QBO BankFeed Stops Working

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QBO BankFeeds can stop working temporarily, for an extended period of time, or forever. With a little trial and error you can usually resolve any of the three outages.

Temporary Outages

One of the most common BankFeed Errors experienced by QuickBooks Online users is the “Please try updating again” error.  The message goes on to advise that QBO is unable to download information from your bank.

Routinely, if your bank allows automatic updates, QuickBooks will try to update the bank account during the next overnight period. 

The error message (as seen to the right) goes on to give you Intuit’s ‘General BankFeed’ Failure Error Resolution Protocol:

          (1) Wait for the next overnight update or try a manual update.

          (2) In the navigation bar, click Transactions > Banking.

          (3) Click Update in the upper right.

          (4) Select the account to update and click Update Now.

Extended Period Outages

Outages to BankFeeds generally occur as a result of one of two things, improper or inadequate credentials established within QuickBooks Online, or a server or service outage associated with the participating bank.

Verify your bank credentials by attempting to log into your bank directly via the bank's website from your browser.  If you can successfully log-in, then that pretty much indicates that your bank credentials within QuickBooks Online are improper or inadequate.

On the other hand, if you can not log-in to your bank's website directly from your browser, then either the credential issue or bank service outage could still apply.  In many cases, if a service outages is the problem, you will either receive a message on your bank's website that online banking is unavailable or you will not even be able to access the webpage where you would normally enter your banking credentials (account name, password, etc.).

If you can access the bank's webpage where you enter your credentials, and you receive a notification back that your account name, password or other credentials either don't match or are no longer valid, then you are pretty much assured that your bank credentials stored within QBO are also invalid or improper (don't match). In this case you will need to contact your bank to clear up your credential issue.

In some cases BankFeeds may display errors associated with improper or invalid credentials. Once such error (shown below) is "Bank Account Error 109: Your bank is requesting a password change (once completed return to QuickBooks and enter your new password."

Back in QuickBooks, if the issue is one of a bank server or online bank service problem, then the proper resolution is no different than the temporary outage steps above.

If the issue stems from improper bank credentials, then you will need to update your QBO Bank Account credentials after you have cleared up the matter with your bank. 

  • From the Banking Center, click the pencil icon at the top right of the Account Box,
  • Then select the option to Edit sign-in info.
  • Enter your updated online banking credentials
  • Then click Update sign-in info.

In most cases, these steps will resolve extended period outages within your control.

Forever Outages

Well, forever is a really long time, and someone once said, "nothing is forever."  In some cases, something happens in the BankFeeds connection mechanism within QuickBooks Online and neither the temporary outage or extended period outage procedures will resolve the problem. It's not like you can't really fix it, you just have to completely undo it and start over to fix it.

In these cases it becomes necessary to break the existing connection between QBO BankFeeds and your bank and to re-set or re-establish the connection. To accomplish this you must edit the bank or credit card account that has the problem.

In the bottom right of the account window you will see the BankFeed information advising you that the account is connected to (and the name of the bank account and bank associated with the bank feed).

  • Check the checkbox next to where it says, Disconnect this account on save.
  • Save and close the account.

When a bank account is disconnected from the bank, the tile disappears from the banking center and all bank activity previously in the 'For Review' is hidden. If you reconnect the same GL bank account to the bank’s BankFeeds, the information previously excluded will be re-included in 'For Review'.  Many users report that the process of completely disconnecting the account, then re-establishing it successfully resolves their BankFeeds problems.

In instances where the attempt to re-establish BankFeeds after disconnecting the original account does not work, it may become necessary to create a new bank account within QBO and then associate that account with BankFeeds. If you reconnect your bank’s BankFeeds to a different G/L bank account it should act like any other new bank account.

Some users report successfully merging their old bank account to the new bank account and BankFeeds continuing normally from that point on. I am also aware of other users making both the original and new bank accounts sub accounts of a master bank account containing both so that the entire transactional history maybe viewed within the parent-level account.