Welcome to the Fit Small Business QuickBooks Online training course! In this lesson, we’re going to cover how to manage downloaded banking transactions (QuickBooks bank feeds) in QuickBooks Online.
You can follow along on your own QuickBooks Online account. If you don’t have one already, click here to sign up for a free 30-day trial and follow along below.
To complete this lesson, you can either watch the video below, read through the step-by-step instructions, or do both. Let’s begin!
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Why Is It Important to Manage Downloaded Banking Transactions (Bank Feeds) in QuickBooks Online?
When you import the transactions into QuickBooks, they are un-posted. This simply means that you need to review them and provide some additional information before they can be added to the register in QuickBooks. In this lesson, we will show you how to review and categorize your transactions so that they can be added to the register and your financial statements.
Understanding the Banking Center Layout
At the top of the Banking Center, you will see all of the bank and credit card accounts that you have set up as indicated below.
- If the account is linked to your bank account, the top blue portion of the account box will show the bank balance as of the date of the last sync.
- The bottom portion of the account box displays the current balance in the QuickBooks register and the number of transactions in the For Review tab below.
- If the account is not linked, it will show $0.00 in the top portion of the box.
- Similar to the linked account, the bottom portion of the account box displays the current balance in the QuickBooks register and the number of transactions in the For Review tab below.
- Bank feed transactions are organized into the following three tabs:
- For Review – this tab will show all of the un-posted transactions. For example, when you import transactions into QuickBooks, this is where they will appear until you review them and take action.
- In QuickBooks – this tab will show all of the transactions that have been matched or added to the register in QuickBooks.
- Excluded – this tab will show the transactions that have been removed from the For Review tab by you.
How Do I Manage Downloaded Transactions in the Banking Center?
Step 1 – Navigate to the Banking Center
From the Home page, click on Transactions located on the left-hand menu bar and select Banking as indicated below.
Step 2 – Review Transactions Tab
You should begin with the transactions that are located on the For Review transactions tab. Within this tab, transactions are categorized into two additional tabs:
- All – this tab will list all transactions (including those on the recognized tab)
- Recognized – If QuickBooks recognizes a transaction that is already recorded in your register, it will display a green MATCH tag next to the transaction and add it to the Recognized tab as indicated below.
To add the transaction to the register, just click the Match link located in the Action column indicated below. QuickBooks will add the transaction to the QuickBooks register and include it in your financial statements.
TIP: QuickBooks can also recognize common vendor names and will make suggestions as to which account it should be coded to. If you accept the suggested account, QuickBooks will change the account for all transactions of that same name.
For example, if you have previously coded Bluehost.com transactions to Advertising (as indicated below) then the next time a Bluehost.com transaction is downloaded QuickBooks will suggest coding it to the Advertising account. If you accept the suggestion then QuickBooks will categorize all transactions with the Bluehost.com description to the Advertising account.
Step 3 – Add a New Transaction
Click on the transaction that you want to add in the Banking Center.Complete the following fields as indicated below.
- Select the vendor from the drop down. If you have not set up the vendor yet, you can do so by clicking Add New from the drop down. Be sure to watch our video tutorial on Setting up Vendors.
- Select the account that you want to code the transaction to.
- Put a brief description in this field of what the expense is for.
- Click Add to add this transaction to QuickBooks.
Troubleshooting QuickBooks Bank Feeds
When managing downloaded transactions in the Banking Center, a couple issues that you may encounter are:
- Transactions that have already been matched
- Sign-In Error
Transactions Already Matched
Sometimes a transaction has been matched to the wrong transaction in the register. This can happen for a number of reasons, but usually because the register transactions are for the same amount and fall within the same date range. To fix this issue, click the In QuickBooks tab in the Banking Center and click Undo next to the transaction as indicated below.
This will return the transaction to the For Review tab where you can match it to the correct transaction.
Sign In Information Error
If you see a red error message in the Banking Center similar to the one below, more than likely your user id or password has changed and you need to update QuickBooks with this information. Click on the Fix It link as indicated below, and follow the on-screen instructions to update your user id and password.
How to Create Bank Rules
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 the bank rules that you set up to automatically code transactions to the right account for you. To create bank rules, just follow these steps:
Step 1 – Manage Rules
Click on the drop-down arrow to the right of the Update button & select Manage rules as indicated below.
Step 2 – Click New Rule
Click the New rule button in the upper right-hand corner of the screen as indicated below.
Step 3 – Set Up Conditions for New Rule
Complete the following fields to set up a bank rule.
- Rule name – Give each rule a name.
- For – Select whether the rule applies to Money in (deposits) or Money out (withdrawals).
- In – From the drop down, you can select which bank accounts this rule applies to. The default is All bank accounts.
- Conditions – You have the option to set the conditions that the transaction must meet for this rule to apply:
- From the drop down, select all or any
- From the drop down, you can select bank text, description or amount.
- From the drop down, you can select contains, is exactly, or doesn’t contain.
- In this field, you can enter the bank text, description or amount.
- Transaction type – Select whether the transaction is an expense, transfer, or check.
- Payee – Select the payee (if applicable).
- Category – Select the account the transaction should be categorized to.
Wrap Up
That wraps up the section on how to manage downloaded banking transactions (QuickBooks bank feeds) in QuickBooks Online. The next lesson in our QuickBooks Online Training Course will be how to make deposits. In this lesson, we will walk you through how & when to enter bank deposits in QuickBooks Online.
To access this lesson or any of the others in the series, click here. Or, click here for a free 30-day trial of QuickBooks Online.
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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