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Custom text for a "Reference" would be so simple and quick to implement as default text offered in the reference box during bank reconciliation I am surprised it has never happened!!

This is critical to us. The feeds from our bank bring across everything as a really long description and an unhelpful reference. We set up bank rules to pick out the relevant bit from the description and it would be so helpful to be able to post this custom text as the reference.
To keep consistency we have to refer to previous transactions or an external look up list.
Not being able to define the description defeats the point of having the bank rule.
It can't be that difficult to add the option of entering a user-defined text in the bank rule to populate the reference field.

This is critical and shouldn't be something that is left for bookkeepers to have to deal with. The whole idea of bank rules is to speed up the process. Why create the bank rule option to users if you aren't going to give complete flexibility, resulting in them having to manually input data anyway?

Appreciate there are other options available to choose from with the reference field, but we are setting up a bank rule for a reason, and the options pulled over from a bank transaction do not equate to what is needed in the actual transaction reference in most instances. Therefore, we are having to manually input the reference before reconciling. It is hard to remember all the exact references we use, so we often find we're having to open transactions in another tab to check that what we are putting in aligns with past transactions. As a business owner, I should be focusing my time on other priorities and shouldn't have to manually input repetitive transactions when i have spent the time setting up bank rules to remove this burden.

I have worked in software engineering previously, and our team were able to apply fixes like this very quickly.

When creating a Bank Rule option 4 is Set The Reference. These are pulled from the statement details provided. Often these details are left blank therefore no decent description is provided.
Another option should be provided so the user can enter a reference that is saved in the rule for every time that rule is used.
I understand the the option to set the reference at Bank Reconciliation But that defeats the purpose of a bank rule as you still have to open View Details to enter the reference.

This would also save my team a lot of time. We could set the reference to be an external identifier for each bank rule, and reduce the chance of the transaction being miss-allocated later down the line.

Disappointed to hear this as it would be very useful. Would it really be that hard to implement?

Yes, Xero, please could you implement this. Thank you!

When creating a bank rule, would it be possible to type in the "4. Set the Reference" field a FIXED reference so that it appears in the reference field whenever that rule is used?
Thank you, Janet

This would be great.

Better than using some gobblydegook imported from the bank.

This would be super-helpful; as I wish to enter descriptor in the "reference" field, that let me see in the bank account transactions, what the money was spent on.

But don't get your hopes-up, this has been listed nearly 10 years ago! Mind you, the other day I got an email from a SAAS scheduling app that I last used to use 15 years ago, to announce (proudly) that they had just implemented a suggestion I made 16 years ago to them!

Is this going to implemented soon as it would save so much time!!

This seems like such an easy change to implement. Why is it taking so long to implement?

This request is nearly 10 years old. Such a shame it's not attracted enough attention in terms of upvotes to be considered.

Having this would save so much time.

Surely this would be so easy to set up - cant believe this is still open since 2015!

This is a fantastic idea and would be a complete game changer!! Please implement.

Basic requirement - please add!

Mind boggling that this isn't already an option

This is so simple, I really cannot understand why it's not an option already.

I came across this problem recently while importing over 350 small transactions from a credit card. The transactions fell under 5 rules. But I couldn't set the reference to anything worth using as the description from the credit card had nothing about the purchase. As I fool to myself I spent 2-3 hours editing while reconciling each and every transaction ! mind-numbingly boring and mundane.

Towards the end, I realized I wanted it displayed slightly differently and would have to re-do the whole lot, especially as 1/4 of the transactions had also come across as a bank feed as well as the imported transactions. So had loads of duplicates to go through.

Then decided to try another approach. I ended up "remove and redo" every reconciled transaction. Also deleted every single imported and bank-fed transaction so I was back to square-one.

I then opened my .XLS file in Excel using "find and replace", and tidied up all the descriptions so i could use the description as a reference later.

Imported the edit .XLS file into Xero. Change the rules so I could set the reference from the description and voila!

This only works when importing as you have the ability to change the bank description in Excel.

A little glimmer of hope but still doesn't fix this issue.

Just add a custom box for us to use! so much easier.