Ask the Accountant…
Question: Can I link my bank and credit card accounts so I don’t have to enter any data?
Answer: I wish it were so! And all our bank and credit card entries would magically go into QBO exactly where they belong. Alas, such is not the case today.
Yes, this data will download into QBO, but ours is a complicated industry. If we download a deposit and it doesn’t match the total of the invoice, it will not record against the invoice. This can happen because of human error, sales tax rounding differences when integrating with another industry system, or when using a payment system like Stripe or Square where the fees are deducted from each payment.
Similarly, if you pay multiple bills, QBO will not recognize which bills were paid and may record the payment or charge directly against cost of goods sold or some other random account.
I worked with a distributor who was automatically downloading bank and credit card transactions. I saw where QBO had recorded a Verizon bill against “retained earnings” instead of “telephone expense.” In another instance, a charge from Leeds of $4,770 was entered as a “meals” expense instead of “cost of goods sold.”
As of now, when using this feature, you must categorize each and every downloaded piece of data and match, add or reject them. I recently logged onto a distributor’s QBO to do some other work and saw that there were 1700 entries which had not been categorized. It can get ahead of you very quickly.
Final answer, if you decide to utilize this feature, be prepared for a long learning curve and to be spending a lot of time making sure you know exactly what QBO is doing with the data it is receiving.
