Import expense items form

This popup form can be accessed via the bottom of the ‘Expenses’ table in the Expenses tab at any of the parent view pages (e.g. organisation, programme, project or sub-project) , as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1 – Access via expenses table

Completing the expense items import consists of a number of phases: The import popup is shown in conjunction with each phase below, and can be used to import a number of expense items from a Comma Separated Values (CSV) file into the selected parent asset. There are four steps when importing expense items:

Phase 1 – Import file

Figure 2 – Import expense items form (1)

The first phase is to select file you want to import and some details about the file, using the browse option of the import file field. You can also set the delimiter used in the file, whether the file contains a header row and whether you want to skip a certain number of rows  (e.g. if you have a surplus of lines before the header). If you are importing expense items into the organisation or a programme (as indicated in the top read-only field in this popup) then you will get this option to match the expense item to one of the projects underneath the organisation or programme. The three options are:

• Do not match projects, i.e. import all of the expense items into the selected organisation or programme.
• Match project by the default GL number – this option will add the expense items to the projects with the match GL number
• Match project by name – this option will add expense items to the projects where the project name matches the project name column.

If your import file includes a transaction type column you can choose to filter this by only importing selected transaction types and ignore the other lines. In phase 2 you’ll have an extra option where you can select the transaction type column. Click the Next button to move to the next step.

Phase 2 – Mapping

Figure 3 – Import expense items form (2)

Phase 2 allows you to map or specify which columns from the import file should go into which fields of the new expense items. For example the Reference field allows you to select which column to import into the reference field. The Category field allows you to select the category column, and so on. If the column headers already match the field names then Psoda will automatically select those. There is one special option on this page to Invert amount – if you set this check box then the amount from the import file will be inverted, i.e. positive amounts will be made negative and visa versa. If you do not want to import a particular column from the file the just select the “Do not import” option from the list. You will be given an opportunity in the next step to specify default values for any fields you do not want to import. NOTE: The reference field must be unique for every expense item in your project so you cannot choose not to import the reference. Select the Next button to move to the next step. If you have selected columns for all the fields then you will skip over the next phase (default values) and go straight to the last phase (results).

Phase 3 – Default values

Figure 3 – Import expense items form (3)

Phase 3 allows you to set default values for any fields you chose not to import from the file. You may also be given the chance to assign a project name at this stage. The fields may be the same as for creating a new expense item, except for the additional field to select the Transaction types to import. However, this is very much dependent on which options you selected in phase 2. Figure 3 above provides an example of what this popup might look like at this stage. You can select multiple transaction types to import by holding the CTRL or SHIFT keys and clicking on the name of the additional transaction type(s). To de-select, click on the highlighted name while still holding the CTRL or SHIFT keys so as not to lose all other selected transaction types. Click the Import expense items button to start importing the expense items.

Phase 4 – Importing…

Figure 3 – Import expense items form (4)

Phase 4 performs the actual import. You will see a progress bar that will automatically update and show you how much of the file has been imported. If you do not see automatic updates then you can force a refresh with the Refresh button. Once the import is complete the Refresh button will change to a Next button.

Phase 5 – Results

Once the import is completed, click on the Next button to see the results. If there were any failures while importing a table will by shown listing all of the failures including the line where the failure occurred, descriptions of the failures and the first 20 characters of the line to make it easier to identify. If any expense items were successfully imported they will be listed in a table with links allowing you to easily view the new expense items. The Import expense items form will remember the options that you selected for next time that you want to import more expense items.