Banking | Account transactions tab - Show transaction description
The Account Transactions tab has very weird information presented. I need to see either the Description from the Transaction or the Expense Account account it's hitting. I see neither.
In the Description Column of the Account Transaction Tab, you have the vendor/contact, not the Expense Description. In the Reference Column, you have the bank reference, which is fine, but it's a duplicate of the vendor info. You're leaving me with no useful information about the transaction.
This is something Quickbooks has figured out. I can see how the expenses are being categorized without opening every individual transaction. This is a huge problem for us with Xero. I can't convert to Xero if I don't have good info during and after reconciling.
The solution is simple, put the transaction description in the transaction or show the expense account or both. Don't give me the vendor twice. Very unhelpful.
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Vlad Finn commented
We are constantly frustrated by this limitation. It’s can’t possibly be difficult to have the description field in the report point to the description field in the data.
Having the description field pull data from the contacts field in the data doesn’t seem like a feature, this must surely be a bug that needs fixing.
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Caitlin Browner commented
Would like a report that shows where a transactions was allocated (including contact and description associated with the transaction) as well as being able to see the bank statement description.
Maybe it could just be an extra column on the account transactions report.This is particularly relevant when clients are reconciling their own files and when the accountant or bookkeeper reviews the transactions all they can see are the details entered by the client at the reconciliation stage. However, if the client misinterpreted the bank transaction then there is no way for the accountant to easily identify this when reviewing.
Attached screenshot shows example where client has selected the incorrect contact for the transaction. This is one of the few places where we can compare what the bank statement said verse how it was recorded in Xero. Would be useful to be able to compare for a large number of transactions.
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Sue Fregien commented
"The product improvement idea you raised will not be investigated any further by our product team" - so apparently Xero isn't interested in making things easier for their customers.
I have the responsibility to direct subsections of our organization regarding accounting software. This is exactly the sort of thing that is causing me to steer people AWAY from Xero. It's likely our main Xero account subscription will be dropped once I archive the data from it. QuickBooks is easier to use and obviously cares about their customers more than Xero does.
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Sharon Glasser commented
Completely agree that the Accounts Transaction information is lacking and should be a simple fix. I raised this issue back in February and only now do I receive a message saying "The product improvement idea you raised will not be investigated any further by our product team" but advising that that I can "enter your idea" on this page. Not sure why customers have to canvas support for basic functionality which improves the platform. Most disappointing and not much confidence that this will go anywhere. At least not anytime soon.
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Sue Fregien commented
Absolutely right! The Transactions tab should be a quick overview of the account. Either add the description in or allow for users to customize the view.
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Shezba Khan commented
I agree with the above. I have been training my clients on how to use Xero and I'm afraid the Account Transactions tab lets Xero down. The description should be the description, not a contact. If I want to do a search using a key word, I cannot do this on this tab. Extremely frustrating. This needs to be changed.