Creating a bank rule in Farmplan Business Cloud enables you to automatically categorise and assign tax codes and enterprises to the imported transactions which match the rule conditions you have selected. This will minimise time spent entering routine transactions and ensure that banking entries are coded consistently.

Once your bank rule has been created you will also have the option to 'auto confirm' any banking transactions which your bank rule applies to without involving any intervention by the user. Of course, you still have the chance to view and edit them if necessary.

Bank rules will only apply to transactions which have been automatically imported through a bank feed or file import; they will not apply to bank transactions entered manually into Farmplan Business Cloud.

To learn more about entering bank transactions using a bank feed click here.

To learn more about entering bank transactions using a file import click here.

After uploading your bank transactions, head to the Imported Transactions screen.

Then from the Check tab you will need to click the button below, followed by 'Create Bank Rule':

Business Cloud will then pull information from this transaction into the rule conditions which you will use to create your New Bank Rule, as seen below:

You will need to enter a Name and Description for your Bank Rule; we recommend making your Description as informative as possible. This way, if you set up a number of different bank rules they will be easy to identify from the Bank Rules summary page.

You can choose to edit any part of your rule conditions to ensure they will apply to all similar transactions you wish to automatically categorise and assign a tax code to.

In the example below, the Description describes purchasing petrol; '5700 04NOV18 C SAINSBURYS PETROL UPTON GB - POS':

But as the Description includes details such as the date, which will not be relevant for all future petrol purchases from this station, we will change the Rule conditions to Include just the keyword 'PETROL' and remove the amount rule condition by clicking on the red – sign, so that the Bank Rule will apply to any petrol purchases, no matter the transaction value.

If you are creating a Bank Rule for regularly occurring direct debits then you might like to leave the amount rule condition as Farmplan Business Cloud had populated it so that the Bank Rule would only apply to these recurring transactions of the same value, for example to allocate different insurance payments to different categories.

You will also notice that Farmplan Business Cloud will have automatically populated the Bank account for your imported transactions and assigned the transaction a tax code (based on your previous selections for transactions of this type), as seen below:

You will then need to select the category and enterprise (if applicable) that you want the Bank Rule to assign to this transaction and any future transactions which meet the rule conditions. In this example, the category will be 'Vehicle Fuel & Oil'.

You also have the option to 'auto confirm' the transactions which this Bank Rule applies to. This enables Business Cloud to automatically process and confirm these transactions for you, although you can still check through them later under the Confirmed tab of your imported bank transactions.

Using this above example the Bank Rule you have just created would processed and entered automatically whenever the following conditions apply:

'If description includes 'PETROL' in NatWest bank account, then assign to the Vehicle Fuel & Oil category and use the Standard VAT tax code.'

Once you are happy with your rule conditions, bank account and which category and tax codes will be assigned to these transactions click the 'Apply This Rule' button to create your Bank Rule.

After you have created your Bank Rule you will be able to view and edit them from the Bank Rules summary page within Banking. You can also add new rules from here by clicking the 'New Rule' button:

When creating a new Bank Rule from scratch you will be required to set your own rule conditions to control which of your imported transactions will be automatically categorised and assigned a tax code by your Bank Rule.

When selecting your rule conditions there are three initial options for you to choose from to begin creating your Bank Rule:

You can see these in the image below:

Your initial selection will then provide different options for the second part of your rule condition. For example if you selected Money In or Money Out you will then be able choose between the following four options to continue constructing your bank rule from the value of the transaction:

As below:

However if you selected Description for the first part of your rule condition you will then be able to choose between the following three options:

As below:

For example if you wanted to set up a New Bank Rule for all of your insurance purchased from the NFU you would select Description - Includes - NFU.

After you have set up your rule conditions to control which transactions this Bank Rule will apply to you then select which Bank Account these transactions will appear in, followed by the category and tax code you want assigned to these transactions.

Using this same example we would select our main business bank account 'Current Account', followed by the Insurance category and Exempt tax code.

So the Bank Rule you have just created would be as follows:

'If description includes 'NFU’ in Current Account bank account then assign to the Vehicle Insurance category and the VAT exempt code.'

Once you are happy with your rule conditions, bank account and which category and tax codes will be assigned to these transactions click the 'Apply This Rule' button to create your Bank Rule.

You will again have the option to 'auto confirm' the transactions which this bank rule applies to, enabling Business Cloud to automatically check and process these transactions for you.

From Banking > Bank Rules you can delete, edit and view existing bank rules.

You can also see a list of all transactions that have been created from a bank rule by clicking on this button:

Entries can be bulk edited from this list if you want to reclassify them.