Problem setting up online banking with Bank of America

Have you tried using direct connect through your account register instead of web connect? Also make sure you have enabled the online feature within your bank's website. (Usually an option in their customer service section after you have logged on to your account). Try contacting their online technical support group. I did this with Chase and got help on the second call.

I recently switched to Bank of America from Key Bank.
Now I have sadly discovered that BOA adds a 4 digit date code such as 0721 to the payee field in their download file. Example.. instead of having "Verizon" in the payee field as it was up loaded to them, they have "0706 Verizon". Obviously this makes it imposible for QB to match the banks data with your register. The only options are to add a matching entre in the registry or create an alias to every downloaded entry. Obviously neither of these options are acceptable! I have made several calls to BOA's QB support people but they have no clue as to "why QB imports their data wrong". They admit to inserting a date code in the data but claim it has no effect on QBKS and have never had anyone complain about this matter before! They also have said that they have no intention of changing their servers or the way that they store data on it! Unless I am able to find some way to circumvent this problem I will have to change banks again because it is a daunting task to match my register entries to their data with this extra data added to the payee field.
I hoped someone might be able to help with this problem. Thanx!

I set up my Bank of America main checking account and my money market account in QB with absolutely no problem.

I got a business credit card and line of credit and attempted to add these to QB so that I could download the transactions easily (as I do with my Chase cards and American Express cards.)

No matter how I configured it, I couldn't get it to connect.

I called support and was told that BOA does not allow business credit card transactions to download to QB. Let me get this right -- the largest bank in America will not let users of the most commonly used accounting software download credit card transactions? How could this be true?

I reviewed the boards and with a few minor exceptions it appears as if many people experience this same problem.

Has anyone found a solution? If not, I think an email campaign to BOA is in order. This is ridiculous -- and if it's true, I'll barely use these cards, I'll just give Chase and Amex my business.

Did you ever find a fix for this?

Getting data from Bank of America into Quickbooks is crazy - they change the name of the payee to include the date or check number so that you can never line anything up with QuickBooks. I mean, it is retarded...

How to retrieve the .QBO files?

I was downloading very easy from the Accounts at Bank of America files with extension .QBO until July 2006. Since July 2006 I could not retrieve the bank statements into my files.

The message on QB tells me no such account existed.

Even if I will create new account name for this and import the file, the ledger will show no transactions.

I called the B of A numerous times, and they refer to QB specialists. I have called several places and they recommended to join the forum.

sorry, I was replying to the guy who had problems with the BOA and transaction names.

Hello emands, thank you for adding your question to the discussion. What is the exact error message you receive? Also, what is the process you use to download the files? Do you know if you are using WebConnect or Direct Connect? Please reply back with as much specific information as you can and we will try to help you further.

Thanks!
Amy

Amy, do you know if quickbooks or bank of america is working on the 'adding a date to the name' problem.

For example: if you download an entry for amazon from bank of america on 12/13, it lists as the name

1213 Amazon

and the next day it will be

1214 Amazon

This makes matching impossible.

Will quickbooks have a fix for this? or Bank of America?

I made countless calls to BOA about the date being inserted into the payee field and was unable to find anyone intelligent enough to even know what I was talking about let alone solve the problem. They even stated that I was the first person to ever complain about the problem. I then contacted QBs tech support who also stated that they knew nothing about the problem I was describing... after charging me $75 they made a conference call to BOA with me on the line.
BOA stated that they do infact insert the transaction date into the payee field as though there was nothing wrong with it! When the QKs support person told her that this practice prevents the data from being imported properly into QBs the woman from BOA, who said she was the head of the online banking department, stated that BOA had no intentions of changing their policies to suit QBs! The QBs support person told me that he would check with his coworkers to see if there was some kind of "work around" and would get back to me.
He never called back. When I called QBs tech support again to see what the status was I was told that QBs had no intentions of modifying thier software to make it work with BOA. After several requests I finally was able to get my $75 back from QBs but still have the problem! This situation is too stupid for words! I am switching back to KeyBank where QBs data is properly imported into QBs. QBs should at the very least remove BOA from the list of banks that work with thier software and BOA should do the same!!

Before July 2006, I could download the Bank Statement with Extention .qbo (stmt.qbo) on my computer and import this file into my Quick book Filel.

I perform following steps.

connect to BofA account from the Quck Book File

click on download statement

choose transaction period

Saving the stmt.qbo file on my computer

Trying to import this file into Quick Books file

Message that Quick books does not have this account

and I have to create new

Creating new account in Quick Book files

Importing stmt.qbo into my file.

The new account does not show any transaction.

Do you have any clues?

Good morning emands, thank you for your reply. I would suggest re-branding your online account and setting it up for online banking again.

1. Open your chart of accounts
2. Right-click your online account and choose edit
3. Under the Online Info tab, uncheck the online boxes at the bottom
4. Click OK

Now that your account has been disabled, let?s re-brand your account:

1. Click on the Banking menu
2. Choose Online Banking
3. Select Available Financial Institutions
4. Click on your Financial Institution on the left
5. Click the ?Apply Now? button on the right
6. Click on the ?Exit? button in the middle of the top gray bar
7. This should download your bank information (re-brand)

Finally, let?s setup your account for online access again:

1. Click on the Banking menu
2. Choose Online Banking
3. Select Setup Account for Online Access and follow the prompts

I hope this helps!
Amy

Since you are "QB_Guru_Amy" maybe you could comment about the incompatability between QuickBooks & Bank of America described in my post below.

