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How to move transactions between two or more businesses
Elizabeth
Member Posts: 2
I created three businesses on Wave and want to consolidate some of the items. Wave lets me move transactions from the first business to the other two, but not from those two into the original business. How can I fix this?
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Hi @Elizabeth.
I'm assuming the first business is still running the old version of Wave, while the two new one use the new interface, is that right?
The new interface is missing this feature for now, so it takes a few more steps to do this transfer. We are working on making that workflow friendlier, but the feature isn't quite ready.
Can you give me a bit more information on your businesses and those specific transactions? I'll be better able to offer steps to follow. Do you use the same bank account for each?
Hi Alexia,
I’m not sure how to tell which version of Wave I’m using. Please see the screen shot for a list of my Wave businesses:
The two businesses I am concerned about are Cove Media and Elizabeth Rains. The company I run with my husband is Cove Media. However, I’m a journalist and like to use a different (Elizabeth Rains rather than Cove) invoice when my personal branding is most important. I’ve set up the Elizabeth Rains account only give a different look to the invoice.
Once an invoice is sent, I’d like to transfer the accounts receivable transaction and later the payment to Cove Media. I’d like all transactions to ultimately go into Cove.
Can that be done? Alternatively, is there a way to set up two different styles of invoice on the main Cove account? If so, I could delete Elizabeth Rains.
Thanks very much for your help!
Alexia:
I have the same question here.
I need to move some transactions from one business account to another. please advise how to before the new feature is ready. manual step is ok. but please advise.
thanks.
Hi @Elizabeth and @carolatwm.
In your particular situation, if all the accounting and bookkeeping is done from Cove Media, I would recommend doing this:
It's important that only one copy of the invoice remains at the end.
Alternatively, you could do this through a journal entry in each business, crediting from Owner's investment/Drawings for one business and Debiting from the same account for the other. Essentially going through you, the business owner, as an intermediary.
thanks
Happy to help!
Hi Alexa, How is this done please:
"Alternatively, you could do this through a journal entry in each business, crediting from Owner's investment/Drawings for one business and Debiting from the same account for the other. Essentially going through you, the business owner, as an intermediary."
Hi, @MistyM.
You can create a journal entry by clicking on "More", on the top right of the Transactions page. It'll allow you to manually create an accounting entry. Can you tell me exactly what it is you are trying to account for in the real world? I'll be able to help translate it into Wave.
Alexia, it would be great if we can transfer all our receipts for expenses and also can reclassify into asset into our Personal account as batch and then accordingly to post them into different businesses. If we have wrongly posted, it is possible for us to move the receipt to another business rather than delete and reposting.
This will ensure only one receipt per company. Same for wrongly issued invoice.
Thank you for your feedback, @Kenj.
We are working on a better workflow for moving transactions between the business and personal pages on Wave, but those features aren't quite ready yet. I can't give specific details right now, but there is something in the works.
Hiya - is there an update on this automation? It was one of the great features of the old interface. I do lots of work in partnership with another freelance under another brand and it was great to move the transactions into my business or their as relevant?
Hi, @Stuart,
It's still on the way! I can't offer a timeline for when this feature will be available, but we haven't forgotten. Our engineers are hard at work and will bring this feature to you as soon as they can.
Hi @Alexia
I actually switched to wave BECAUSE of the very feature that allowed us to categorize transactions appearing on one single credit card as expenses of multiple businesses. The solution to have to go through myself as an intermediary is irritating and time consuming.
Are the engineers really working on reinstating this option? Am asking because according to a wave employee who just answered me via email, it seems it was discontinued because it wasn't working well.
I'd appreciate as much info as possible, because sincerely if the option is not going to be re-instated, I'll just switch to another system.
thanks for any help you can give.
Hey @CarolAnne123,
I totally get that this workflow is less than ideal, and you're not alone. Reintroducing the ability to move transactions between multiple businesses is something our teams are working on right now. I don't have a timeline on when this will be available again, although I can confirm it is in the works!
