because it was good for so long. Hate to have to go back to Quickbooks... Also, who is any software company to say how a customer uses its software? Wouldn't an accountant be the one to determine implications?

@khfurletti Have you moved back to Quickbooks and which version of Quickbooks allows you to overcome this issue? Your guidance would be greatly appreciated!

I haven't made any moves yet. Changing software is such a massive project and I don't have the bandwidth at the moment. I absolutely hate most of the updates to Wave though. As for Quickbooks, there isn't a feature that does this, but I'm really familiar with it and it's easy to have multiple companies on the desktop version. They do have a more accurate way of doing journal transactions too, which is a method to accomplish what you want to do.

TonyS

I hope it's not too late to attempt to help @Donza (and everyone else who need this feature back). I've just discovered a potential work-around that you could try, but bare with me it's a bit lengthy but definitely works.

The short story is, you'll need to export the data as a CSV, with a bit of post-processing, and re-upload it as a Bank Statement.

The long story....

If you go to Settings, and under the heading "Other", select "Data Export". In the dialog window to the right, there is an option to "Export all transactions for Excel (and CSV) file. There's also an option if you want to export your Receipts (which is all the images you've uploaded to Wave). If you click on either the CSV/Excel export buttons, you'll be email-ed a link to download a Zip file. In the Zip file you'll find a number of CSV files (openable in Excel) where the information is waiting for you. I did this and I was given 4 CSV files - Accounting, Bill Items, Customers, and Vendors. The Accounting file is where all the transactions are. If you're like me, you'll have thousands of transactions, which can seem daunting. Next, you'll need to prepare the Accounting CSV file for upload. You will be using the Upload a Bank Statement feature (if you go to Transactions, you'll find it under More), which has limitations, some things to look out for before in preparation:

• the file size cannot be bigger than 500KB (which is roughly 2500 Transactions, so if you have tens of thousands of transactions, then you'll need to have separate files and do this uploading process a few times);
• there can only be a maximum of 3 columns (date, description, amount... see below for the time-consuming task);
• delete duplicated transactions (you should only have 1 line depending on the transaction);
• expenses will need negative signs if they don't have them;
• if you have multiple Income Accounts (like Savings Account, Cash on Hand, Cheque Account, etc) you'll need to update the Chart of Accounts (recreate the respective income account) before uploading and repeat the upload, having separate CSV files based on Account names;
• you don't need to recreate the expense accounts yet, but you will need them in the next step.

Now, for the time consuming task. Once the above is done, you should be ready to upload as Bank Statement. It should work like magic. But there is information still missing - like, Sales Tax (if you're operating in a country with Sales Tax obligations), and Category. However, with the Multi-Select function you can edit all transactions that require Sales Tax in one hit - so go ahead and select all transactions that require Sales Tax, and simply choose the Sales Tax you've created. Similarly, this can be done for Categories, too.

Ultimately, this has worked for me. There were a couple problems along the way, and my biggest tip is to create a new 'test' business (name it whatever you like to distinguish it from your others) and just test it out to iron out any errors or mistakes. I'm not an accountant, or a bookkeeper, I've been using Wave for about 2 years, this whole process took me about 1 hour to get it right, with over 20,000+ transactions. Hopefully, it doesn't take you that long.

For further information about the rules for uploading CSV files (as a bank statement) check out - https://support.waveapps.com/hc/en-us/articles/208622596, to ensure you don't encounter processing errors.