Write bank transactions to FreeAgent

Learn how to write your SMB users' bank transactions via our FreeAgent Bank Feeds integration

When an SMBSMB The primary customer segment that Codat helps businesses serve, typically companies with annual revenues under $500 million. user has set up a bank feed connectionConnection A link between a Codat company and a data source (like an accounting platform). Each connection represents authorized access to pull or push data from that platform., you can write bank transactions for source bank accounts to FreeAgent. Write them using the Create bank transactions endpoint, as described in Write transactions.

Prerequisites

• Your SMBSMB The primary customer segment that Codat helps businesses serve, typically companies with annual revenues under $500 million. user has an authorized FreeAgent connectionConnection A link between a Codat company and a data source (like an accounting platform). Each connection represents authorized access to pull or push data from that platform. and has established a bank feed.

Transaction direction can come from the type

In Codat's bank transactions schema, the sign of the amount determines the direction of a transaction: positive is money in, negative is money out. The transactionType describes the kind of transaction.

For some transaction types, FreeAgent takes the direction from the transactionType and overrides the sign of the amount. Xfer is one of these types: FreeAgent always treats a transfer as money out.

Written as sent, a transaction with amount: 1.60 and transactionType: Xfer would be £1.60 out in FreeAgent, while integrations that use the sign, such as Xero and QuickBooks Online, record £1.60 in.

Codat converts a positive transfer

To keep the direction consistent with the amount you send, Codat writes a positive Xfer transaction to FreeAgent as OTHER. FreeAgent uses the sign for OTHER in both directions, so the transaction is recorded as money in, matching the sign of the amount.

A negative Xfer isn't converted, because the type and the sign already agree.

The type appears in the description

FreeAgent includes the transaction type in the description that the SMBSMB The primary customer segment that Codat helps businesses serve, typically companies with annual revenues under $500 million. user sees against the bank transaction. A transaction sent as Xfer reads as //XFER/, followed by the amount:

your-transaction-description//XFER/£1.60

Because a positive Xfer is written as OTHER, the SMBSMB The primary customer segment that Codat helps businesses serve, typically companies with annual revenues under $500 million. user sees //OTHER/ instead:

your-transaction-description//OTHER/£1.60

SMBSMB The primary customer segment that Codat helps businesses serve, typically companies with annual revenues under $500 million. users explain the transfer themselves

Because the transaction arrives as OTHER rather than Xfer, FreeAgent doesn't suggest a transfer when your SMBSMB The primary customer segment that Codat helps businesses serve, typically companies with annual revenues under $500 million. user explains it.

They can still explain it as a transfer exactly as they do now, using the Transfer from Another Account option. They select it themselves instead of FreeAgent proposing it.