How do bank feeds and QuickBooks work together?

Once you begin adding and matching your bank feed transactions into QuickBooks, the process gets easier and quicker over time. QuickBooks learns from your decisions and offers smart suggestions to speed the work for you.

What QuickBooks does with bank data

When QuickBooks receives your bank data, it:

• Cleans up cryptic bank descriptions
• Suggests logical categories based on bank descriptions
• Remembers changes you made before, and applies those changes to similar transactions
• Looks for matches among the transactions you already entered into QuickBooks
• Checks for rules you created to handle certain transactions in a particular way

What the Banking page shows you

Once you get your bank data into QuickBooks, the Banking page shows you:

• Bank and credit card accounts. The different accounts appear as cards along the top of the page. Select the card of the account you want to work with. Its transactions appear beneath it. You can tell which account you’re working with because its card is darker (a darker blue) than the other cards. Additionally, the account name appears next to the page title.

To move between accounts, just click the card you want. Have more than 3 accounts? Click the left and right arrows to rotate among the cards. You can also select a different account using the dropdown list next to the account name at the top of the page.

• New transactions. Transactions are broken out by account, waiting to be added to your books. You can filter the list to show only "recognized" transactions or view all transactions waiting to be added or matched.

  What are "recognized" transactions?

  "Recognized" transactions are those that QuickBooks was able to "preprocess" for you because it found logical categories, remembered earlier changes to similar transactions, found matches, or applied rules. You can add or match recognized items more quickly, and with a high degree of confidence.

• Suggested actions to take. For each unaccepted transaction, QuickBooks shows you a suggested action to take, usually Add or Match or sometimes Transfer.

  As you take action on items, the New Transactions list becomes shorter and shorter. Give yourself a pat on the back when the list is empty. It means you've accepted—added, matched, transferred—your bank items and made them part of your business finances.

• Tools to use. You can use column sorting, batch actions, and filtering (All versus Recognized) to help you quickly access, review, and accept your bank data into QuickBooks.
• In QuickBooks and Excluded transactions. When you accept bank transactions, they move from the New Transactions tab to the In QuickBooks tab so you always have a record of the items you accepted. You can also exclude bank items if they shouldn't be part of your business finances. (If you change your mind, you can always undo a transaction you accepted or excluded.)

What to do with your bank transactions

Once you begin seeing bank transactions on the Bank page (either by connecting your accounts or uploading bank transactions), you need to review and accept the transactions so they become part of your business finances.

Add downloaded items from bank feeds to QuickBooks

Match downloaded items to QuickBooks transactions

Designate a bank feed item as a transfer

Tips for accepting bank feed items quickly