Account transactions report - Show description of transaction line
Account Transactions Report
It doesn't make sense that you can separately select the 'Contact' column and the 'Description' column, but that the 'Contact' details show in the 'Description' column.
It feels like the 'Description' column in the Account Transactions report is wrongly pointing to the 'Contact' data!
If the 'Description' detail is not available in the Account Transactions report, this column should be withdrawn from the options available for selection.
It would be great to get this issue fixed.
Peter Martin
shared this idea
Thank you for your engagement on this idea. To help explain a little on how this works in the Account Transactions(AT) report - what shows in the Description field when running the report is dependent on the type of account you're running the report for.
For example, when running the AT report for a bank account, transactions will show the Contact name in the Description field. This is because the detail that is entered on each description line in the body of a transaction relates to the account the line item is coded to.
To see the detail, you'll need to run the report for the account code, not the bank account. This is also how the report works for some other accounts such as the system sales tax account, Account Receivable, and Accounts Payable.
If you're trying to find the account a bank transaction or system account line has been coded to, you can add the 'Related account' column to the report which should help with look ups.
We appreciate what's being asked in this idea and will continue to keep an eye on the idea here, however we want to be open we don't have plans for changing the behaviour of this in the near term.
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Patrick Norman
commented
This seems like something that should have been in place at inception. We can't even customize the report to get this information ourselves. It has to be done manually combining two reports out of the software.
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Ann Plush
commented
This is a pretty simple issue, I don't see why it can't be fixed.. And while you're at it, enable split transaction visibility too!
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Trevor Courtney
commented
Please fix this now or I'm heading back to Quickbooks this year.
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John Davies
commented
Another thing about Xero changing the description of an item to just the supplier contact name. At times we order the same item from different suppliers, so if we go searching for how many of an item we've purchased over the past year, we're going to end up with a list of supplier names which might have items we haven't purchased or need information about. How many of the programmers in Xero have actually worked in a small business that orders many different items, from the same supplier as well as different suppliers?
The difficulty in trying to search for important information will be so much more difficult AND time consuming. -
Stephen Humphrey
commented
It is maddening that you cant get the Description in the reports. I cant believe this isn't possible.
Please Xero action this request asap
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John Davies
commented
Whose bright idea was it to change something that has worked logically for years !! The description of the expense from a supplier we know doesn't need the suppliers name in the description. Absolute stupidity and nonsense and a total stuff up for something that has worked so successfully in the past. Do fix it ASAP
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Trevor Courtney
commented
I
I'm going to just copy the previous post because it says it all. Fix this already."Its an absolutely stupid feature that will take the Xero Development team 5 minutes to resolve.
Contact = Contact
Description = Description
NOT: Description = Contact + Description" -
Accounts Department
commented
Its an absolutely stupid feature that will take the Xero Development team 5 minutes to resolve.
Contact = Contact
Description = Description
NOT: Description = Contact + Description -
Richard Hollis
commented
It's been like this for ever but completely agree. When you want to see detail against bank for example, you can't without going into every transaction. Contact and Description gives exactly the same information.
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Jennifer Feranda
commented
Invoice description should flow through to payment description for reporting.
My company runs daily receipt reports with a combination of invoiced and non-invoiced items. The Description column on the account transaction report does not show a description of the invoice for which the payment was made, but rather shows the contact name for the invoice. This information is redundant as this is already part of the option for the Contact column.
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Frank Burnham
commented
Account Transactions Report Description Cash Basis - please use the same transaction description text for cash basis reporting as it is displayed for accrual basis reporting. Currently cash basis description text is limited to "Payment: [Vendor Name]" which is utterly useless in performing analytical procedures of scanning to see the general business purpose for a cash basis report. This is a very common practice by CPAs to quickly gain an understanding of the nature of transactions in a given account for tax compliance reasons.
Currently users must drill down in each suspect transaction to the originating bill to see the actual description text entered by a client.
QuickBooks uses the same description text regardless of the basis of accounting for reporting purposes for this very reason. Just sayin....