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About this lesson

Let's review the bank feeds dashboard, what is displayed, and what it all means.

Quick reference

Bank feeds dashboard

The bank feeds dashboard has a lot of great information that we've looked at in bits and pieces, and this lesson will recap what you've already learned and fill in a few gaps.

When to use

You're going to find that most of your time spent in QuickBooks is either creating records of what you've sold or working on your bank feeds.

Instructions

Let's talk about what you see when you navigate to the banking/bank feeds:

Top of the screen:

  • Banking = the default screen with the banking data
  • Rules = "if this, then that" rules to streamline adding transactions to QuickBooks from bank feeds
  • Receipts = a way to add receipts to QuickBooks

Upper right corner:

  • Link account (sometimes this says add) = adding an account or uploading data
  • Update = if you see that your bank account hasn't updated within the last 24 hours, click update to force the update. It should happen automatically but sometimes it needs a nudge.

Blue and white boxes:

  • These are technically called tiles 
  • Each box represents an account that is connected to QuickBooks. It might be a checking, savings, or credit card
  • The number in blue/gray (top) is the balance according to the bank
  • The number in the white (bottom) is the running balance in QuickBooks
  • The small text near the divider line between top and bottom tells you when the account was last updated
  • The blue/orange number in the lower right corner of the box represents the number of pending transactions for you to process

The pill/selection box below the tiles:

  • For review = these are the transactions in your to do list below
  • Categorized = these are the transactions you've previously categorized
  • Excluded = these are transactions that were in the to do list but instead of categorizing them, you've excluded them

The grid of dates and numbers:

  • These are the pending transactions for you to categorize. While they are here, they are not going to appear on your financial reports or bank register.
  • Date = date
  • Description = this is the detail provided by your bank, if you were to log into your online banking, this is the description you would see
  • Payee = this is where you select the name of the customer or vendor associated with the payment
  • Category = this is where you pick the account from the chart of accounts that most closely relates to the transaction you're working on
  • Spent/received = this is just telling you if the money was coming in or going out, it doesn't necessarily mean income/expense.

Editing a transaction:

  • Click on the line where the transaction is that you'd like to edit, I'll often click in the field under payee
  • In the gray box that opens up, you can change the following:
    • Payee 
    • Category
    • Memo