I made countless calls to BOA about the date being inserted into the payee field and was unable to find anyone intelligent enough to even know what I was talking about let alone solve the problem. They even stated that I was the first person to ever complain about the problem. I then contacted QBs tech support who also stated that they knew nothing about the problem I was describing... after charging me $75 they made a conference call to BOA with me on the line.
BOA stated that they do infact insert the transaction date into the payee field as though there was nothing wrong with it! When the QKs support person told her that this practice prevents the data from being imported properly into QBs the woman from BOA, who said she was the head of the online banking department, stated that BOA had no intentions of changing their policies to suit QBs! The QBs support person told me that he would check with his coworkers to see if there was some kind of "work around" and would get back to me.
He never called back. When I called QBs tech support again to see what the status was I was told that QBs had no intentions of modifying thier software to make it work with BOA. After several requests I finally was able to get my $75 back from QBs but still have the problem! This situation is too stupid for words! I am switching back to KeyBank where QBs data is properly imported into QBs. QBs should at the very least remove BOA from the list of banks that work with thier software and BOA should do the same!!

You are not alone. I have had nothing but frustration in trying to get BofA explain how to download charges. With the business credit card, I cannot get the WebConnect or DirectConnect to work. DC connects but doesn't download, WC will only download one card instead of the corporate+individual cards. Instead I've been downloading statements and then manually merging the entries on them, then downloading. It works, but it's ugly.

Does anyone know if you sign up for the BOFA online business suite (for $15) whether you can then download BOFA Credit Card statements into QB?

The problem of inserting a date into the payee name is not exclusive to BofA. I have a Citibank MC and charge my UPS shipments to it. In this case it seems that UPS adds a date to their payee name since all of the other payees on my statement don't have one. Making it necessary for me alias UPS's transactions everytime I download their transactions. Perhaps if QB only allowed the first 10 characters of a payees name to be downloaded?

Just purchased quickbooks 07 last week and after numerous attempts we're still not able to get our statements online. We've contacted BofA and Quickbooks support several times but to no avail. We're ready to throw the PCs out the window at this point. We've checked the routing numbers, passwords/PIN is correct, account numbers are in fine and still nothing but error reference 2000! HELP!!!

I also am having a problem with the date code issue in downloaded transactions.

A simple wildcard function would solve this quite nicely. We use Check Cards from BofA for our business constantly. So the transaction reports always go "CHECKCARD xxxx COMPANY NAME".

If there was wildcard support for aliases, then we could set up an alias like "CHECKCARD **** COMPANY NAME" and it would match up every time.

If there was a store number issue, you'd only have to create a few aliases per store. Like HOME DEPOT #*, HOME DEPOT #**, etc...

Hopefully this is something that gets implemented soon. I'm a little surprised to come on here and see this is a common issue considering as far as I know BofA is the largest bank in America and Quickbooks is I believe the leading business financial program in America. The fact that they're not more compatible seems a little silly.

This is not a new problem. I have been using the download capability with Quickbooks with BOA since they started it. And reported this problem to both QB and BOA two years ago. I too went through the same trouble shooting issues that everyone else has done... What is really interesting is that it USED TO WORK!!!! IT ALL USED TO WORK. Downloading worked perfectly. Even the company name didn't include the extra information so matching happened correctly and easily. So somewhere along the way something broke. I would like to know if I were to go back to Quickbooks 2004 Pro if it would work correctly, because I think that is when it stopped when I upgraded to Quickbooks 2005. I have two companies in Quickbooks and one of them down loads the other doesn't... those accounts are my personal accounts though.. If you look at the down load .ini log file you will see that it says quicken2002...is that the format they are still using?.

This is what I found from B of A. Apparently I need to set up a PIN for it to work.

Online Banking in QuickBooks or Quicken

You can do more with Quicken and QuickBooks than just access and download your account information. Online Banking in QuickBooks or Quicken lets you make payments and transfer funds directly in your software for fast, efficient account management.
What you need to get started

To set up Online Banking in QuickBooks or Quicken, you will need:

* QuickBooks or Quicken 2004 for Windows (or a newer version)
* Internet access
* Microsoft Internet Explorer
* Your online ID for Online Banking (QuickBooks/Quicken refers to it as the Customer ID)
* Your Online Banking passcode (QuickBooks/Quicken refers to it as a PIN)

How to set up Online Banking in Quicken

1. Open the Cash Flow menu and select Go to Cash Flow Center.
2. If it isn't already open, select the My Data tab.
3. Select Add Account.
4. When asked how you want to set up your account, choose Online and select Next.
5. Enter your online ID and passcode for Online Banking and select Next.
6. Your account is now set up. Your account information and transaction history will be downloaded and you're ready to get started.

How to set up Online Banking in QuickBooks

1. Open the Banking menu, select Set Up Online Financial Services, and then select Setup Account for Online Access.
2. In the Online Banking Setup interview, select the Enable Accounts tab.
3. Choose Bank of America from the list of financial institutions and select the option indicating that you have received the confirmation information
4. Verify the bank's routing number, confirm or enter your Federal Tax ID (this may be your Social Security number), and then select Next.
5. Select the appropriate option for the account you're setting up.
1. To edit an existing account: select Use my Existing QuickBooks Account, choose the account you want to edit, and then select Next.
2. To create a new account: choose Create a New QuickBooks Account, select Next, and then enter the information you're asked to provide.
6. Review and verify the information for your account.
7. Select Leave to exit the Online Banking Setup interview.

Has anyone fixed this problem yet?

I just can't believe the whole accounting world is dealing with creating new aliases each and every time a new transaction comes in.