Downloading and Uploading Banking Data

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In this lesson, we learn how to download data from the bank and upload it to QuickBooks.

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7.02 downloading-and-uploading-banking-data - Exercise.docx
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Quick reference

Downloading and uploading banking data

An alternative to connecting your bank to QuickBooks is to download the data from your bank and then upload it to QuickBooks.

When to use

There are a few use cases where this is really useful: 

  1. If you can go further back into past on the bank website than you can from within QuickBooks
  2. If you are using 3rd party tools to convert old PDF statements to QuickBooks files to avoid manual entry

Instructions

  1. Log into your bank's website
  2. Navigate to the account you have in mind, locate the option to download data
  3. Select the QuickBooks file which could be called a web connect file, a QuickBooks file, or a .qbo file, download this file
  4. Navigate to bank feeds in QuickBooks 
  5. To the right of link account (you might see "add") there is a dropdown, select this and then select upload from file
  6. Click browse to browse your computer to locate the file to upload
  7. QuickBooks will ask you which account at the bank you wish to connect (this is true even if there is only one account), select the account(s)
  8. In the dropdown to the right, select the account in QuickBooks you wish to link this bank account to (or select add new)
  9. Information will update below, QuickBooks will ask you how far back you wish to go to download data, change this dropdown to pick the duration that's right for you
  10. Click connect 
  11. Take a deep breath, your to-do list just got longer! You are now ready to organize your bank feeds.

