We have only one QB client, and have serious issues with bank feeds from Barclays. I am not sure if this is down to QB, Barclays or a combination of the two. Do others have experience of this - is it a common problem with QB and Barclays? Do other banks update more successfully to QB?
Thanks
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yes we had this problem for about 3 weeks, QB told us it was an issue with Barclays.
In the last week it seems to have been sorted.
The quicker these banks agree direct feeds with all software companies the better.
If you have only one client on QBO and having issues with bank feeds, dont waste time on it and just swop them over to Xero and there direct feeds as they run pretty much hassle free.
I had a problem like this and I find QBO support very poor and you get bounced around without getting any joy.
Its easier just using something that works all of the time.
Glennzy I cannot disagree with the technical aspect of your answer, but for us it is more about cost - Xero is 3 times the cost of QBO and most clients will not pay that. I am just hoping that the technology improves.
If not we might have to dig deep
Its a tricky one. The offers that QBO have put out recently are tempting but I find when you get issues the money disappears quickly.
My normal pricing for full version of QBO was £10 per month and I pay about £18 quid for Xero so the £100 per year difference easily gets eaten up if you run in to problems that repeat regularly that tends to happens with bank feeds. (Whats it they say, accountants know the cost of everything and the value of nothing).
Dont get me started about Lloyds ones Its easier running the statements through autoentry then uploading the output into the software.
I have also had problems with QBO and Barclays recently and advised Intuit of the issue. This is my experience:
Barclays systems know a transaction from a third party is going to hit the account in, say, a couple of days, so deducts this from the available balance (which QBO downloads) however QBO does not download the transaction itself, hence a mismatch.
An example of this is:
30/05/2017 DEBIT £-47.99 LINKEDIN - ON 26 MAY BDC"
Note the two dates, Barclays deducted this from the available balance on 26 May, but it did not download until 30th May.
If QBO were to download the statement balance then this would not happen.
Barclays offer a great system for accountants called
eSync. This is a read-only access to all of your clients' accounts at Barclays. Just call the eSync team who will set you up and you then add your clients' bank accounts. eSync then contacts each client who identifies themselves to the bank (usually via their phone banking) and you get access to read their statements online (all clients in one portal). The great thing about this is the client needn't worry as you can only read (not create) transactions and you can download a single csv file for an extended period of transactions for easy upload into QBO whenever you want.
Direct feeds are great but, when the bank allows multiple months to be downloaded at once into a single csv file, it is very quick and easy to do it this way. Once the data is in QBO, it makes no difference how it got there (whether csv upload or direct feed or Yodlee screen-shaping). The only banks that i find a pain to use csv's are those (like HSBC) that insist upon allowing only a very few transactions to be downloaded at a time. With eSync, Barclays transactions can be done for a few months in one go.
To the best of my knowledge, eSync for Barclays is the only external system to provide read-only access by the banks. HSBC allow primary account holders to add secondary users and those users' rights can be limited to read-only access (or whatever limitation the primary user wishes to set).
once setup esync works brilliantly, it is a well kept secret, I asked my own Barclays business manager and she had never heard of it.
One thing to bear in mind, your client must have both internet and telephone banking setup as there is a two step process they have to go through, it is somewhat long winded for the client (2 out of 8 of my clients gave up and refused to do it!), but well worth pestering them to get it setup.