Transaction export to CSV, several issues with 365 online

Irish Steve

Folks,

Had my head wrecked last night trying to get sense from the data that was exported from the system

There are several issues, 

The first is that if there are multiple transactions for a day, the balance is on the wrong line of the CSV file, it's on the first line of the day, and for correct information, it should be on the last line, as that it the point where the balance returned is correct. As there's no opening balance with a CSV file, this well confused a routine I was trying to use last night, as the calculated balance in the intermediate stages didn't agree with the balance that was being shown on the basis of the CSV data.

Then there's an issue that I couldn't completely get to the bottom of, but I managed to get round it. There appears to be no way to select a period of longer than one month even if the advanced option is used, to (for example) search for just lodgements, and in some situations, even if a specific month is selected, and there are transactions of the selected type for that month, they are not returned when the search is sent, the only way to see them is to select individual months, and ALL transactions, which is not exactly helpful. 

With the first issue, I can't understand how this even got past intitial testing, given the importance of being able to use the data for calculations. As for the second, I don't understand why the advanced routine can't get the data that I know is there. 

Hopefully, someone can check what's going on with this, and get it sorted before too long

Thanks

Bank of Ireland: Sarah

Hi Irish Steve,

Thank you for contacting us on Boards. 

The CSV file would not be the same format of your 365 Online or hard copy statement and does not display the balance of that day next to the last transaction of that day. There is currently no plans to update this format, however we will certainly pass on your feedback to our 365 Online Development team. 

With regards to selecting only certain transactions on that month, this would not be possible as the CSV file would display the entire month's transactions and it is not possible to display individual transactions. 

Just to mention, you might find Money Manager helpful if you wish to view a break down of your account. You can find more information on this here. 

Thanks,
Sarah

Irish Steve

Sarah,

Sorry, but you are COMPLETELY WRONG, based on the work I have done over the last couple of days, the CSV structure DOES contain the balance (as at the end of day) but if there are a number of transactions for a day, the END of day balance is contained in the first record presented for that day, which means that if any calculation is being done using the figures the intermediate stages will be incorrect, or (which was what threw me) if there are multiple transactions for the first day of the month, the "opening" balance embedded in the first CSV data record returned is in fact the balance at the END of the day, which means that the "opening" balance can't be used for calculation purposes.

I can forward examples if you need them, but it should not be necessary, any programmer that is worth the name will be able to see this fundamental failure in about 30 seconds. It's not the format that needs to be updated, it's the program logic that needs to be corrected to provide the information in the correct format, as it is presently structured, it is WRONG.

The header record from a CSV file downloaded earlier reads "Date,Details,Debit,Credit,Balance"

I think that is pretty self explanatory! 

Regarding the ability of the system to show specific transaction types. I'm not even going to bother going down that road any further, clearly the programmers don't understand how the concept of "advanced" works, so realistically, it would be better for all concerned if the option was removed from the application, given that it doesn't work.

Bank of Ireland: Sarah

Irish Steve wrote: »

Sarah,

Sorry, but you are COMPLETELY WRONG, based on the work I have done over the last couple of days, the CSV structure DOES contain the balance (as at the end of day) but if there are a number of transactions for a day, the END of day balance is contained in the first record presented for that day, which means that if any calculation is being done using the figures the intermediate stages will be incorrect, or (which was what threw me) if there are multiple transactions for the first day of the month, the "opening" balance embedded in the first CSV data record returned is in fact the balance at the END of the day, which means that the "opening" balance can't be used for calculation purposes.

I can forward examples if you need them, but it should not be necessary, any programmer that is worth the name will be able to see this fundamental failure in about 30 seconds. It's not the format that needs to be updated, it's the program logic that needs to be corrected to provide the information in the correct format, as it is presently structured, it is WRONG.

The header record from a CSV file downloaded earlier reads "Date,Details,Debit,Credit,Balance"

I think that is pretty self explanatory! 

Regarding the ability of the system to show specific transaction types. I'm not even going to bother going down that road any further, clearly the programmers don't understand how the concept of "advanced" works, so realistically, it would be better for all concerned if the option was removed from the application, given that it doesn't work.

Hi Irish Steve,

Thanks for your reply. 

