I downloaded my bank transactions and use the banking tab and have to fill in all the names and categories, but most of them are there in the expenses tab. I don't get it

Hi gshuck1960.

To help you resolve this expense issue, you’ll need to follow the steps provided below to exclude them from your downloaded bank transactions. This will streamline everything for you moving forward.

Follow these steps to get started:

Exclude transactions

1. Select Banking 
2. On the Banking page, select the For Review tab
3. Select the check boxes of the transactions to exclude.
4. From the Batch actions drop-down, choose Exclude Selected.

Excluded transactions are listed on the Excluded tab for reference or review, but are not tracked or reported as part of your business finances and don't appear in any associated account registers or reports.

Include previously-excluded transactions

If you have accidentally excluded a transaction, you can easily include it again:

1. Select Banking.
2. On the Banking page, select the Excluded tab.
3. Select the check boxes of the transactions to include again.
4. From the Batch actions drop-down, choose Undo.

The transactions are returned to the For Review tab where you can categorize, add or match the transactions again.

Excluded transactions and reconciliations

Excluding duplicate transactions does not affect reconciliations. If you exclude a download transaction because it's a duplicate, when you reconcile the account, your balances will match.

If you exclude transactions for personal expenses, your bank register wont reconcile because the bank balance and the QuickBooks balance won't match.

This is not an issue if you don't reconcile your bank statements with QuickBooks Online, but if you do (or if your accountant instructs you to do so), you can track your personal expenses by adding yourself as a vendor and assigning the transactions to an owner's equity account. (often called an owners's draw). 

I was able to find this information as well as many more helpful articles here. 

This should help you properly categorize everything. If you need help with anything else, I'm only a click away. 

I must be doing it wrong, to reconcile and accounting purposes do I need to do all the work on the banking tab.

It seems as though I have to do everything twice

Hello there, gshuck1960.

Let me clear out your confusion about the things you can do in the Banking tab.

The Banking tab lets you review, assign a payee, categorize, edit, add, and even exclude your downloaded transactions. For more information, check out this article: Banking tab. 

There's no need to do everything twice since the steps provided by colleague above refers to excluding unnecessary transactions.

You can reconcile your account in two ways:

• Through the Banking menu. Select the Go to Register hyperlink and you'll be routed to your account register. Then, click the Reconcile button at the top right.
• Through the Accounting menu. Select Chart of Accounts to locate the account you want to reconcile. Choose View register under the Action column to open, then click the Reconcile button.

For the reconciliation steps, kindly visit this article: Reconcile an account in QuickBooks Online. It also contains information about reviewing a past reconciliation and editing it.

Please let me know if you have other concerns. I'm just around to help.