I have two companies, 'A' is a retail business, 'B' is a video production business - Both are VAT registered. A month ago, company 'B' didn't have enough money to buy something needed for that business. I allowed the purchase to be made from company 'A', thinking I could transfer that expense using Wave over to 'B' when the time came. Do you know the best way to do this in Wave? I've tried to use 'transfer' to transfer both the VAT receipt and the payment out from 'A' over to 'B' - However over in 'B', it won't let me merge the receipt with the transferred amount (because it was transferred).
What's the best way to deal with this in Wave such that when we run a sales report, the receipt and the transferred transaction expense show up in company 'B's reporting?
Hi @pappy12, I think the best way to do this could potentially get a little complicated in Wave, but I think we have a suitable workaround.
So, using your example, in B, I'd recommend uploading the receipt for the expense as a first step. Then head over to Accounting > Chart of Accounts, and create a new liability - credit card account which you can title 'Reimbursement for Business A'.
Head back to 'Receipts', and categorize the receipt as Reimbursements for Business A. This now effectively shows that A fronted the expenses for B.
Then for the transaction you use to pay back A, you'll be making an expense transaction from the B's business account. This one you will categorize as 'Transfer to Bank, Credit Card, or Loan' and select the “Reimbursement for Business A” account you created for this purpose. So now B is balanced - the receipt shows, and the payment is accounted for.
In A, where you've also recorded the expense receipt to demonstrate you effectively fronted the money to yourself, you should be able to create an income transaction categorized to the same account you paid with. In the notes just include a reference to the fact that this is funds moved from your B back to A as repayment.
I hope this helps. We have a guide that breaks it down a little more thoroughly here: https://support.waveapps.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005928103-How-to-account-for-reimbursements
Oh that is such a bummer - soooo much easier to "move" expenses to my other business when necessary - then they just show up in my other business's expenses and reports. Now it seems that when I find an expense that I have to move I will have to do the workaround and then try to remember all of those when I go into my other business and and create transactions that supposedly transfer that money back? In my case I never bothered to actually transfer any money - it was really a case of allocating the different expenses to the different businesses. Sloppy accounting, perhaps, but oh so easy.
In my case perhaps setting up an intermediate account (personal loan) is the more accurate way to "move" these expenses?
Hi @StevieG. Technically, what you can do in your business account with Wave is (as you said) create a personal liability account/expense account that would keep track of certain transactions to be paid out to you later. You could then create a transaction that displays the transfer for the amount that was paid back to you via that particular liability account that you created. Hope this helps!
Hey All,
Any update on when the move feature would be reintroduced into Wave? Was a great feature. Last I read it was in the works back in October 2018.
Thanks!
Hey @Wilsonm88, we are still working on enhancements over the coming months that will allow you transfer transactions between businesses, but we still do not have an ETA on that!
In the meantime you may be interested in hearing about a new feature to Wave - Wave connect. Wave Connect is a Google Sheets integration that helps you:
To learn more about this integration, including how to set it up, I recommend visiting this Help Center article on the topic.
@Zoe_caff1 that is great but I have one issue......how do you export journal transactions using Wave Connect? The import feature is there but no export. I need to export from one Wave account and import into another.
Please, please, please can you bring this feature back before taxes are due this year. This was such a fantastic feature and not having it makes me want to move to another product. As an aside, thank you for finally adding group recategorizing!
Hey @asterix_le_gaul, so great question! I should have been more clear, Wave connect is only for importing data into Wave. The best way to export transactions from Wave would be by navigating to Settings > Data Export on your account.
Right now these are the best routes for getting data out of your account (data export) and into your other business (Wave Connect) because there is no way currently to transfer directly to your other business. I hope that makes sense!
I'm a new user, and have been searching for an answer to this issue, and want to make sure I'm understanding: Are we saying there's NO way to assign expenses to different businesses, if they're all charged to the same account/card?
I use my Mastercard for business A, B and C.
Wave: "All your transactions will show up under A."
Me: "But I've got some stuff for B and C. Can I just move--"
Wave: "A it is! A all day."
