Are your bank rules actually helping you, or are they quietly sending your transactions to the wrong place? 🧐

If you have started using bank feeds in QuickBooks Online, you have probably noticed that rules are sitting right there, waiting for you.

And they really are a great shortcut.

The catch is that a rule set up the wrong way does its work quietly, and you may not notice anything is off until you go to pull your Profit and Loss or sit down for taxes.

So let me walk you through what bank rules actually do, how to set one up the right way, and the one setting I never turn on.

 

What bank rules do?

A rule tells QuickBooks exactly what to do with a certain kind of transaction as it comes through your bank feed.

Instead of categorizing the same deposit or the same vendor expense one at a time, you teach QuickBooks the pattern once, and it recognizes it going forward.

That is the speed everyone is after, and it is possible.

 

Set it up the right way

A few things make the difference between a helpful rule and a rule that causes a mess.

The easiest place to build a rule is not the rules screen itself, which can feel overwhelming when you are new.

Start from inside your bank transactions instead. Find a transaction, click the little dropdown, and choose to create a rule right there.

QuickBooks pre-fills a lot of it for you from that transaction, so you are editing something real rather than staring at a blank setup.

Be sure to name it something you will actually recognize later, not an auto-generated label you will never use.

For the condition, contains is usually the safest choice because it looks for a piece of the description instead of an exact match.

And you can always come back and edit a rule later if it is not behaving, so you are never locked in.

One important note: if you use invoices or sales receipts to record your income, you do not want a rule categorizing that money straight to income. You will want to match it to the invoice instead. Rules are a better fit for your expenses when that is how you track income.

 

The one setting I never turn on

When you build a rule, QuickBooks offers an auto-post option. If you turn it on, the transaction will post automatically every time, and you will never even see it. I never turn this on. Ever.

I think of your bank feed like cruise control. Cruise control is wonderful. It takes the effort out of the drive.

But you would never close your eyes and take your hands off the wheel just because it is on. You are still watching the road.

Your bookkeeping works the same way. Rules speed things up, and they should, but you still want to glance at where each transaction is going before it posts.

That habit is exactly what gives you reports you can trust when taxes roll around, rather than a pile of transactions that quietly went somewhere they shouldn’t have.

So build your rules, enjoy the speed, and leave auto-post off.

It still saves you a huge amount of time, and it keeps you in the driver’s seat.

 

Looking for the other tutorials mentioned in this video?

“How to Customize Your App Menu for Easier Navigation” (Bookmarks)

“New QuickBooks Online Bank Feeds Walkthrough”

“Why is QuickBooks Categorizing My Transactions for Me?”

 

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Want to master your whole bank feed?

If you want to really understand your bank feed from start to finish in under an hour, including how to troubleshoot when something looks off, that is what I teach inside Mastering Bank Feeds.

It walks you through the whole thing step by step, so bank feeds finally feel simple.

You can grab it here: https://canduskampfer.com/feeds

 

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Now I would love to hear from you. Did you have auto-post turned on without realizing it?

Tell me in the comments. ⤵️

#CandusKampfer