Create Efficiencies with Bank and Credit Card Feeds in QuickBooks Online
One of the best ways to make your daily bookkeeping entries more efficient is through the use of bank and credit card feeds in QuickBooks Online. Setup of these bank and credit card links is easy to do and can save you many hours of manual entries into your bookkeeping file.
Setup
To set up these bank and credit card links, navigate to the “Banking” tab in the left sidebar in QuickBooks, then click the “Add Account” button to begin linking your first bank/credit card account to QuickBooks. You will need to search for the proper banking institution or credit card company and then log into the selected bank or credit card account with your online credentials. If you have multiple accounts with that bank or credit card company you will need to link each one to the appropriate account in your QuickBooks Chart of Accounts. The last step is to select the appropriate date range for the transactions to be imported into your QuickBooks Online bank feed screen for review. Most institutions will allow you to bring up to 90 days of transactions into your bank feed, but you may opt to select fewer days if you have already manually entered transactions into your bank/credit card register.
How will you know that you have successfully linked this bank or credit card account to your QuickBooks account?
If you bring up your Chart of Accounts there should be a new icon with a left and right arrow next to the account type and detail type for that account. In addition, once you navigate to your banking tab in the left sidebar, you will now find a new bank or credit card account tab with the current bank balance, your balance in QuickBooks with a number indicating the transactions that still need to be reviewed, and a notice of when the last update was synced with QuickBooks for that account.
Each transaction will be listed in the grid at the bottom of the screen with the date, description and amount of payment or receipt which feeds directly from the bank/credit card company. QuickBooks will search your bank or credit card register for that account to determine whether there is a matching transaction that has already been entered. If there is one, in the Category or Match column, there will be a green textbox which displays “1 Record Found”. Verify that this transaction is the same as the one already entered, then click on the “Match” action button at the far right of the transaction in that same row. If no entry has been manually entered, then QuickBooks will attempt to find a Vendor with the same name as the bank feed description and will provide an educated guess of which Category from your Chart of Accounts should be used for this transaction.
This is the true power of the bank/credit card feed – these entries will become more automated as this process becomes more familiar with the regularly occurring transactions. If you need to update the Payee and Category, you have the option to do so. Once these are correct, simply click on the “Add” action button for that transaction and continue on to the next transaction for review.
When each transaction has been either matched or added they will populate in the bank or credit card register. Through this process, you can see how you would cut down on the time needed to enter each of these transactions manually.
Are you ready to save time by using these bank and credit card feeds in your QuickBooks file? Let our RAD staff assist you with setting up your bank and credit card feeds and syncing to your company’s QuickBooks Online file. You will be amazed at how much time you can save every day!
Written by Martha Leonard, Bookkeeper, RAD
