Bank Reconciliation - Only autofill existing contacts when using Add details option
On the Reconcile screen, if you click the 'Add details' button for a transaction that doesn't have a suggested contact, Xero will autofill the 'To' field for the new transaction with the statement line Payee field. This is true whether or not that field matches an existing contact name and Xero doesn't indicate new contacts in any way.
I would like the option to restrict this autofill to only use existing contact names, or turn it off entirely. I have a lot of contacts where the Payee field is slightly different than the contact name in Xero and this autofill created a lot of duplicate contacts before I realized what was happening. Even now, I have to manually delete and re-enter the correct contact during reconciliation if Xero auto-fills the wrong name.
At minimum, the new transaction entry should have a label showing whether an auto-filled contact is new. This would help us avoid creating duplicate contact that have to be merged later on.
Briana Caesara
shared this idea
Thanks for sharing this feedback. Automatically copying the bank statement payee into the Contact field can create duplicates when the name doesn't match an existing contact.
For recurring transactions, you can use Bank Rules to map bank statement details to the correct existing contact.
I’ve updated this idea to Gaining Support so we can continue tracking community feedback. If a setting to control contact auto-fill would be useful, add your vote and share how you'd like it to work.
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Briana Caesara
commented
Upon further thought, I think the core of my suggestion is simply to have Xero mark when a new contact would be created during reconciliation. A 'New' label similar to the Expenses feature would be ideal.
With the current functionality, I have to check every automatically filled in contact to make sure it isn't creating a duplicate and it's easy to miss when the names are similar. Combined with the fact that Xero doesn't let you delete contacts, this is causing me major issues.