Engage offers the ability for your institution to import financial transaction data on a regular basis via a CSV file, rather than entering each transaction into Engage by hand. This feature is best used when:
- You are entering some or all financial transactions into an institution-wide accounting system and simply want student treasurers to be able to view these transactions within Engage.
- You do not need transactions within Engage to show as “attached” to specific purchase or funding requests. NOTE: Imported transactions are not shown as related to financial requests.
Note: If your campus also uses API, you could also choose to automate this process. Discuss with your consultant for more information.
This article will walk you through all the relevant steps to prepare your system for importing transactions, performing the import, and errors you may encounter.
Preparing for your Transaction Import
Before you can import transactions into accounts, make sure all relevant accounts are fully created and have an associated External ID. To identify your existing accounts and External ID data, you can individually refer to their details under "Accounts" or use the "Financial Accounts List" report.
Creating your import file
The system accepts a Comma Delimited (.CSV) file of your financial transactions and imports them into Engage using Engage's “deposit” transaction method. Expenses should be imported as negative transactions and income/distributions as positive transactions.
Each transaction must be listed as one row within the CSV file. The columns (fields) contained within the CSV file must be only the following, in the order described below. The maximum length for all string fields is 255 characters. A (*) denotes a required field.
Here is a Template to get you started!
| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| *externalTransactionID | (string field) | A unique identifier for the transaction to be imported. This is used by Engage to ensure no duplicate imports may run. The unique transaction ID has to be numbers only. If there are letters or other special characters, you will receive an error. |
| *externalAccountID | (string field) | A unique identifier for the account in which the transaction has occurred. This ID# must match the External ID set in Engage for the account in which the transaction will be recorded. |
| *transactionAmount | (00.00 or -00.00 format) | The amount of the payment or deposit to record in the account. A payment would generally be a negative number and a deposit would generally be a positive number. |
| *transactionCategory | (string field) | A category for the transaction, such as an expense or revenue code. |
| *transactionType | (string field) | A secondary category for the transaction most often used to specify the type or transaction such as Internal Transfer, Check, Credit Card Purchase, etc. |
| transactionMemo | (string field) | A description of the transaction. |
| *transactionPayee/Source | (string field) | The payee for a payment or the source of a deposit. |
Here is an example of a CSV file of transactions:
NOTE: Your file should not contain the bolded column header row shown above. The image above allows you to see the proper order in which the items must be listed. Be sure to remove the header row before you perform the import, or it will cause an error to occur. When you are ready to perform the import, your correctly-formatted template should look like the one shown below:
Scheduling an import
Head to the Admin view, select the Finance dropdown and select Transaction Import. Click "+Import Transaction."
Browse for the CSV file created using the steps above by clicking Choose File, and then click Upload.
The page will refresh listing all Valid Transactions in the top module and any Invalid Transactions in the bottom module. A transaction may be invalid if any of the fields do not match in the system, or if the transaction # is duplicated. These will not be imported. If you're fine with the listed transactions, click Import to complete the process.
You will see all of your pending and completed imports. The new import just scheduled will show in the list as Status Pending. If you have more than one import to run, you may schedule multiple imports to run at the same time. Return to this page to see the status of your imports and to display any errors that have occurred.
Common error messages and explanations:
- No internal account has been mapped to this external account number – If this error occurred, the transaction was not imported because the External ID specified is not associated with any existing account in Engage. Correct the External ID in the CSV file or add it to an existing account and then try your import again.
- A transaction with this ID has already been imported – This error means that the transaction in the CSV has an externalTransactionID that matches a transaction that was imported previously, so it was skipped because it was identified as a duplicate
- {fieldname} cannot be null – A required field was missing a value for the specified transaction so the transaction was not imported. Add a value to the field specified in your CSV file and try the import again.