Bank Connection Problems

Hi there, Jason. 

Allow me to share some information about your bank connection problem in QuickBooks Online (QBO). 

To start, you'll need to merge the duplicate bank account in the chart of accounts. Then, disconnect the new connection on the banking page. 

Follow the steps below on how to disconnect an account from online banking:

1. Go to Bookkeeping, select Transactions, and then click on Bank Transactions.
2. Choose the tile for the bank account, select the pencil icon (✎), and click on Edit account info.
3. Select Disconnect this account on the save checkbox.
4. Click on Save and Close.

Once done, we can connect the existing bank account through the chart of accounts. This way, it will link without creating another duplication. 

I've added screenshots for your reference. 

I've added this article for more tips while organizing and setting up your accounts: 

• Add an account to your chart of accounts in QuickBooks Online
• Create subaccounts in your chart of accounts in QuickBooks Online

Feel free to mention my name in the comment section below if you have other questions about bank connections. I'm always here to help. Have a good one!

Thank you so much.  I have followed your instructions, but when I reconnect the account the option doesn't appear on the menu.  I only have EDIT, MAKE INACTIVE, RUN REPORT.

Please can you advise how I reconnect the account without creating a duplicate.

Thank you.

Jason

Thanks for the prompt response, JMAD1. I'll provide additional details to help you reconnect to your bank account in QuickBooks Online (QBO). 

Based on your statement above, I take it that you merged the two accounts and disconnected the new one. Usually, doing that process will have the option to reconnect your bank.

Since the option doesn't show up, I suggest temporarily making the account inactive and then active again.

1. Go to the Gear icon and choose Chart of accounts.
2. Find the account you want to delete.
3. Click the Action ▼ dropdown and select Make inactive.

After that, you can log out of your QBO account and log back in before making the account active again. Follow the steps below to make it active again:

1. Go to the Gear icon and choose Chart of accounts.
2. Select the small gear icon ⚙ next to the printer icon. Then select Include inactive.
3. Find the inactivated account, then select Make active.

Once done, you can click the dropdown again if you can now see the Connect bank option to reconnect to your bank account.

 If you have any other concerns about reconnecting your bank account in QBO, feel free to leave a reply below. Have a good one.

Thank you so much Kevin_C.

When I attempt to make the account inactive, I get the following pop-up:

This account has a non-zero balance. Inactivating this account will cause an adjusting transaction to be created. Is this OK?

I am very nervous to do this in case it causes a big mess.  Need I not be concerned?

Thank you again.

Jason

Good day, @JMAD1.

Thanks for getting back to this thread. Let me join in this conversation and help you address your banking concern.

You'll usually get this prompt when you inactivate an account with a remaining balance. Ideally, before making a balance sheet account inactive, you should zero out its balance.

If not, QuickBooks Online makes an automatic adjustment entry to zero out the non-zero balance of the inactive account. The automatic entry posts to the Opening Balance Equity account, which is the equivalent of posting to previous years. The entry could potentially cause incorrect tax info to be filed.

If you make an account with a balance inactive, QuickBooks creates a journal entry. This moves the remaining balance to another account. Your existing transactions don't disappear and stay on your financial reports. However, if you decide to use the account again, QuickBooks won't move the balance back or change the journal entry.

To ensure this change is right for you, I'd suggest getting in touch with your accountant. If you don't have one, use this link to find a QuickBooks Certified ProAdvisor: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/find-an-accountant/

Here are other things you can do to keep your chart of accounts in order:

• If there are accounts you no longer use, make them inactive
• Add an account to your chart of accounts in QuickBooks Online
• Use account numbers if you have an extensive chart of accounts

I'll be on the lookout for your response. Let me know if you need more help handling your bank accounts. I'm always happy to lend a hand. Wishing you the best of luck!

Good morning,

I too have the same issue as the OP Jason. Each month we have two days where over 200 debits are made from the account, and I have discovered that this quantity of debits causes an error with the connection between our QBO account and bank account. The solution has been to disconnect the bank account with QBO the day before, wait for the debits to leave the bank account before then downloading and uploading the transactions via a CSV file, and reconnecting the bank account the following day.

