Disconnect accounts connected to online banking in QuickBooks Online

Learn how to delete or disconnect a bank or credit card account from QuickBooks Online.

When you connect an account to online banking, QuickBooks automatically downloads your recent transactions.

If you decide you don't want to get new transactions from your bank, simply disconnect the account. We'll also show you how to completely delete accounts if you don't need the data from them anymore.

Understanding the difference between disconnecting and making an account inactive

There's a big difference between disconnecting an account from online banking and deleting one from your chart of accounts.

We recommend disconnecting accounts that are connected to online banking instead of deactivating them. This simply stops QuickBooks from downloading new transactions. If you disconnect an account from online banking, your existing accounting data won't change. You can reconnect it anytime to start downloading transactions again.

If you have an account that's not connected to a bank or credit card and you don’t need it anymore, learn how to make an account inactive.

Decide what's best for you

Disconnecting accounts connected to online banking

When you disconnect, you’ll no longer see transactions that still need to be categorized in the For review tab. If the transactions are older than 90 days, you won’t be able to download them from the bank when you reconnect. In this case, you can still manually upload old transactions.

Deleting accounts

Deleting an account is permanent. You won't see it on menus or lists anymore. You can keep your existing data in financial reports and delete the transaction record. It's very hard to get transactions back into the account if you decide to recreate it later on.

If transactions in a deleted account are tied to other accounts in QuickBooks Online, they will remain in those accounts. For example, if you delete a credit card account, but you made card payments from your chequing account, the record of those transactions stay in the chequing account.

Deleting an account from your chart of accounts is permanent. If you're sure this is what you want to do, here's how to delete an account and make it inactive.

Disconnect an account connected to online banking

If the issue persists, sign in to QuickBooks using an incognito or private browser, or try other browser troubleshooting options.

1. Go to Transactions, then Bank transactions (Take me there).
2. Select the tile for the bank account.
3. Select the pencil icon, then select Edit account info.
4. Select the Disconnect this account on save checkbox.
   Note: If QuickBooks is downloading new transactions, you won't see this option. Wait a few minutes for the update to finish and try again.
5. Select Save and Close.

You can reconnect the account to start downloading transactions again.