Hints & tips

  • There are some really great things you can do on this screen, click on the small gear on the right side and change settings
  • After you feel comfortable with the bank feeds, spend some time learning about bank rules, this will make you even more efficient but it's best to learn that after you have the fundamentals down
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  • 00:04 In this video, I want to talk to you about the bank feeds.
  • 00:08 When you download data into your QuickBooks from your bank, or
  • 00:11 when you connect your bank to your QuickBooks,
  • 00:13 there's going to be a list of transactions for you to process.
  • 00:17 This list is within QuickBooks in a place we call bank feeds.
  • 00:21 On the right hand side of your dashboard, you can see Bank Accounts.
  • 00:25 When I hop over the box for Checking 1234, it can kind of see it turns a light gray.
  • 00:32 I can click on that and it's going to take me to my list of bank feeds.
  • 00:36 If for some reason I wasn't on the dashboard, or
  • 00:38 I didn't want to click there.
  • 00:40 A second way to get to the bank feeds is to click on Banking on the left hand side
  • 00:45 of the screen, and then click on Banking again.
  • 00:48 So now I have my bank feeds.
  • 00:50 My bank feeds, like I said, just means it's a list of transactions that
  • 00:53 have come from the bank into your QuickBooks, and
  • 00:56 are just sitting here waiting for you to do something with them.
  • 00:59 While they're sitting here, they don't show up on any of your financial reports.
  • 01:04 Right now, I have one account connected.
  • 01:06 If I had multiple accounts connected, I'd have multiple blue and white boxes.
  • 01:10 Every time I select a box,
  • 01:12 the data down below updates with the pending transactions from that account.
  • 01:17 In this example, I have 31 transactions that are pending and
  • 01:21 waiting for me as the human to do something with them.
  • 01:24 I can see in the blue and white box, I can see my bank balances one number,
  • 01:29 my in QuickBooks balances another number.
  • 01:32 The bank balance represents the amount of money that the bank thinks you have.
  • 01:36 So if you log into online banking, that's what you'll see.
  • 01:40 The In QuickBooks number means how much money will you see
  • 01:43 if you look at your register in QuickBooks.
  • 01:46 Let me show you what that looks like.
  • 01:48 This says my QuickBooks register indicates I have $25,000.
  • 01:52 I'm going to go to the left hand side of my screen, go Accounting and
  • 01:56 then Chart of Accounts, I see my Checking account.
  • 01:59 I'm going to go to the right and click on View register.
  • 02:02 And I can see 25,000, and I can see why it's all these pluses and
  • 02:06 minuses that have happened in my register.
  • 02:11 Then go back to bank feeds.
  • 02:13 A second way to get to the register is from bank feeds.
  • 02:16 You can click on this Go to register on the right hand side of your screen.
  • 02:23 When we look at the bank feeds, we have this list of transactions, right?
  • 02:28 There's 31 transactions in our example.
  • 02:31 They're sorted right now by dates, I can start by date or
  • 02:35 by description, by payee, by category.
  • 02:38 I'll encourage you to sort them by description.
  • 02:41 If you start by description, you'll start to group things up.
  • 02:44 You can see that QuickBooks\g starts to learn, which is really helpful.
  • 02:48 So QuickBooks is learning that these things they all go to Bank of America,
  • 02:52 and they all go to Alaska Airlines.
  • 02:54 I know that QuickBooks has learned because this text is green.
  • 02:58 When the text isn't green, and the text is black,
  • 03:02 it means that QuickBooks is making its best guess, but it really doesn't know.
  • 03:07 So I would encourage you to click on any one of these lines where the text is black
  • 03:11 and the payee is blank.
  • 03:13 Click on the line and let it open up.
  • 03:15 When it opens up, I'll encourage you to put in the payee.
  • 03:18 So where did the money come from?
  • 03:20 Where did the money go?
  • 03:22 And why did it happen?
  • 03:24 When you click on the category, it means Chart of Accounts.
  • 03:27 So your whole Chart of Accounts is here.
  • 03:30 And so sometimes the money that comes in your account is an income.
  • 03:33 Sometimes the money that comes in your account as a transfer from savings.
  • 03:36 Sometimes it's from you, like you had to put money in your business.
  • 03:41 So I encourage you to pick and say why am I depositing this money?
  • 03:44 Is it an income that I returned something to store?
  • 03:47 What was it?
  • 03:49 If you know, indicate where the money comes from.
  • 03:52 When you're spending money, well Bank of America is a good example of a spend.
  • 03:57 When you're spending money, indicate who gets the money.
  • 04:00 What I want you to be able to do is to look at your list and to say,
  • 04:04 I spent $2,000, that $2,000 went to this place, and here's why.
  • 04:08 And then click Add.
  • 04:11 If you want to look at the stuff you've recently added to your QuickBooks,
  • 04:15 you can click on this little button that says Categorized and
  • 04:18 it's going to show you the stuff you've recently added.
  • 04:20 If you want to look at it in more detail, you can click on the blue hyperlink.
  • 04:26 If you want to undo it and put it back in the to do list, you can click on Undo.
  • 04:32 Another place to go and look at the stuff you've recently added to the QuickBooks is
  • 04:36 in the magnifying glass in the upper right hand corner.
  • 04:39 So click on that, and you can see I've just added this.
  • 04:44 All right, is a brief overview of the bank feeds.
  • 04:47 The takeaway that I really want you to have for bank feeds is that this is your
  • 04:52 to do list, that you do need to review and edit these columns, if they're inaccurate.
  • 04:58 The payee column, as well as the category or match column.
  • 05:01 And then what you can do if you want a bonus trick is you can click these
  • 05:06 little boxes on the left, you can click Accept on the banner that pops up.
  • 05:11 This is an alternative to clicking Add on the right hand side and waiting for
  • 05:15 it to happen.

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