To clarify my previous post, the CSV file "does not display the balance of that day next to the last transaction of that day", it does indeed display the end of day balance beside the first listed transaction of that day.  
 

365 Online does not display opening balances, however the closing balance of the previous day will be the opening balance for the next day.

We have done some checks here ourselves and successfully exported the following into a CSV file:
  
From the Advanced Option Direct Debits/Credits for the last 12 months, . One point to mention, this would not include the balance column in this option as this is only available when you choose to export "all activity" for the period selected.

Request for all transactions for the past 12 months.

For the above, they were exported and displayed correctly on the CSV file.

We did try to filter Lodgements for the past 2 months however, in this instance, as there were no branch lodgements for that period, we got the following message "Sorry there have been no transactions since your last statement on this account".
If you choose a transaction type that was not made during that time period, you will get the above message.

If you are finding that there are discrepancies between what's exported and what appears online, we would recommend that you call Bank of Ireland 365 on 0818 365 365 when you have access to your computer. A representative who will have full access to your account can arrange for you to then send in screen shots if necessary.

Thanks,
Sarah

Irish Steve

I cannot believe that BOI see this as a correct and valid way to present the information, but then having said that, BOI also see nothing wrong with having transactions on a statement twice for periods of time as part of their processing system.

CSV data is intended to be used with spreadsheet products such as Excel, which can be set up to validate information by using calculation formulae in line.

If I have a transaction for a day, then there is a balance with that transaction. In order to check that no mistakes have been made when doing things like preparing information for Revenue submissions, the rolling balance on the account is fundamental to ensuring that no errors have been made in either copying or updating, and to validating that no transactions have been either omitted or duplicated.

So, I now have a transaction file for a month of activity. If there is one entry for a day, then the balance calculated by Excel will agree with the balance presented by the CSV data, and all is good. If however there is more than one entry for a day, the rolling balance calculated by the spreadsheet will NOT agree with the balance presented within the data, as the balance is not on the correct line of the data, which makes checking the information more involved, as the spreadsheet will be flagging errors that are not as such errors in the data, they are errors in the order or presentation.

Yes, it would be possible to sort the data so that the item that has the daily balance becomes the last item of the day, but that will then mean that the spreadsheet information is no longer in the same order as the data presented on the prime document, the statement, which means that an audit check or validation of the data becomes considerably more involved than is necessary or appropriate.

Now consider a year end scenario. The closing balance of the year is captured on file, and then the first statement of the new financial year arrives, and there are multiple entries for the first day. The opening balance is taken from the external file, and the spreadsheet calculation then checks the rolling balance and because of the order that the data is presented in, it will throw an error, as the "balance" will be wrong at the end of the day's transactions. 

Effectively, the CSV is not the same as the statement and that is my issue with the way that it's being done.

For audit and accountancy purposes, I should be able to use the CSV data to validate the system, and as presented, that's a lot more complex than it should be because of the issue of the position of the balance information in the CSV. which does not correspond with the presentation of the information on the paper statement.

Bank of Ireland: Tara

Hi Irish Steve,

We will ensure to pass on all of your comments and we do appreciate the time you've taken to provide us with your feedback. As mentioned, there are currently no plans to change the formatting of the export function. 

If the export function does not suit your particular purpose, perhaps, as Sarah mentioned, Money Manager would be worth checking out. We have more information on this here and we've received really positive feedback from many customers who are using Money Manager. 

Thanks again for taking the time to post.

Tara

Irish Steve

Tara,

Thanks for the response and the link to Money Manager, I've had a quick look at the options, and while they might be useful for some work, they don't cover the specific requirement I had, which used the output from the BOI system that would have been processed forward into another application, but the issue with the balance field being associated with the wrong transaction record means that there would have to be significant changes to the input data before it could be incorporated into the ongoing application. 

Clearly, there's no point prolonging this discussion as BOI are happy with presenting data to customers that's not formatted correctly from an audit aspect, and are not prepared to see that the present format is wrong. So be it.

I am going to forget trying to use the BOI system to get a better result for my clients, and I will start researching alternative solutions, and if that means telling them to move away from the BOI to an alternative supplier, I will do that, if it means that we can save time and money on the ongoing processing of audit data.


we tried, and failed.

Thanks anyway

Steve