 We're now going to get into the logistics of the bank feeds, the different ways we can set up bank feeds and the pros and cons of using those different ways. A few things we need to keep in mind. One, the bank feeds need to be connected to a general ledger account, usually a cash account. But remember that most of the rules, most of the processes that we do for cash type of accounts can also be applied to credit card type of accounts because the credit card types of accounts are going through the same types of financial institutions such as banks. So we've got to set up a general ledger account. And then two, there's two main ways we can get the actual information from the bank into the QuickBooks system. One is to do it automatically. That's the most common way where we connect directly to the bank and we pull that information directly from the bank into the system or we can go to the bank or financial institution itself, download the information in some format such as a CSV file or a QuickBooks file. This is not the actual software, although it looks like the same icon. This is a data file from the bank, which we can then use to import into the QuickBooks system. Now, whether we import the data directly into QuickBooks from the bank or we go to the bank itself, download the information and then import it into QuickBooks. Once the information is in QuickBooks, we'll basically be in the same place. I'm going to show that by going to the sample company over here, which means we're in the business view at this point. And I'm going to go down into the bookkeeping where the bank feeds are located. And then I'm going to go into the transactions up top. And I'm going to review the categories down below. And here are our banking transactions. So I'm going to close up the hamburger. We've got the banks that have been connected to up top. And then we've got the actual transactions down below. These being the transactions that have not yet been finalized, they're in what I would call bank feed limbo at this point. And some added information needs to be put in place before they can be pulled in to the actual accounting system and used to either create the financial statements or to help double check the transactions we used to create the financial statements. And of course, the data that we need to add is going to be the account is going to be necessary to add and then possibly vendors and customers in order to populate that information to pull it over. So whichever method we use to get the information into this point and the accounting software will then remain, will be at the same point at that time, which means we'll have this information down here that we'll have to provide the added couple components in order to pull that information in from what I would call bank feed limbo to the creation or double checking of the financial statements. Now there's a few pros and cons of using one method or the other. Obviously, most people would like to connect directly to the bank because then you can pull that information automatically in and every time you log into QuickBooks, it'll pull that information in. And that's just the easiest thing to do. However, in some cases, you might not be able to get as much data from a direct connection to QuickBooks to the bank as you could if you downloaded the information. So if you want to pull like a whole years of information or multiple years of banking data from your financial institution into your QuickBooks system so that you can reconstruct prior years or something like that, then you might be limited in terms of how much you can pull directly into QuickBooks and you might be able to get more information by going to the bank directly and downloading the information in a way that you can then import it into QuickBooks. So if you're just starting off the QuickBooks company and you're trying to pull in like the QuickBooks file and you're trying to pull in a bunch of data like a whole years of taxes or whole years of accounting so you can do your taxes or something, then you might be required to first pull the information from the bank. And then once you've got that beginning stuff set up, then you can set up the bank feeds from that point going forward. Also if you're doing a practice problem as we are doing here, then possibly you don't want to do the direct bank connection, maybe you would think that it would just be easier to download the information from the bank. That's what we're going to do here. We're going to download the information from the bank and then upload it for the purposes of our practice problem once the information is in the system will be basically in the same spot. Alright, so let's go back on over to our bank feed practice file. So the chart of accounts is down below. I'm in the accounting view now. So it's in the accounting tab to the left and there is our chart of accounts. If you're in the business view and I open up the hamburger, then it's going to be under the bookkeeping and then the chart of accounts. Now the chart of accounts, I have to hit that to see the chart of accounts is needs to be connected. Something in the chart of accounts needs to be connected to the bank feeds. The bank feeds are going to tie in to feed into one of these accounts. So and the type of account usually needs to be a bank type of account. So when you set up a new account and you say new account, you can set up. It's got to be a bank type of account that you're going to be setting up because the bank type of account is the only account type other than a credit card type of account that has the capacity to connect to the banks. Remember the same concepts we're using here generally apply to the credit card. We will dive into credit cards more in a future presentation. So this account, they set up for us. We didn't delete it. They're using it as a cash on hand account, but it was set up as a bank type of accounts. So you might go in here and set up your account first and then you can go in and connect to the bank. That's one way that you can set up the bank feeds from your actual chart of accounts and connect that way, which makes sense because you can set up the account and then add the bank feeds. When you set up the account, you might want to put the name of the institution, for example, and possibly if you have multiple accounts, the last four digits of the account number because that might help you internally. Now that's not something that you want to often give externally to other people. So you might also create a cash kind of parent account. And then maybe if you have multiple accounts under it, make them sub accounts so that you can collapse them for external reporting as just cash. And then for internal reporting, you have the multiple kind of checking accounts. The other way you can set it up is if I go up to the plus button up top and I go into the banking tab, within the banking tab, you've got your first item is the banking. This is where kind of like the bank feeds are located. If you're under the business view, it's a little bit different. It's under bookkeeping as we saw before. It's under bookkeeping. And then you've got your transactions up top. And that's where your bank transactions are. It's already set up here because they have a few that have been set up already. So that's where we'll go and we'll set them up here. And then we've got our instructions to set it up. Usually the actual connection of the bank feeds is pretty easy. That's not the difficult part of bank feeds. The difficult part that people get messed up on is that they pull in all the information, they get the connection right, but then they have all this stuff and what I would call bank feed limbo and they don't know how to add it to the system. They get overwhelmed at this point in time because they don't know the accounting system. And so it's useful to first have an understanding of what's going on a little bit before, but we can build it from scratch here even if we don't. So it's going to say automatic income and expense tracking save hours of work by tracking finances automatically. You could see how it works with the video if you want. Number one, connect bank or credit card to get started. Number two, review and add your transactions. Number three, see how your business is doing so we can either upload transactions. That's the way we're going to do it in a future presentations, but most likely most people are going to connect if this was their actual business. Now I recommend if you're following along with a practice problem with your own data that you download the data from the your financial institution, the way we're doing here, which we'll show you in a future presentation and then we'll upload it.