In this lesson, we’re going to cover how to manage QuickBooks Online bank feeds. After connecting your bank accounts to QuickBooks, you should review each transaction to ensure the date, amount, and account are correct. By using the QuickBooks Online Banking Center, you can then add them to the QuickBooks check register as a new transaction or match them to an existing transaction already entered in QuickBooks.
We’re happy you’re completing this free tutorial for QuickBooks Online, our best overall pick for small business accounting software. We encourage you to follow along in your own QuickBooks Online account. If you don’t already subscribe to QuickBooks Online, you can choose from a 30-day free trial or 50% off for three months.
This lesson is one in our series of Free QuickBooks Tutorials. The video below and the illustrated instructions that follow present the same information. The video is from a slightly older version of QuickBooks Online. While the process of managing imported transactions in the QuickBooks Online Banking Center essentially is unchanged, the layout of the screens is slightly different. The step-by-step instructions are made with the latest version of QuickBooks Online.
Why It’s Important to Manage QuickBooks Online Bank Feeds
Bank transactions imported into QuickBooks Online from your connected bank accounts are not entered into the check register automatically. You must review each transaction in the Banking Center, match it to any existing transaction already in QuickBooks Online, and then click to add it or exclude it from the check register. In this lesson, we will show you how to review and categorize your transactions so they can be added to the check register.
QuickBooks Online Banking Center Layout
To open the QuickBooks Online Banking Center, hover over Transactions from the left menu bar and then click Banking:
Navigate to the QuickBooks Online Banking Center.
The QuickBooks Online Banking Center includes a tile across the top for each bank and credit card account that is connected to QuickBooks. Each tile includes the name of the financial institution, the current bank balance, and the current account balance in QuickBooks. If your bank is not shown in a tile at the top of the screen, it is not yet connected to your QuickBooks Online account. Visit our prior lesson, How to Import Bank Transactions, to connect your bank account.
QuickBooks Online Banking Center.
A. Bank balance: This is the actual balance in your bank account as of the last time QuickBooks imported your banking transactions. In the above example, the bank account was “Updated moments ago.”
B. In QuickBooks: The balance in QuickBooks will be different from the bank balance as a result of bank transactions that have not been added to the check register.
C. Bank feed transactions: Transactions imported through your bank feed are organized into three tabs:
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- For Review: Imported transactions initially appear in the For Review tab where you must add, match, or exclude them.
- Review: Transactions that have been added or matched move from the For Review tab to the Reviewed tab.
- Excluded: The Excluded tab lists imported transactions that you have chosen to not transfer to your QuickBooks check register. Excluding should be extremely rare and likely only used when correcting for a previous error. All bank transactions―even if personal―must be entered into the QuickBooks check register.
Finding errors: The QuickBooks balance (B) and bank balance (A) should match after you have added and matched all transactions for review. Certain errors, such as adding a transaction that should have been matched to an existing transaction or excluding a bank transaction, can cause differences. These errors will be easiest to find when you reconcile your account as we will teach you in How to Process Bank Reconciliations.
How to Manage QuickBooks Online Bank Feeds
Navigate to the Banking Center as described above, then follow these few easy steps to review and add the imported transactions to the check register.
1. Examine Transactions in the For Review Tab
All newly imported banking transactions will appear in the For Review tab at the bottom of the Banking Center screen:
Review Transactions in the Banking Center.
Each transaction in the For Review tab must be added to the check register, matched to an existing transaction already in QuickBooks, or excluded from QuickBooks.
2. Match Imported Transactions to Existing Transactions
It’s critical that imported transactions are matched to any existing transactions, instead of being added as new transactions. If you add transactions that already exist, the check register will include them twice, and your bank account and financial statements will be wrong. Some examples of imported bank transactions that will already exist in QuickBooks include:
- Checks printed from QuickBooks
- Deposits of customer payments
A great feature of QuickBooks Online is that payments can be matched against outstanding bills, even if you haven’t recorded the payment in QuickBooks. When you match a payment to an outstanding bill, QuickBooks will create a bill payment transaction and record it in the check register.
QuickBooks Online will automatically propose any matches for your imported transaction. To review the details of the match, click anywhere on the transaction. When you are satisfied that the match is correct, click on the green Match button:
Match Imported Bank Transactions in QuickBooks Online.
The matched transaction will move from the For Review tab to the Review tab. You can undo the match by clicking on the Reviewed tab, locating the transaction, and clicking Undo.
3. Add New Transactions
Imported transactions that have not been entered into QuickBooks can be added as new transactions to the check register. An example might be an electronic payment of an expense where the bill was not recorded in QuickBooks. To add a transaction, click anywhere on the transaction to open more detail.
