Reading an external account
An external account is a bank account at another institution — a person’s own account, an operating entity’s own account, or a beneficiary you pay.
The Details panel looks the same for all of them, but it offers different actions depending on what the account is. This article explains why, so an action you expected to see is easy to find — or easy to understand why it isn’t there.
Own account or beneficiary
Every external account is one of two things to you:
| Relationship | What it means |
|---|---|
| Own account | It belongs to the person or entity you are looking at. You may collect money from it. |
| Beneficiary | It belongs to someone else. You may only pay it. |
The Relationship row on the panel states which. Everything else on the panel follows from that one fact.
Actions on your own account
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Change description | Renames the account on your screens |
| Automatic parking | Sets how unmatched statement lines land in suspense |
| Transfer | Replaces this account with a different one, everywhere it’s used |
| Close | Ends the account |
Automatic parking appears only on an operating entity’s own account. It reconciles imported bank statements, and statements are imported for your organisation’s own accounts — never for a customer’s.
Actions on a beneficiary
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Payment references | Sets what a payment to this beneficiary is called, on both sides |
| Notification contacts | Sets where proof of payment goes when a payment settles |
| Approve as beneficiary / Re-scope approval | Lets other accounts pay this destination too — see approved beneficiaries |
| Revoke approval | Withdraws that permission |
| Add proxy | Registers another way to address this beneficiary — see paying by proxy |
Payment references and notification contacts belong to the beneficiary, because a beneficiary is paid by more than one account — the reference and the notification address are the same whoever is paying. See payment references for how to set them and what they do.
Actions on both
Change description, Transfer, and Close apply whatever the relationship, because they are about the record itself, not about what it’s used for.
Why the list changes
Every action here changes the account, and each one only makes sense for one kind of external account. Offering an action that would always be refused would send you into a screen only to be turned back — so the panel offers only what applies.