One of the most dynamic features of QuickBooks Online is the Bank Feed. This feature connects your online bank and credit card accounts to QuickBooks and feeds the transactions automatically into the banking center each day. Once imported, you can match them to existing transactions already recorded in your database or add them as new transactions. You can also use Bank Rules to further automate QuickBooks by setting conditions that QBO will use to code your transactions. As you add and match transactions in the Bank Feed, you are also marking them cleared – which makes reconciling at the end of the period a snap.
It’s important to take the time to set up your Bank Feeds correctly and as with all technology and processes, occasionally things do go wrong. In fact, the most common troubleshooting calls I get from clients is when their Bank Feeds have gone awry. To help out, this blog series will cover the top 5 Bank Feed errors in QuickBooks and how you can fix them and avoid them from happening in the future. The first of our troublemakers is when the Bank Feed stops syncing!
Bank Feed Stops Syncing
You’re ready to start working. You’ve got your coffee, your bank statement and other documentation to start working and you log into QuickBooks, only to see this:
The dreaded orange exclamation point shown in the account tile means that QuickBooks was unable to retrieve transactions from your bank. When you see this error, one of three things has happened and each is fairly easy to fix. Keep in mind that QuickBooks is designed to make it easy for you, so likely you’ll see an error message right underneath the bank tile telling you what happened and how to fix it. But in case you don’t see a message or you have accidentally dismissed it, here are the three steps to troubleshoot the broken Bank Feed Connection:
Scenario 1: The bank had a hiccup and couldn’t connect.
QuickBooks sent the call to retrieve transactions and the bank didn’t respond.
How to fix it:
This is the easiest of the three errors to fix because it literally requires that you click on a button.
Click the Update button at the top right of the screen and QuickBooks will head on out and knock on the door at the bank again. The bank will say “hey, sorry about that – I was kind of busy earlier, here are your transactions”. And you’re back in business.
Scenario 2: The password has changed.
Many banks require you to change your password every so often and many (if not most) of the time we forget that changing the password will affect other things in our lives. If you’re like me, you have a love/hate relationship with your passwords – they are great because the secure your information but you have to keep track of all of them! I use a little app called LastPass for this. When you change your password, you’ll need to remember to go into QuickBooks and update the password in the Banking Center too. Here are the steps to do that:
How to fix it:
From the Banking Center, click on the pencil icon at the top right of the account tile.
Then, click on “Edit sign-in info”.
This will launch the Update sign-in info screen, where you can update your User ID and password to get those transactions flowing again.
In this case, the connection between QuickBooks and the bank is broken (she’s dead, Jim), and you’ll need to disconnect the account from the bank and reconnect it again.
How to fix it:
From the Banking Center, click on the pencil icon at the top right of the account tile.
This time, click on “Edit account info”.
Check the box next to “Disconnect this account on save”, and then Save and close.
Go back to the Banking Center and reconnect the account.
Go back to the Banking Center and reconnect the account.
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