Occasionally a transaction that appears in your internet banking won’t come through on your bank feed. This is usually caused by your bank backdating a transaction’s value date after the sync that should have captured it has already run. This article explains how to identify what’s missing and recover it manually.
Before manually importing a missing transaction, try adjusting your sync date and rerunning the bank feed. Go to Settings > Banking Setup > Bank Sync, move the Sync Transactions From date back to before the missing transaction, and click Sync all transactions. If the transaction comes in, move the sync date back to where it was. Only proceed with a manual CSV import if the resync doesn’t recover it. See Setting up bank feeds for more detail on how resyncing works.
Why you need to use CSV for this
When recovering a single missing transaction, CSV is the only practical option. OFX files are generated by your bank and cover a date range — you can’t create a single-transaction OFX file manually. A CSV file is just a spreadsheet saved in a plain text format, which means you can create one yourself with exactly the one row you need.
Before you import
There are two important things to do before you create your CSV file.
1. Confirm the transaction details from your internet banking. Note the exact date, amount, and description as they appear in your online bank account. You’ll need these to match the transaction correctly.
2. Check your reconciliation to confirm it is genuinely missing. Go to Banking > Bank Transactions and search for the transaction. If it’s already there, you don’t need to import it — it may just need to be reconciled.
Adjust your sync date before importing
This step is critical. Because CSV imports have no bank ID, Law App cannot detect if the same transaction later comes in through your bank feed — it will simply create a duplicate. To prevent this, you need to set your bank feed sync date to a point after the transaction you are about to import manually.
- Go to Settings > Banking Setup > Bank Sync.
- Find the account the missing transaction belongs to.
- Set the Sync Transactions From date to the day after the missing transaction’s date.
- Click Save all.
If your bank feed is still active and you import a transaction via CSV without adjusting the sync date, the same transaction may come in again on the next sync and appear twice in your bank transactions. A duplicate bank transaction that has already been reconciled can cause reconciliation balance errors that are difficult to unwind.
Create your CSV file
Open a new spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. You only need one row of data — the missing transaction. Set up your columns as follows:
| Column | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Date | The transaction date as shown in your internet banking — in DD/MM/YYYY format. |
| Amount | The transaction amount. Use a positive number for a receipt (money in) and a negative number for a payment (money out). No dollar signs, no commas, two decimal places — e.g. 1250.00 or -1250.00. |
| Description | The transaction description as it appears in your internet banking. Remove any commas from the description text. |
| Reference | Optional — add a reference if relevant. |
| Payee | Optional — if the payee is an existing contact in Law App, enter their name exactly as it appears in Law App. |
Dollar signs and commas in the Amount column will cause the import to fail or produce incorrect values. In Excel, select the Amount cell, right-click, choose Format Cells, select Number, set decimal places to 2, and uncheck Use 1000 Separator. Do the same for any amounts in the Description column if they appear there.
When your spreadsheet is ready, save the file as CSV (Comma delimited) — not as an Excel file. In Excel, go to File > Save As and choose CSV (Comma delimited) (.csv) from the file type dropdown.
Import the transaction
Go to Banking > Import in Law App. Select the correct bank account from the Account dropdown, then scroll to Step 4 and click the Import CSV File tab. Click Import, select your CSV file, and Law App will display the transaction.
Check that the date, amount, and description match what you saw in your internet banking, then click Save All.
For full detail on the import screen and what each field does, see Import bank statements (CSV) into Law App.
After importing
The transaction will now appear in Banking > Bank Transactions. Go to Banking > Reconciliation to match it against the corresponding record in Law App.
Your bank feed will continue syncing from the adjusted date you set earlier. Keep an eye on your bank transactions over the next day or two to make sure the transaction hasn’t also come through on the feed — if it has, you will need to delete the duplicate.
If the transaction still isn’t appearing correctly after importing, or if you’re seeing ongoing gaps in your bank feed, check the Fiskil website for any current issues with your bank’s integration. If the problem persists, contact us and we can help investigate.
Need help with a missing transaction? Contact us at support@lawsupport.com.au or call 07 3040 3036.