Add Imported Bank Transactions to Check Register in QuickBooks Online.
The only requirement to add a new transaction is to provide a Category, or account, from your chart of accounts. However, I highly recommend that you also provide the Vendor, Customer/Project, Class, and Location so that QuickBooks has all the available information to run useful management reports. If Class and Location do not appear on your screen, you need to enable Class and Location tracking in the Advanced Options.
How to Create Bank Rules to Streamline QuickBooks Online Bank Feeds
You can reduce the amount of time it takes to code and record transactions in the Banking Center by setting up bank rules. QuickBooks will use these bank rules to code transactions for you automatically, but you’ll still have the opportunity to review the transactions (as above) before you add them.
1. Navigate to Manage Rules and Create a New Rule
Click on the Rules tab at the top of the banking center, then click the green New rule button:
Create a New Banking Rule in QuickBooks Online.
2. Set Up Conditions for New Rule
The Create rule screen collects data regarding how to identify intended transactions and then how to classify them:
Design a Banking Rule in QuickBooks Online.
A. Name: Provide a name for the rule that will make it easy to identify later.
B. Transactions: You can specify whether you want the rule to apply to transactions that are Money out or Money in to either all bank accounts or specific bank accounts.
C. Conditions: You can specify one or more conditions that the transaction should meet to be classified under your new rule. If you specify multiple conditions, you can choose whether the transaction must meet all the conditions or at least one of the conditions.
Conditions can reference the transaction’s description, bank text, or amount. If the condition is based on the transaction’s description or bank text, you can specify that it must contain, doesn’t contain, or exactly matches the text you enter. Conditions that reference the amount of the transaction can specify the amount must be equal to, not equal to, greater than, or less than the value you specify.
Here are some examples of conditions you could specify to make a rule:
Field | Comparative Statement | Text or Amount |
|---|---|---|
Amount | Equals | 22.17 |
Amount | Is less than | 100.00 |
Description | Contains | telephone |
Bank Text | Contains | Verizon |
D. Assign transaction: In the final section, you tell QuickBooks Online how to assign the transaction. You can specify the following fields for each transaction that meets the criteria in C:
- Transaction type
- Category or account
- Payee
By expanding the link Assign more, you can also specify:
- Class
- Location
- Add memo
Be sure to click the green Save button when you are done creating your rule.
Wrap Up
Congratulations on the completion of another lesson in our QuickBooks Online Training Course. You’ve learned how to classify transactions imported from your connected bank accounts and to create rules that will automatically classify transactions. The next lesson in our QuickBooks Online Training Course is How to Record Bank Deposits. That lesson will teach you to record the deposit of individual checks and groups of checks using the undeposited funds account.
Office Flatiron
I stopped using bank feed for one of my credit card accounts a number of months ago. When I tried to get it going again, it would not work . I figured it was because I have changed the password to my credit card, so I set up a new bank feed. It is working and bringing in the charges to the bank feed screen. However the new feed has the wrong name and does not match my chart of accounts name for the credit card account. So when I try to import the charges to quickbooks it does not recognize the account in my chart of accounts. I have tried to change the name of the account in the chart of accounts but QB will not let me. How do I edit the new bank feed account to match the chart of accounts and how do I delete the old one?
Thank you.
Amanda Norman
Hi Office Flatiron,
Sorry you are having trouble. Here is a link to a Quickbooks support page on how to edit bank feeds, which calls for you to deactivate and re-set up the account.
Hope this helps. Thanks for stopping by!
Mandy, Moderator
Angela Gallegos
Hello Crystalynn:
I hope I can craft my question effectively (first time jumping in). I’ve got a question re matching a Customer Refund Receipt to a bundled transaction of credit card payments received in my bank account (refunded customer for returned product). In Banking, For Review, I click to “Find Match” I can see the various Payments received, but don’t know how to locate and Match the Refunded amount credited back to the customer. (Backstory: The actual crediting back to the customer’s card was not done through QBO but a standalone credit card machine. I don’t know if I did the return transaction incorrectly to start with. I did not create a Credit Memo for the return, simply did a Refund Receipt. On the Customer’s Account the Refund shows as “paid.” Thanks for any assistance!
Crystalynn Shelton
Hi Angela, thanks for posting your question regarding how to match downloaded banking transactions. Based on the info you provided, it sounds like you took care of the credit back to the customer but your books have not been adjusted because you did not create a credit memo. In QBO, if you created an invoice for your customer for the original order, you should create a credit memo against that invoice. If you never created an invoice then just create a credit memo and indicate that you want to refund the customer. Once the credit memo is saved, it should show up as an item that you can match to the actual credit out of your bank account in the banking center. I hope this helps but if I am missing something it’s probably best to contact the Intuit Support team. They can actually take a look at your QBO and help you get this fixed. It’s a bit difficult for me to do since I can’t look at your data but I think I’m on the right track.
