Connecting a bank account in Wave can save you time with uploading your transactions, but what happens if your accounts get connected more than once and you suddenly have duplicate transactions?
This guide will take you through the steps to removing your duplicate accounts and transactions to ensure your books are back in order.
Bank Connection
First, you'll want to make sure you only have the bank connections you need for transaction imports.
- Head to Banking > Connected Accounts in the left-hand menu to find a list of your bank connections
- Toggle off Automatically import transactions into...for any unneeded accounts
- Toggle on imports for any bank or credit card accounts you need transactions from and assign them to the correct account from the Chart of Accounts
- Ensure that you edit the Import From date to the day after your most recently-imported transaction if you are prompted. You can find this information in your Transactions page or in the Chart of Accounts. For example, if your last imported transaction was on February 4th, 2021 then you'll want to select to start importing from February 5th, 2021. This will prevent more duplicate transactions from importing
- If you have an entire connection duplicated (multiple bank or credit card accounts under one bank connection), then you can also delete the connection you no longer want using the trash can icon
If your bank account is connected for Wave Payments or Wave Payroll, we recommend keeping this connection for your bank imports as well. Otherwise, you'll need to update your payout account or payroll funding account in Settings before you're able to delete the connection!
Chart of Accounts
Next, you'll want to locate any asset or liability (credit card) accounts in the Chart of Accounts that were created for the duplicate connection. Renaming the unneeded account to mark it as the duplicate will help you to locate it more easily in filters and in the final step when you'll archive it.
- Head to Accounting > Chart of Accounts and locate the duplicate accounts. Checking and Savings accounts will be under Assets while credit card accounts will be under Credit Cards and Liabilities
- Determine which account is still connected to your bank connection. This will likely be the one with the latest imported transaction date - you'll be keeping this account for your accounting
- Edit the unneeded account by clicking the pencil icon next to its name
- Rename the account something that will indicate it's a duplicate - this will make it easier to filter for in the next stage
Transactions
Now you will need to remove any imports from your unneeded accounts. This may mean moving your transactions from one account to another to ensure all your transactions for a bank or credit card account are in one place. Alternatively, you can also completely delete your transactions if you don't need the account at all.
- Head to Accounting > Transactions
- Filter for your unneeded account using the Account dropdown menu at the top - this will be the account you renamed in the last step
- Click Select All to bulk select all loaded transactions
- To move the transactions into the correct account, click Edit and change the Account field to the currently-connected account
- If you want to permanently delete your transactions, you can use the Delete button instead of the Edit button
- Repeat this process for all transactions in the account until you have no transactions left
- If more than one account was duplicated, repeat the process for all duplicated accounts
If you need help bulk editing or deleting your transactions, please see our Help Center article on the bulk edit tool for more information.
Chart of Accounts
Once you've moved or deleted all the transactions from the unneeded accounts, you can now archive them in the Chart of Accounts. This will also remove the account from the drop-down menu in the Transactions page.
- Head back to Accounting > Chart of Accounts and click the pencil icon next to your unneeded account
- Use the Archive account option and hit Save
This should make the account disappear completely from Wave as long as there are no associated transactions. Once you've completed this for all duplicate accounts, you're done!