QuickBooks Online Bank Feeds Set-Up

If you have an accountant who does not have this turned on right now, then people have no idea what they're doing. This is the most important thing for them to be doing, is this, and it will save them a ton of time.

So if you're doing your accounting yourself, for sure do this process. If someone else is doing your accounting for you, then really encourage them to turn this on, because it's such a huge time saver, and time is money, right?

Okay, so let's dive into this. So by the end of this video my goal is that you will know how to do this, you'll know why to do this, and you'll be committed to doing it, because it's such a big time saver.

0:58 Set up your chart of accounts first

So if I'm in QuickBooks, this is where the banking center is, over here on the left you see where it says banking. And I'm just going to click on where it says banking, and this is the screen that it will take me to if I haven't yet connected any accounts.

Now one thing you need to know is, when you go in to connect the account, it's going to expect you to map to accounts that are already in your chart of accounts. If you haven't set it up yet, you'll have to kind of back out of the system and go back in and do this. So let me encourage you to do this right now.

So what you need to do is you need to come down here to accounting, click on chart of accounts, and you need to set up an account for every single one of your bank accounts and credit cards that are business accounts that you're going to be using.

1:41

So this is how you're going to do that. You can come up here to where it says new, and you're going to say account type. We're going to start with banks, so account type is bank. And I know I have a checking account, and so I'm going to say Wells Fargo checking.

And FYI, best practice as far as we're concerned is to always add the last four digits of the account. And you'll see why in just a minute. There's a million reasons why, but you'll see some good reasons why in just a minute. So this is how I would name this, I would name it Wells Fargo checking, save and close.

And let's say that I had another savings account, I would do that same process. I would say bank account again and then I would choose a savings account, and then I would name it the same thing. And then I would do the same thing for credit cards, only I would choose credit card type, and you know credit card's the only option you have, so that would say like AMEX 4008. Okay, so that would be another one.

So that's how this process would look. So the first thing you need to do is go into your chart of accounts. Now I have a gazillion listed here, just because this is a sandbox that we play around with all the time, but you won't have this many in here. But go through and make sure that you have created a bank account or credit card for every single account that you're going to be syncing. So that's the first step.

2:55 Connecting the account

The second step is to actually go back to the bank feed center. And if you haven't done anything yet, it's going to have this button that says connect an account. And you're just going to start typing up here the name of the bank that you're banking with. So I'm going to start with the Wells Fargo account.

And now you're going to follow prompts, and honestly this is going to be slightly different for every bank. At this point QuickBooks starts talking to the bank portals, and this actual interface is going to look slightly different depending on which one you're setting up. So just follow the prompts. So continue.

And then it's going to ask for my username and password. And do not be alarmed, this is not something that they keep with a bunch of people over in India who can all see what your bank accounts and credit cards is. This isn't stored in a spreadsheet somewhere. This portal, this interface, is a very safe place to put your credentials in and to move forward in this process.

So I'm going to put in the information, I'm going to say sign on, and then it's going to think about it for a minute. And then it may say that you have to have some additional security passcode to verify your identity. You're just going to say continue.

3:59

So in this particular login, this particular set of books has all of these different accounts. So it looks like we have one, two, three, four bank accounts and one business credit card account that are all synced, that are all part of this particular thing.

So it's going to ask me what I want to sync. Now when I was setting up the chart of accounts, I didn't get to set up any of these, so I'm going to leave them off for now so it doesn't stall the process.

So I'm going to tell it to sync this one. And you can see, remember how I told you that you wanted the last four digits here? This is part of the reason why. I can see that this is the account I want, because statements and all of this other stuff will always kind of give you the last four digits, and so I know exactly which one I need because of these last four digits. So I'm going to select that one.

And it's going to say, if you select this, then as these statements become available they will also be pulled into QuickBooks, which is nifty and saves you time. So if this option is available, then select it. And then you also have the option of having it notify you if other accounts come online.

5:13 A note on choosing a bank

So keep in mind, this is Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo is a great bank for banking with QuickBooks Online. Not all banks are created equal when it comes to the way they interact with QuickBooks. Credit unions, especially local credit unions, can be really problematic.

Truly, when I say I would not bank with a bank that did not have QuickBooks integration, I mean it with everything in my heart. Because the time investment of entering everything by hand is so much more than just having it sync, that I would not bank with any credit card bank or credit union that did not sync with QuickBooks Online.

So I'm actually just going to unclick that for now. I'm going to say continue. By the way, if I was doing this for realsies, I'm going to come down here and I'm going to click this box that says I have read and accepted the terms and conditions, even though I didn't read it. And then I'm going to say connect account information.

6:10 Mapping to your accounts

All right, so it's going to think about it for a minute, and then it's going to bring up a page that will basically say, hey, these are the accounts that we found, and how do you want this to map?

