Bank Feed Basics

As we mentioned in a previous blog, Bank Feeds are one of the best tools in Quickbooks online. It alleviates a lot of the stress and time it takes to hand key transactions in Quickbooks. When utilized, business owners can click on the “Banking” tab on their Quickbooks Online company and see the lists of transactions that have cleared their business’ bank and credit card accounts.

Below we’ll summarize some bank feed basics:

  1. Understanding the Bank Feed
    • It’s best to think of the transactions in the bank feed as a checklist. Transactions are not posted to your Quickbooks until you “add” or “match” them.
    • “Adding” means that you’re posting a completely new transaction into your books.
    • “Matching” means that you’re connecting a transaction that appears in your bank feed with an existing transaction that has been posted in Quickbooks.
  2. How to Get Transactions
    • Upload/Download – With this method, you can download a list of transactions from a specific date range from your bank. To upload, select the drop down arrow next to “Link Transactions” at the top of the “Banking” Page. Click “Upload from file” and follow instructions.
    • Direct Connection – This method creates a secure connection between your bank and Quickbooks. Transactions are automatically updated as they clear the bank.
  3. Use “Rules” With Caution
    • Rules can be a great way to automate and expedite posting transactions. Business owners can create custom rules based on bank description or amount. Unique names can be given to any rule that is created.
    • The word “Rule” will show in green next to any transaction in the bank feed where it applies. The name of the rule applied will be listed at the bottom of each line.
    • Recommendation: We recommend scrolling all the way to the bottom of the rule you’re creating and disabling “auto-add”. This allows there to still be a final review before posting.
  4. Customization
    • Bank feeds in Quickbooks Online allow business owners to customize the amount of detail included with each transaction. Attachments, receipts, and memos are just a few examples of how the bank feed can help ease the manual input of accounting for small businesses.

If you have any questions about accounting in QuickBooks feel free to check out our  Youtube for more tutorials or reach out to us! We specialize in QuickBooks Online, Migrating from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online, and QuickBooks Training.

Thanks for reading!
The QBcure Team