Automating some of the FreeAgent transaction explanation process

We have a weekly Harmonia task to import our bank statements and explain them in FreeAgent. Explaining a transaction in FreeAgent involves, among other things, choosing a category, setting the amount of VAT, describing the transaction and potentially uploading an attachment.

Trying to remember how to explain recurring payments (e.g. for our monthly GitHub subscription) is error prone and takes longer than necessary. While explaining the transactions yesterday, I decided to do something about it. To that end, I’ve created a bookmarklet that automates some of the explanation process for me. You can see it in action in the short video below (there’s a better quality video too).

The video shows me explaining the monthly payment for Campfire. You can see that clicking on the bookmarklet automatically sets the VAT, category and description and additionally prompts me to upload the invoice.

The code is in the freeagent_transaction_explainer project on GitHub should you wish to make use of this little time saving tool. The rules used to explain transactions are currently stored in the bookmarklet itself, so you’ll almost certainly want to fork and customise the project to get the most out of it.

Let us know if you find it useful!