I am shocked that this feature was removed. It was my whole reason for using Wave instead of QuickBooks in the first place. I would have paid to have this feature. Rather than evaluate its importance or ability to generate revenue your company just removed this important feature entirely. You did this stealthily and so many of your users are probably just finding out this is a problem right before tax season. This isn't just something you do haphazardly with people's finances.
@KarenOK As of right now, this feature is not available in Wave (assigning specific transactions to different businesses). Although tedious and might not be ideal for you -- what might be best in your case is uploading your bank statements into each business and then sort through the transactions that need to be there/not be there. We are currently exploring different options to improve this in Wave so I do appreciate your understanding here.
@tshm001 I've recently made a fairly big response regarding this here; https://community.waveapps.com/discussion/comment/15682#Comment_15682 -- I do think we should have given more clarify on what this feature actually accomplishes in Wave and I do apologize for the timing/lack of notice of when we migrated our users over to the new software.
@JamieD What you addressed in that thread is moving transactions from personal to business or vice versa. What most people were complaining about was the ability to move transactions between business profiles. You never addressed that in that post and it's still not clear whether you plan to bring this feature back or not. If you think it's a bad feature because, for instance, it breaks reconciliation or compromises LLC protections then you should consider that
1) this is a tradeoff that people have consented to make in order to simplify their book-keeping. I'm a software developer (rather than for instance a builder) and so I'm not overly concerned about lawsuits and I'm willing to co-mingle and move around transactions at will.
2) plenty of people are sole proprietors regardless and so don't need to worry about co-mingling
3) i'm willing to best the vast majority of users are using Wave to run simple P&L against income/expense accounts rather than the airtight reconciliation process that more professionals use
Removing this feature in order to move people toward a more 'professional' workflow makes no sense because the users aren't professional accountants.
Also I had a suggestion for all of the users in that thread but you locked it and I wasn't able to provide them a workaround. Here's what I'm doing to get around this problem:
Hypothetical entrepreneur has 3 businesses: A, B, C. He has 2 credit cards and each credit card has transactions from all 3 businesses.
Business A Profile in Wave (imports credit card 1):
Create two Income accounts: Business B Profits, and Business C Profits
Create two Expense accounts: Business B Expenses and Business C Expenses
Business B Profile in Wave (imports credit card 2):
Create two Income accounts: Business A Sales, Business C Sales
Create two expense accounts: Business A Expenses, Business C Expenses
Business C Profile in Wave:
Create two income accounts: Business A Sales, Business B Sales
Create two expense accounts: Business A Expenses, Business B Expenses
Allocate all of your co-mingled pulled transactions inside each profile as you normally would but use the internal accounts.
You can keep allocating the transactions like this for as long as you want until you're ready to move them. You could even move them all in one fell swoop at the end of the year, although I don't recommend it. Anyways, once you're ready to hunker down for a "transfer session" open two browser windows. In one window, filter the transactions for the business account you'd like to transfer from. In the other window, open the business that you're trying to transfer your transactions to. In the business you're moving to, create an account that matches the source it came in from e.g. "Chase Credit Card" so you can still have a paper trail of which account each transaction actually came from. One by one create a new transaction in the second business for each transaction you're wanting to move from the first business. Match the date, the price, and allocate to whatever expense account you normally would. Once you're done moving all of the transactions, delete them from the first business you moved them from. Do this for the sales/expenses of each business that exist inside of the other businesses. In my case this process took me a couple of hours but depending on volume it might take different people a long time to do.
Of course, offering a simple feature labeled "transfer to different business" would completely remove having to do this manually like this.
Hey @tshm001. Thanks again for providing your detailed feedback here -- highly appreciated. When we have an update for this feature request, you will definitely see something in the thread I mentioned above.. but I do want to reiterate that your voice is being heard, and the example of your workflow is great!
It's been multiple more months without a solution to replace this lost functionality. We're really stuck in a bind without a new feature. Please update us with the feature details that will restore this functionality to the community. Thanks for the delivery date in advance!