What the work queue is
The Transactions tab in a client workspace is not a flat bank-statement list — it's a work queue. Every bank transaction in the selected period is sorted into exactly one bucket based on what (if anything) still needs to happen before it counts as booked. You work the buckets; finished items drop out of sight.
The 7 buckets
The pills above the list, in order:
- Open — the default view. It's the union of the four buckets that still need work (Needs receipt, Needs category, Review, Waiting), so you always land on the actionable set. An "All" view exists and stays reachable by URL, but it isn't a pill — finished work shouldn't compete for attention.
- Needs receipt — no supporting document yet, and the transaction either carries its own VAT or is matched to a confirmed invoice. Split payments are handled correctly: a transaction paying several invoices needs its documents across all of them.
- Needs category — uncategorized and with no invoice link at all. Truly open: nothing about this transaction is booked yet.
- Review — everything else that needs a human decision: auto-matches awaiting your confirmation, and matched transactions whose invoice is still pending review.
- Waiting — an open question to the client, typically a receipt you requested. The ball is in their court; see request a receipt from your client.
- Done — cleared: a human confirmed this transaction as booked.
- Ignored — deliberately excluded from the workflow.
Every non-ignored transaction sits in exactly one of the five underlying states (Done, Waiting, Needs receipt, Needs category, Review) — the buckets are disjoint and always sum to the total, so nothing can hide between pills.
Counts are server truth
Bucket counts and the progress meter are computed on the server over the full selected period, not over the rows currently loaded. The list paginates at 200 rows, but the pills never read a truncated page — if Needs receipt says 37, there are 37, even if you've only scrolled past 15.
Reading a row
Each row is designed to answer "what is this?" at a glance:
- A direction glyph: green arrow in for money in, arrow out for money out.
- Exactly one chip — the linked invoice, or the category, or an internal-transfer marker. Never a chip pile.
- Done rows get a green border.
Auto-matched rows can carry an amber "Check this match" marker when the match has caveats — see why this matched and how to undo.
The primary action follows the bucket
The focus panel's main button changes with the state, so the next step is always one click away:
- Needs receipt → Request receipt
- Waiting → Mark resolved & clear
- Review with a pending auto-match → Confirm / Reject (always shown as a pair)
- Review with a pending invoice → a cross-tab link to that invoice
- Needs category / categorized → Clear (disabled with a hint while the receipt gate applies — see why VAT bookings need a receipt)
Resolved progress and inbox zero
A "Resolved X/Y" meter above the queue tracks the period. It fills green at 100%, and when the period has transactions but no open work you get an explicit "Open work cleared" state — the signal that the bank side of this period is finished.
Much of the progress happens without you touching the queue at all: when you approve an invoice in the invoice workbench, its confirmed matched transactions are cleared automatically — never past the receipt gate, never over an open client query, and for split payments only once all contributing invoices are reviewed. If an invoice later leaves the reviewed state, the auto-cleared transactions reopen. Every auto-clear and revert is recorded in the audit log.
Deep links from the period checklist
The period checklist links straight into this queue: items like "N transactions unresolved", "N transactions uncategorized", or "N open client queries" open the Transactions tab with the right bucket pre-selected. Closing a period is mostly a tour through these deep links until every bucket that matters reads zero.
Related
- Booking transactions for your clients — what you can do on each transaction
- Request a receipt from your client — the one-click path out of Needs receipt
- Bulk clearing and smart cohorts — resolving 50 at a time
- Period checklist and VAT return prep — where the deep links come from
- Why this matched — and how to undo — the amber caveat markers