Best of luck,
Crystalynn Shelton, CPA
Jean Cell
I do bookkeeping for a restaurant. The sales are reported form a POS system manually yet money is deposited to the bank account by credit card processing centers. Also checks are written in the month and recorded on monthly statement in the month written. When the checks clear, they show up on bank statement.
The bank downloads include transactions from credit card purchases and automatic payments from the bank which can be recorded monthly in quickbooks from the download. However, the money deposited from credit cars processing centers, also included in bank download, are not what we use. Also checks written are entered to our accounting from check stubs. The cleared checks are included in the bank download which would make sense if we are going to reconcile them in quickbooks.
So the bank downloads are coming across just as a dump of everything hitting the bank statement.
1. I do not know how to exclude the transactions we record from other sources.
2. The items we are including, I understand need to be reviewed and added each time. Does this add need to be done on each individual item or is there a way to do a batch add?
3. Since we do monthly statements, I would like to deal with transactions for the month. If the bank downloads are for 90 days, are items previously downloaded not downloaded again?
4. I am not sure how to reconcile the bank balance shown on the statement with the bank balance shown in quickbooks.
5. The bank downloads are in a different format than the download showing up in quickbooks making matching of transaction difficult.
6. The menu format in your videos is not the same as my quickbooks online menu format. Were you working with an earlier version?
Crystalynn Shelton
Hi Jean,
Thanks for your detailed questions regarding how to best manage downloads from multiple sources into QuickBooks. In a nutshell, you will need to pick one source to connect to QuickBooks and download your sales and once source to connect and download your payments. By having all sources connected to QBO, you run the risk of double counting which will produce inaccurate financial statements.
The 90 days that you are referring to is just your initial connection of a bank or credit card account to QuickBooks. For example, if you decided to connect a bank/credit card account to QuickBooks today (10/5) then following the instructions in our video tutorial, you bank will allow you to download the first 5 days of October, all of September, all of August and most of July. However, you can go back further by obtaining the CVS file from your bank and importing that into QuickBooks. The instructions on how to do this are also in the same Bank Feeds video tutorial.
Finally, yes when I recorded our video tutorials it was back in 2016. Some of the screens have definitely changed since then but the good news is that the mechanics are pretty much the same for most of the videos.
I hope this helps. If you need to find a local QuickBooks ProAdvisor to help you sort out the banking downloads, check out my article below or contact me directly at cshelton@fitsmallbusiness.com
How To Find A QuickBooks ProAdvisor: https://fitsmallbusiness.com/how-to-find-a-quickbooks-proadvisor/
Best of luck,
Crystalynn Shelton, CPA
Nicholas S Muller
We are a small company and we purchase supplies (lots of transactions each month) on our credit card. How can I choose the line of service and customer from the credit card feed?
Crystalynn Shelton
Hi Nicholas,
I’m not quite sure I understand your question. When you say line of service and customer are the charges that come through on your credit card statement items that you bill back to your customer? If so, you must turn on the billable feature in QuickBooks Online. Follow these steps to turn this feature on:
1. Go to Account Settings
2. Click on the Expenses Tab
3. Click the pencil in the upper right corner
4. Put a checkmark in the box that says “Track expenses and items by customer”.
5. Put a checkmark in the box that says “Make expenses and items billable”
6. Click save and close out of that screen.
Now when you go into bills and expenses you will see a field to make an item billable and then you can also select which customer that item needs to be billed to. The next time you create an invoice for the customer, you will see a notification asking you if you want to include the billable items on the invoice. QuickBooks will allow you to pick and choose what to include or you can include everything.
All the Best-
Crystalynn Shelton
Serena Croft
I have a question. When reviewing bank transactions, what if a transaction is for more than one type of expense? For example:
Amazon $53.99 total spent
$25 Office Supplies cost
$25 Materials cost
$3.99 Shipping costs
Can 1 transaction be coded to more than one expense account? How is that done?
Thank you in advance for helping me!
Crystalynn Shelton
Hi Serena, that’s a good question. Yes, you can definitely split a transaction across multiple accounts. To do so, you can go directly to the check register and click on the transaction that you want to do this for. There should be a split button. Once you click on that button there should be multiple lines that you can now use to select the account and the amount that should be allocated to that account.
All the Best-
Crystalynn Shelton