How to create bank rules in MYOB

Look at a few of the bank transactions you want the rule to catch and note what repeats: words in the description, the amount, or both. Those become the rule's conditions.

Pick the kind of rule. A Bill rule finds payments you've made to a supplier and suggests their open bills. An Invoice rule finds payments from a customer and suggests their open invoices. A Spend money or Receive money transaction rule creates that transaction and allocates it to one or more categories.

For spend or receive money rules, check your category list has the category you want before you begin, and add or edit one first if needed. If you're not sure which category to use, check with your accountant. Where the description or amount changes every time, an automated rule won't catch the transaction; MYOB's answer is a categorisation template, set up the same way with Categorisation template as the Rule type.

1. Go to the Banking menu and choose Bank rules.
2. Click Create rule and choose the type: Bill, Invoice, Receive money transaction or Spend money transaction.
3. Enter a Rule name you'll recognise later.
4. For the Rule type, choose Automated rule, so MYOB applies it without you.
5. Choose whether it applies to All bank accounts or One bank account.
6. In the conditions section, set what to look for. A Description condition matches words with Contain, Starts with or Ends with, and ignores capitals. An Amount condition matches one set amount.
7. Click Add condition for each extra condition you need. A transaction must meet every one.
8. Say what happens when the rule applies. For a Bill rule choose the Supplier, and for an Invoice rule choose the Customer.
9. For a spend or receive money rule, you can add a Contact and a Description of transaction. Choose Percent or Amount, then on each row select a Category and the share it gets, plus a Job if the amount relates to one.
10. Use the next row to allocate to another category, or the delete icon at the end of a row to remove it.
11. Click Save.

The rule is applied on the Bank transactions page, both to transactions already there that meet its conditions and to future ones. A Bill or Invoice rule offers matches from that contact's unpaid bills or invoices. A spend or receive money rule creates the transaction for you, allocated the way you set.

Allocations can be split across several categories or jobs, by percentage or by dollar amount. In AccountRight on the desktop, MYOB's notes add that negative lines are allowed, which is how a rule separates something like a merchant fee or bank charge from the payment it was taken out of. A percentage split there must total 100, so the main line goes above 100 to balance a negative fee line.

Rules can be changed or deleted later. MYOB's desktop notes say deleting a rule leaves alone any transactions it has already been applied to.

A message that one or more fields contain a trailing space means a space has crept in after the text in a field, often the Rule name. Delete it and save again. MYOB's desktop notes also advise against using rules for recurring transactions that come through the bank feed, because their preset amounts might not match what the bank sends.

If you use AccountRight on the desktop, rules are made from the Bank Feeds window: select a bank statement transaction, click New and choose Transaction Rule, Invoice Rule or Bill Rule. Conditions there use fields such as this exact word or phrase and any of these words, with commas between entries. Click the refresh icon afterwards so the rule is applied to unmatched transactions already in the window.