Hints & tips

  • Generally speaking, it's easier to connect to the bank than it is to do this.
  • If you are working with an account and you have PDF statements and cannot download data, you can use 3rd party software to convert the PDF statements to a QuickBooks file.
Login to download
  • 00:04 In this video, I want to show you how to download data from your bank and
  • 00:08 upload that data to your QuickBooks file.
  • 00:11 In most cases, it's really going to make a lot more sense to connect your bank
  • 00:15 directly to your QuickBooks.
  • 00:17 But I want you to know how to do this just in case you ever need to do it.
  • 00:22 So right now, I've got my QuickBooks, and
  • 00:24 connected to my QuickBooks is my checking account.
  • 00:26 We're going to pretend like some of the information from my checking account
  • 00:29 didn't download, but I need it to download into my account.
  • 00:34 So to do this, I'm going to navigate over to my bank's website, download the data,
  • 00:38 and upload it to my QuickBooks.
  • 00:41 Okay, so I've navigated over to my bank's website.
  • 00:44 In this case, I used Wells Fargo.
  • 00:46 So on the left-hand side, kind of toward the bottom,
  • 00:49 there's a blue hyperlink that says Download Account Activity.
  • 00:53 For your bank, you'll navigate however you need to to get into your account and
  • 00:58 then find the thing that says download.
  • 01:00 So you might see text that says download, or
  • 01:02 you might just see a piece of paper with a down arrow.
  • 01:06 Once you find it, you can say I'd like to download information.
  • 01:10 So I'm going to click on Download.
  • 01:12 It's going to ask me, where do I want to pull the download from?
  • 01:15 So in this case, it's going to be the one account that I have.
  • 01:18 It's going to to ask me for the date range.
  • 01:21 And in this make believe example,
  • 01:23 I'm going to say it's from May 14th through May 31st.
  • 01:27 I get to pick what kind of download I would like.
  • 01:31 So in this case, I need a QuickBooks Web Connect file.
  • 01:35 So the QuickBooks Web Connect will either say QuickBooks Web Connect, or
  • 01:40 maybe on your bank's website, it'll say a .QBO file.
  • 01:43 QBO does not stand for QuickBooks Online.
  • 01:46 It's just an amazing coincidence.
  • 01:48 So once you find the file you want, the QuickBooks Web Connect, click on Download.
  • 01:54 Do recognize that QuickBooks and Quicken sound alike, but
  • 01:57 they are completely different files.
  • 01:59 We're going to now go back to our QuickBooks.
  • 02:02 We're going to click on Banking on the left-hand side and then Banking, again.
  • 02:07 When we do this, it'll give us a place to upload our file.
  • 02:11 So in the upper right-hand corner, normally we click on Link account and
  • 02:15 we say we'd like to link a bank account.
  • 02:17 But in this case, we say no,
  • 02:18 no, we don't want to link account, in case we already have an account linked.
  • 02:23 We just want to upload the missing data.
  • 02:26 And so I'm going to click the drop down and say Upload from file.
  • 02:31 I'm going to navigate to my downloads to grab this.
  • 02:35 Once I've navigated and
  • 02:36 selected the file that I just downloaded, I'm going to click Next.
  • 02:41 It's then going to say, okay, this information that comes from Wells Fargo,
  • 02:46 where would you like to put that within your QuickBooks Online account?
  • 02:50 And I can say, you know what,
  • 02:52 I'd like to put it within the bank that I have called Checking 1234.
  • 02:56 Whatever I call it in QuickBooks does not need to match what I call it at the bank.
  • 03:01 What I call it in QuickBooks needs to make sense for me.
  • 03:05 I'm going to click on the green Next in the lower right-hand corner.
  • 03:10 And we wait.
  • 03:12 All right, so then it says everything is here and
  • 03:15 you're ready to accept your transactions.
  • 03:17 Click on Let's go.
  • 03:20 And now I have 23 things on my to do list.
  • 03:23 When I look at the to do list,
  • 03:25 I can see I have stuff from back in May through August.
  • 03:29 So what I can do if I want is I can just click on Date and
  • 03:32 sort it by date to make it easier.
  • 03:35 But this is a really good example of sometimes you need to add stuff that
  • 03:38 wasn't previously downloaded, and I want you to know how to do that.
  • 03:43 So let me show you something else, because most of the time,
  • 03:46 your bank is going to have the option to download a QuickBooks file.
  • 03:50 But I really want you to have a plan b just in case they don't.
  • 03:54 So let's go back to the Wells Fargo and
  • 03:56 let's pretend that QuickBooks is not an option.
  • 03:59 Let's pretend we have to download an Excel file.
  • 04:02 I'm going to chose Comma Delimited for this example, and Download.
  • 04:07 All right, so I've downloaded the CSV file, and I went ahead and
  • 04:10 put it on my desktop.
  • 04:12 I'm going to navigate over to my desktop and make a few changes to that file, so
  • 04:16 that I can then upload it to my QuickBooks.
  • 04:19 So this is my personal preference.
  • 04:22 It's not necessary for you to do this.
  • 04:24 But I'll come in here and I'll add a header.
  • 04:27 So I'll say Date, Amount, Description, and then Save.
  • 04:35 I do that so the next step is easier for me.
  • 04:38 So I'm going to go back to my QuickBooks, into my QuickBooks, upper right-hand
  • 04:42 corner, same place we did before, I'm going to click on Upload from file.
  • 04:48 I'm going to click Browse to upload the file.
  • 04:50 I'm going to navigate to my desktop.
  • 04:53 I'm then going to select the CSV file.
  • 04:55 I'm going to click the blue Open on the right.
  • 04:58 I'm going to click Next in the lower right-hand corner.
  • 05:02 So now it says, where would you like to put this?
  • 05:04 And I say, well, I'd like to put it in the Checking Account 1234,
  • 05:09 and I'll click Next.
  • 05:11 So now QuickBooks says, all right, this is great, here's the stuff we need to know.
  • 05:15 We need to know the date and the description and the amount.
  • 05:19 And then when we think about the date, we need to know how does the date look?
  • 05:23 Are there slashes?
  • 05:24 Are there dashes?
  • 05:25 Is it in a different order, help us.
  • 05:29 So Description, this is why I put the headers in.
  • 05:34 Down here, I can say the column with the amount,
  • 05:37 right, column 2, it has both positive and negative numbers, or
  • 05:42 there are two separate columns, one for positive and one for negative.
  • 05:48 There's not a right or wrong, you just want to take a look and see,
  • 05:51 how did your bank download this detail for you?
  • 05:54 You'll click on the Next in the lower right-hand corner.
  • 05:58 You'll then have a list of transactions to review.
  • 06:00 And you can say, yep, I'd like to import all these things.
  • 06:03 Thank you for asking, I click Next.
  • 06:07 It says 11 will be imported, are you sure you want to continue?
  • 06:10 And say, well, I've got this far, I might as well.
  • 06:13 And then let's go in lower right-hand corner.
  • 06:16 The transactions that I added from the QuickBooks file that I downloaded from
  • 06:20 the bank, they're here in the to do list.
  • 06:23 The transactions that I added from the Excel file that I uploaded,
  • 06:26 they're here in the to do list.
  • 06:28 The transactions that I added when I connected the bank,
  • 06:31 they're here in the to do list.
  • 06:33 So you're kind of getting the idea.
  • 06:35 I really wanted you to see all the different ways that you can add your data
  • 06:40 to your QuickBooks, so
  • 06:41 that way whichever one made the most sense for your business, you could do.

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