Investigate automatic coding of bank feed items in Xero

[rub1e]

Xero includes functionality to automatically code and reconcile bank feed items based on rules you input yourself. This may or may not be useful for recurring payments like phone bills, subscriptions etc.

• [x] Quick spike to see if this is worth doing
• [ ] Document process if we should start using this

[rub1e]

OK this is actually awesome and I'm annoyed I didn't notice it sooner (I'm already using it for #494!) - it lets you set up a rule for what to do when your bank feed loads payments which meet certain conditions, but it doesn't automatically apply it: rather it lets you say "Yes, apply the rule" or "No, this one's different, I'll do it manually"

(I'll copy this into the process handbook after I've played around with it a bit more)

• Start at the usual Bank Reconciliation page. Next to each transaction on the left hand feed, there's the option to create a rule

• Pick a transaction that is fairly predictable (i.e. always comes with the same reference into the same account, covering items charged at the same tax rate, being coded to the same contact, at the same tax rate)

• Go to create a spend money rule and it'll take you to the rule page

• Add the conditions your rule needs. (In this case the format is GENERIC_REF - UNIQUE_REF, so the rule is just set to "contains" GENERIC_REF)

• Now fill in how you want the transaction to be coded. I've not been very granular here - I'm just using this for single-line transactions so far. The account and tax rate are the important parts, but please also put the client down (as dwyl if not an external client) as I'll soon be making a rule that all transactions have to have a client ref for reporting reasons.

• Now just check the last couple of fields and give the rule a title

• And now the next time you see a matching transaction, you can choose whether or not to apply the rule:

• TODO: check if this can be used for incoming payments as well

[rub1e]

To add to the above: Xero seems to randomly not offer the rules sometimes, but otherwise this is ace. BUT it should only be used for payments where no invoice is required - if we're reclaiming VAT on something, we need to attach the invoice, which needs to be done manually