QuickBooks 2011: The Missing Manual

Online Banking Using Side-by-side Mode

Side-by-side mode makes it easy to see what’s going on with your accounts at financial institutions. You can see online balances, downloaded transactions, and the work you have to do to match them to transactions in your company file. You can do everything you need to do to match downloaded transactions to the ones in QuickBooks without leaving the Online Banking Center.

Sending and Receiving Transactions

Every time you go online, QuickBooks automatically requests newly cleared transactions from your financial institution. If you’ve set up items to send to your bank, going online pushes those along, too. Here’s what you do to send requests and receive replies in Side-by-side mode:

1. Choose Banking→Online Banking→Online Banking Center.

   The Online Banking Center opens.

2. If you have online services with more than one bank (say, a checking account with one bank and a credit card with another), in the Financial Institution drop-down list, choose the one you want to connect to.

   To the right of the Financial Institution heading, you see all the accounts you have at the institution you selected. QuickBooks automatically turns on all the Download checkboxes (Figure 22-5) to grab transactions from all your accounts at that financial institution. If you don’t want to download transactions for an account, turn off its checkbox.

   As Figure 22-5 shows, the Online Balance column shows your balance according to your financial institution as of the last update. The Last ...