Importing your transactions into MYOB Essentials saves you time on data entry, and ensures your data is accurate and complete. You can import data automatically using bank feeds (see Bank feeds), but if your bank doesn’t offer bank feeds, or if you haven’t subscribed to MYOB Essentials yet, you can manually import statements which you've downloaded from your bank and work directly with the transactions in MYOB Essentials (see Import bank and credit card statements).

For more information about working with bank transactions once they’ve been imported, see Working with bank transactions.

About bank and credit card statements

Statements are available from your bank for each of your banking, credit card, loan and special purpose accounts. In most cases these statements are available in both printed and electronic formats.

Why use bank and credit card statements?

If you always enter every transaction conducted by your business in MYOB Essentials, no matter how small, you may only need statements to check bank charges and your own keyboard accuracy.

But, if you have time to enter only your invoices and major purchases in MYOB Essentials, you should use statements to add all other transactions for you.

It helps if you always pay for business purchases with a card, cheque or by direct deposit, and avoid using cash—cash transactions are not as traceable as other payment methods.

What’s in a bank or credit card statement?

A statement contains information about the transactions made on an account.

Each transaction is listed with details like the transaction date, the amount, whether it is money in (credit) or money out (debit), the type of transaction (direct deposit, point of sale, cheque, bank charge, interest, and so on), and a transaction name and description. Some banks provide more information, but the minimum is usually enough to identify your transactions.

How frequently should I import bank and credit card statements?

This is up to you, your accounting advisor, and the number of transactions going though your accounts. At first you should get statements at least monthly (or even daily if you have many transactions each day). As you get better at processing, you should be able to reduce the frequency.

Remember to note the period covered by each downloaded statement so there is no chance of missing some, or of importing entries twice.

For more information on working with bank statements in MYOB Essentials, see the following sections:

• Import bank and credit card statements
• Viewing your bank statement import history
• Deleting imported bank statements