I don't understand why QBO has not adopted some of the features that Xero excels in for Banking
- Bank (feed) statements can export to Excel*
- Cash coding screen is simple and sortable
- Bank reconciliation report shows all unreconciled transactions including those on the Bank feed
The lack of this last feature means that we have to request bank statements every quarter and tick off every transaction one by one just like the (good?) old days. Of course I like to see the year end bank statement to make sure the balance is correct, but surely a bank feed means getting bank statements and slowing down the information flow is unnecessary?
Am I missing something obvious?
*In QBO the bank feed is divided up into 3 tabs "To review" "Reviewed" and "Excluded" which can be exported but you dont have the "luxury" of seeing the bank statement not carved up.
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Not a problem in QBO at all. If the recon screen come back to nil, it takes no more than a couple of seconds - you only need to start ticking things, if the reconciliation screen does not balance (usually as a result of one of the banks dropping a few transactions as part of the feed)
Interesting - having reread your question, you seem to be happy to treat a bank feed one of and the same as a bank statement.
We tend to treat a bank feed as a data feed, which may or may not be complete (and sometime is not). Requesting real paper/pdf bank statements from the client can be a chore, but it is useful to have their invoices anyway (to cover VAT oddities) If statements are not available, the bank balance for that day is shown on the banking screen.
If everything has been matched/categorised correctly then the old school reconciliation (via accountants tools) takes seconds to complete - and keeps the client/team member up to scratch.
Are you saying that for you, Xero bank feeds and what your clients/team do is that reliable, that you do not need to have any sort of check on the bank until the year end - if so then hats off too you and I clearly have the wrong product and clients
Which raises an interesting question as to what extent Open Banking can be used to obtain reliable bank statements in an electronic form. I have been having discussions with the FCA about this for quite a while, but more recently they appear to be more open to this suggestion than they were 9 months ago.
I will keep people in touch.
Open banking can and does sometimes miss transactions, whether due to an error in the feed or because for example someone doesn't renew the bank feed soon enough after the 90 day expiry period sometimes transactions go missing. You can't rely on it solely. At the very least you should be checking closing balances to make sure nothing has been missed regularly. And the only way to do that is to compare with bank statements.
That's an interesting point. I haven't got into the details of this yet. There are always questions as to whether this is a failure of the design of the project, failure of implementation by software house or failure of implementation by bank.
Personally I don't think systems should allow this. They should carry forward the transactions and ensure that the bank statement from open banking balances with the bank statement at the bank.
This may not be possible because of design flaws in open banking, but as I said I have not yet got into the details.
Would I be correct in thinking that QB online are trialing the supply of statements with open banking in Canada at the moment
My mistake, you are right re open banking in Canada, but a little info re actual statements being available for interest.
https://quickbooks.intuit.com/learn-support/en-ca/banking-currency/open-...
I think I first got electronic statements in the 90s. It may have been the 80s. I did put the first bank on the net in May 1995. (We (STB and myself) beat Wells Fargo by a day).
The thing about open banking is that it should apply to all uk banks.
the fundamental point is that you need to review entries that are not subject to a classification rule AND clients often by mistake make accidental entries to the bank account so reconciliations are vital and usually very easy. QBO does all the things you mention above and more