Overview
Bank Feed Allocations helps you categorize bank transactions that come in through your connected bank feed or uploaded CSV statements. Each transaction can be matched to an existing record in your books, or used to create a new expense, invoice, or bank transfer.
When you have many transactions to process, the Process with AI feature can speed things up by automatically matching and suggesting categorizations for you.
How AI Processing Works
When you click Process with AI, each unallocated transaction goes through two steps.
Step 1 — Match Against Existing Records
Before any AI is involved, Beeswax searches your existing accounting records for a matching entry. This step is fast and does not use any AI credits.
The system looks for:
- Invoices — for money coming in (deposits)
- Expenses and Payroll — for money going out (withdrawals)
- Bank Transfers — checked in both directions
- Raw Journal Entries — checked in both directions
- Split and grouped payments — a single bank transaction can match multiple outstanding invoices or expenses when the total lines up
Matching is scored based on three factors:
| Factor | How It Works |
|---|---|
| Amount | An exact amount match scores highest. Entries within 10–20% are also considered to allow for tax variations. |
| Date | Transactions within 1 day of each other score highest. Entries up to 7 days apart are still considered. |
| Description | Keywords from the bank description are compared against the entry title and company name. |
If a strong, unambiguous match is found (90% or above), the payment can be created automatically. If a likely match is found (70–89%), it is shown as a Suggested match for you to confirm.
Split and Grouped Payments
Sometimes one bank line pays several invoices at once, or one incoming amount is the exact total of multiple outstanding entries. Beeswax can detect these combination matches and show them together in the expanded row.
Use Confirm or Apply to All when the grouped suggestion is correct. Beeswax records the individual payments and links them back to the one bank transaction so reconciliation still has a clear audit trail.
Step 2 — AI Categorization
If no strong match was found in Step 1, the AI analyses the transaction and suggests what to do with it. The AI is given:
- The transaction itself (date, description, amount) and its direction — money in or money out
- Your chart of accounts, tax codes, and known vendors
- How similar transactions have been categorized in the past
- Open invoices or expenses near the transaction date — so the AI can recognise an incoming payment that's likely the customer paying an existing invoice, even if the amount or date didn't quite match Step 1's scoring
- Already-paid entries that were never linked to a bank transaction — so the AI can warn you about a possible duplicate payment
The AI may then either:
| Suggestion | What It Means |
|---|---|
| Match to an existing entry | The AI thinks this bank line is the payment for an invoice or expense already in your books. The suggestion links straight to that entry — confirm to record the payment. |
| Categorize as new | The AI suggests an account, tax code, vendor name, and type (Expense or Invoice). The fields are pre-filled and you confirm or edit before saving. |
If an invoice was already marked as paid but the payment was never linked to a bank transaction, the AI's reasoning will flag both possibilities — that this bank line is the missing bank-side of the existing payment, or that it might be a duplicate payment from the customer — so you can decide.
If the AI cannot confidently do either, the transaction is marked as No suggestion and you categorize it manually.
If Beeswax warns that a suggested match may duplicate an existing payment, review the invoice or expense first. When the bank line is genuinely the missing bank-side record, you can still confirm the match and Beeswax will bind the payment to the bank transaction.
Matching Scanned Receipts
Draft expenses created by scanning or emailing a receipt (see the Incoming Expenses help page) are also offered as matches when their bank payment arrives — so you link the bank line to the receipt you already captured instead of creating a duplicate entry.
- Paid from a same-currency account (for example a USD receipt paid from a USD wallet) — the match is offered when the bank amount equals the receipt total exactly.
- A foreign receipt paid on your normal card — the bank converts the currency at its own rate, so the amounts legitimately differ by a few percent. The match is offered when the amount is close and the vendor's name appears in the bank description.
Confirming a receipt match does three things in one step: adjusts the draft to the exact amount your bank settled, finalises it, and records the payment. Receipt matches are never applied automatically — they always appear as Suggested for you to confirm.
Foreign-Currency Documents
Invoices and expenses recorded in another currency (see the Multi-Currency help page) are also matched sensibly:
- Their outstanding amount is converted at the daily exchange rate before being compared to the bank line — a USD 100 invoice is compared against roughly its GBP equivalent, never against the raw number 100. A difference of a few percent is expected, because your bank converts at its own rate.
- Confirming the match records the payment at the rate your bank actually settled, and books the realised currency gain or loss against the document's original rate automatically. If the bank amount only covers part of the outstanding balance, a part payment is recorded instead.
- Cross-currency matches are never applied automatically — they always appear as Suggested for you to confirm.
Categorizing a transaction as a new expense or invoice on a foreign-currency bank account (for example a USD wallet) creates the document in that account's currency, so it settles cleanly against the bank line.
Categorizing Transactions
Click any transaction row to expand it and see your options:
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| New Expense + Payment | Create a new expense and record the payment against it |
| New Invoice + Payment | Create a new invoice and record the payment against it |
| Apply Payment to an Expense | Match to an existing unpaid expense |
| Apply Payment to an Invoice | Match to an existing unpaid invoice |
| Create Bank Transfer | Record a transfer between your own bank accounts |
| Confirm grouped match | Accept a split or combination match across multiple entries |
| Match Raw Journal Entry | Link the bank line directly to a journal adjustment where appropriate |
If the system found Potential Matches (existing entries that partially match the transaction), these are shown at the top of the expanded row. Click the checkmark to allocate directly to a match.
Transaction Statuses
| Status | What It Means |
|---|---|
| Needs Review | Not yet matched or categorized |
| Suggested | The system has proposed matching this bank transaction to an existing entry |
| Allocated | Matched to a record and payment created |
| Ignored | Marked as not needing allocation (e.g. a personal transaction) |
When AI Processing Is Available
Beeswax AI is included with every paid plan (and during the free trial) at no extra cost — there is nothing to configure and no API key to supply.
If your account is on the Free plan, the Process with AI button will prompt you to upgrade.
Trial accounts: Everything works during your trial — both the automatic matching against existing records (Step 1) and AI-powered suggestions. You can always categorize transactions manually as well.
When AI Processing Is Most Useful
AI processing works best when:
- You have many transactions to categorize at once
- You want account and tax code suggestions pre-filled
- You have a history of categorized transactions for the AI to learn from
- You want vendor names automatically identified
AI processing adds less value when:
- You only have a few transactions to review
- Your chart of accounts has not been set up yet
- Your books are completely up to date with no open invoices or expenses, no recent activity, and no transactions to categorize
Reprocessing
Clicking Reprocess with AI will:
- Re-run the matching step (Step 1) for all unallocated transactions — useful if new invoices or expenses have been created since the last run
- Retry AI categorization for transactions that previously failed due to a temporary error
- Skip transactions where AI has already provided a result, to avoid unnecessary processing
Tip: If you have created new invoices or expenses since the last run, reprocessing can pick up matches that were not available before.
Setting Up AI Processing
- Navigate to Account Settings > AI Processing and enable invoice processing (optional — used for defaults like the expense account and tax rate)
- Return to Bank Feed Allocations and click Process with AI