I recently had reason to disconnect our QBO account from our bank account and now that I am ready to reconnect, have found I am unable to do so. I have read through the information and guidance given to Jason and have exactly the same situation where I only have options to Edit, Make Inactive, or Run report on the account I wish to reconnect. I cannot make the QBO account inactive as, reading the information given by ReymondO, the effects of this will be irreversible in my situation.

What do you suggest?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,
Christina

Hi Christina, thanks for joining this thread - to clarify, do you also have two Chart of Accounts for the bank? If you only have one account, you can re--connect this from the banking page by selecting Link account > Search for bank provider > Follow the on-screen prompts > Map to the existing Chart of Account on the drop-downs during the connection process. 

Hi Georgia,

Thank you for your prompt reply.

In trying to solve the issue myself I did end up with two QBO accounts, one being the original QBO account that I had wanted to reconnect and the other a new account that was happy to link to the bank account. As this did not solve my issue, I made the new account inactive.

Thank you for your guidance. However, when I do this, I am not given the option to Map to the existing Chart of Account. Instead, the on-screen prompts when I click on Link account are: 

- Connect your bank

- Sign in to account

- Consent to connect

- Which accounts do you want to connect?

- Confirm or select your account type (and this is where I get stuck!)

If I select 'Current' and click next, QBO then auto-populates the 'New account name' field and, should I click 'Continue', this then results in a new QBOs account being created and not my original one being reconnected.

Thanks Christina00, this appears to be due to a change implemented on the bank connection flow which our team are currently working on; please instead follow the workaround steps listed on our guide How to link your cash on hand account to QuickBooks Online to connect :)

Hi Georgia,

I'm very relieved to hear that your team are aware of an issue with a recent change and are working on it. I did think it too much of a coincidence that it was working fine and then, after a Bank Holiday weekend, it wouldn't reconnect.

Thank you for the additional guidance. I have already tried this though, also without success. The account I need to reconnect was originally a 'Cash at bank and in hand' Type and a 'Cash on hand' Detail Type. Having found the page you are linking to, I changed the Detail Type to 'Current'. 

When I then followed the steps to connect the bank account, I still was not provided with an option to 'Map to an existing account'. Instead, as before, QBO auto-populated the 'New account name' field and again, should I click 'Continue', a new QBOs account created and my original one not reconnected.

I have to say, this is all rather unfortunate.  All we are trying to do is reconnect an account.  I am very nervous to follow the steps advised on this thread since the consequences appear rather drastic.  Surely Quickbooks should be making the process of reconnecting an existing account easier.

For now I am resigned to manually uploading a CSV file.  It's a massive step backwards.

Jason

Hi Jason!

I completely agree! Although I was so pleased to find someone else was having the same issue, I spent a good portion of time yesterday trying to sort the issue / find information on scheduled changes over the weekend, but found nothing until today, when I discovered your post.

From my understanding of your situation, it was down to the bank that you needed to disconnect your QBO accounts so out of your hands and therefore very irritating for you to then be unable to reconnect. And for me, it's simply due to the fact that if I leave the connection in place for the two days a month where we have in excess of 200 debits, QBOs takes issue and I have connection issues for a few days, something we cannot afford to have, hence my opting to disconnect, manually upload these debits, then reconnect.

I think I too am going to have to resort to manually uploading transactions for now. We haven't long since moved from QBs Desktop to QBO and if the bank connection issue is not resolved, it won't be dissimilar to QBs Desktop so as you say, quite the step backwards. It would be reassuring to receive confirmation from QBs that they are aware of the issues we are having and when they are going to have them resolved. 

Hello Everyone on this thread, We are aware of this issue and it is currently being looked into more by our team. Any updates we will let you know. 

Hi Ashleigh,

Thank you for your post and for confirming your team are aware of this issue and are looking at ways to resolve it.

I appreciate it is unlikely for you to be able to provide Jason and I any clear idea when the issue will be resolved. However, could you please ensure this thread is updated? This way we will presumably each receive an email copy and know to attempt the account reconnection again, and hopefully remove the need for us to be uploading transactions via CSV files (which appears to be the only effective workaround for this issue at this time).

Thank you.

Hi Christina00

We'll be sure to update this thread once we have further info - we've also added you to our investigation so that you'll receive all email updates and notice of resolution. 

Fantastic, thank you.