Bank feeds

Bank feeds are a QuickBooks feature that connects to your bank or credit-card account and imports transactions automatically into a For Review queue. Instead of typing each transaction in by hand, you review what came in, confirm or set its category, and either match it to a transaction already in the books or add it as a new one.

The feed is a data-entry accelerator: it pulls the raw activity in quickly and accurately, and rules can pre-categorize recurring transactions. What it does not do is decide that the activity is complete and correct — that is still a person’s job.

This is the single most important and most misunderstood point about bank feeds: clearing the For Review queue is not the same as reconciling the account. The feed shows what the bank sent; it doesn’t prove the account matches the bank’s ending balance for the period. Transactions can be miscategorized, matched to the wrong entry, duplicated, or missing if the feed dropped them — and the queue will still look empty.

A completed bank reconciliation is the separate step that confirms the full set of transactions ties to the statement and the account closes to the right balance. Bank feeds make the data entry faster; reconciliation is what makes the books true. Feeds also break — connections drop and imports stall — which is its own troubleshooting problem.

Each imported transaction lands in For Review, where you confirm its category and either match it to an existing entry (an invoice payment, a recorded bill) or add it as new. Once reviewed it moves into the register — ready to be reconciled, but not reconciled by the act of being reviewed.

Two different screens, two different jobs. The For Review queue is where imported transactions get categorized and matched — it’s about getting each transaction into the books correctly. The reconcile screen is where you prove the books match the statement for the period. You can empty the queue and still be unreconciled.