Okay, so this is where the fact that I've already set this up is really important. If I hadn't set them up in QuickBooks already in my chart of accounts, when it comes to this part the only options it will give me are accounts that are already in there.

So for example, this one is one that I want to sync. Which accounts do you want to connect? I scroll through this list and you can see, well, there's a gazillion accounts here, but that's because I showed you before there was a gazillion accounts in here. But the only ones available to me are those ones.

Remember I told you that life is so wonderful when you put in the last four digits, because here I can see exactly which one I want to sync to, this one.

7:01

Now if you did not do that step beforehand, where you set up the accounts that you're going to be syncing to, you do have the option of adding this new on the fly. So I'm going to show you how this one works as well.

Okay, so I go through this list and I see that there's nothing there that I like. It's just like I forgot this one, or I wasn't ready for this one. So I'm going to say add new. And it's going to bring up another page that looks just like the one we were just on. So I'm going to say bank, and I'm going to say checking.

And I'm actually a little surprised to see this add new, because a minute ago when I did this process it wasn't there. So remember how a minute ago I told you that you'd have to go back out? Well, it's making a liar of me, and it shouldn't do that, because that's just me. But I'm glad to see that button's there, because I was annoyed that it wasn't.

So I'm going to say another Wells Fargo checking. And again, this is, I might call this like Wells Fargo operating account. Sometimes it's Wells Fargo operating account. It's good to have descriptive names if it makes sense, but the most important thing is really these last four digits would be such a saver for you. So 1343, save and close. And you can see 1343.

8:10

So I'm going to go through and I'm going to add all of these. So real quick I'm going to show you this one also. This one is actually a credit card, not a bank account. So if I was coming in here I would actually say add new, but I would say add credit card. And same thing, I would say Wells Fargo credit card, I would put the last four digits, but for now I'm just going to leave it blank.

8:33 Choosing how far back to pull

Now this is really important. It's now going to ask you how far back you want to pull transactions in. If you have done all your accounting up through the end of the year, for example, and you don't want a bunch of duplicate stuff, just tell it not to pull in from that far back.

Now again, every bank portal is different. Some of them will only let you pull in for the last 90 days, some of them will let you go back as far as you want to. So go back as far as you need to. Hopefully, if it won't let you pull in transactions, you can always go to the bank portal and you can download transactions usually and upload them in.

So in this case I'm going to say that I just want to see transactions as of the beginning of this year. Okay. And then, oh see, after you say something there at all, it forces you to commit. So I'm just going to go ahead and set it up.

So I actually forgot to look at the last four numbers of that. So Wells Fargo Visa, I'm just going to say 999 now, and I'm going to show you how to change this if you also did that same thing. So this is how it's set up right now. It's actually saved in there so I can't change that yet. So 9862 is what I want to do.

So I'm going to say connect, and it will do its thing.

9:48

So what it's doing right now is it's going on and it is downloading all of those transactions into the bank feed, so that I again can save myself all kinds of time when I'm doing this in the future. And I will be so happy and my life will be great and I'll never have problems or woes again. That's how powerful it all is, for reals.

So you see that it's all right. And this is also kind of cool, I haven't seen it do this before, but it's kind of attempting to show me where my money's been going, which is nice. How nice of it. I'm just going to say remind me later because I don't need that right now.

Okay, so now that these are all in here, we go to the banking center, and now across the top you'll see these are all the accounts that I've already edited, and now that they're in here. So whichever box I'm clicking on, this is what all the transactions are below.

And you see I now have many, many, many, maybe even hundreds of transactions that are now sitting here with all kinds of data that I don't have to hand enter anymore. And all I have to really do is worry about how I want it coded, because they're all in here now. Such a beautiful thing.

10:25 Editing and disconnecting

Now I want to show you, remember that Visa card that we just named nine nine nine nine nine nine, whatever. So I'm going to click on this, and I'm going to click on this little pencil thing here, and I'm going to say that I want to edit this account info. And I'm going to say, oops, Wells Fargo Visa 9862. Okay, so that's how I'm going to edit it.

Now also, if you ever want to disconnect it so it's no longer running through this bank feed, you see here at the bottom where it says disconnect this account on save, you would just click this button and then it would disappear from here and it would stop pulling in the transactions. But for now I'm going to say save and close, and you see this updates and it's ready to roll.

11:37

So I'm going to show you what happens when I do say that disconnect on save. I say save and close, and it disappears. And all the transactions associated with it that had not yet been accepted into QuickBooks, so if you coded them and hit accept or add, they would still be there. But if they're just sitting here in the holding tank, then they won't be there.

So you're going to go through the same process with all of your bank accounts and all of your credit cards until they're all synced. If you're adding ones after the fact, this is how you trigger this process. You come up here and you say link an account, and then that's how you'll start this process again.

So, any questions, sorry I can't answer them on the fly, but hopefully you feel ready and empowered to do this process on your own.