How to Download a QBO File from Bank of America

Quick Answer: In Bank of America Online Banking, open the account's activity, choose the download option, pick the QuickBooks (Web Connect, .QBO) file type and a date range, and save the file. In QuickBooks Desktop, import it from Banking > Bank Feeds > Import Web Connect Files; in QuickBooks Online, upload it from Bank transactions > Link account > Upload from file.

A QBO file is QuickBooks' Web Connect format: one account's transactions plus the bank's identifiers, packaged so QuickBooks can match them to a register without column mapping. Bank of America produces one from its own download screen for checking, savings, money market and credit card accounts. The catch is the date range, which stops well short of the statement archive.

What you need before you start

Bank of America's QuickBooks FAQ for small business sets the ground rules:

• Software version. You need QuickBooks Online or QuickBooks Desktop 2018 or later to download account information for QuickBooks.
• Account types. Checking, savings, money market and credit card accounts are covered.
• Two connection styles. Web Connect is the file route covered here: you download from the bank, then import into QuickBooks. Direct Connect is a two-way link set up inside QuickBooks Desktop, and the bank notes a monthly service fee may apply.
• An Intuit sign-in. Intuit's Web Connect troubleshooting article says importing .qbo files requires you to be signed in to your Intuit account inside QuickBooks Desktop.

Also decide your start date before downloading. Open the QuickBooks register for the account and note the date of the last transaction already in it. Your download should begin the day after. That one habit prevents most duplicate entries.

How do you download a QBO file from Bank of America?

The steps below follow the Web Connect flow Bank of America describes for its online banking. Labels can differ slightly between personal and Small Business Online Banking, but the sequence is the same.

1. Sign in to Bank of America Online Banking on a computer.
2. Click the account you want in QuickBooks. Each QBO file holds one account, so a checking account and a credit card mean two downloads.
3. Open the account activity view and select the download option near the transaction list.
4. Choose the QuickBooks format. It may be labelled Web Connect or show the .QBO extension. Do not pick the Quicken (.QFX) option; QuickBooks Desktop's Web Connect reads only .qbo files.
5. Choose the date range, starting the day after your last recorded QuickBooks transaction.
6. Download and save the file. Do not double-click it yet if you have more than one QuickBooks company file, because Windows may launch the wrong one.

How far back the file can go

For Bank of America credit cards, the card account FAQ says you can request up to 12 months of detailed transaction information through Online Banking, and view and print up to three years of statements. Deposit accounts show their available range in the download screen's date selector. Anything before that window will not come out as a QBO file, which is covered further down.

How do you import Bank of America transactions into QuickBooks Desktop?

Intuit's steps for Web Connect, from its bank feed download article and the troubleshooting page above:

1. Back up the company file first. Intuit recommends a backup before any bank download, because a bad import is easier to undo from a backup than by deleting rows.
2. Go to Banking > Bank Feeds > Import Web Connect Files.
3. Select the .qbo file you saved and choose Open.
4. When QuickBooks asks which account to use, pick the existing QuickBooks account if it is already set up, or create a new one if it is not.
5. Open the Bank Feeds Center to review the downloaded transactions. Match those already entered, add the new ones, and assign payees and accounts.

If the import fails with "We can't read the file" or "Your data was not imported," Intuit suggests three checks in order: confirm the file was downloaded from the bank's website as a .qbo (not from inside QuickBooks, and not a renamed .qfx); sign in to your bank's site and read any messages about account changes; and switch Banking > Bank Feeds > Change Bank Feeds Mode to Classic (Register) mode before importing again.

How do you import a Bank of America QBO file into QuickBooks Online?

QuickBooks Online has no Web Connect menu; it takes the same file through its upload screen. Intuit's manual upload article gives the path:

1. Go to All apps > Accounting > Bank transactions.
2. Open the Link account dropdown and choose Upload from file.
3. Drag the .qbo file in, or select it, then Continue.
4. Choose the QuickBooks account from the dropdown, or Add New, then Continue.
5. Select the transactions to bring in, confirm, and choose Done.

Two limits from the same article matter for Bank of America files: the upload must be 350 KB or less, and it can hold at most 1,000 transactions. A busy checking account can exceed that over a year. Download in quarters instead of one large range.

For current activity, QuickBooks Online can also link to Bank of America directly, which removes the file step for new transactions. Our guide to downloading bank transactions into QuickBooks Online covers when that connection is the better choice and what to do when it stops updating.

Which route should you use?

If you only want a spreadsheet, not QuickBooks, Bank of America's own CSV download is the simpler file; see exporting Bank of America transactions for that route.

What if the months you need are older than the download window?

This is the common dead end: the books are a year behind, or a new bookkeeper is reconstructing a prior year, and Bank of America's download screen will not let you pick those dates. The statement PDFs still exist in the Statements and Documents area, so the data is there; it is just in the wrong format.

Your options:

• Enter the transactions by hand in the register. Workable for a quiet savings account, not for a card with 200 charges a month.
• Convert the PDF to a QBO file. Download each old statement PDF, then run it through a converter that writes Web Connect files. Our Bank of America statement page explains how the BofA layouts convert. With QuickBankConvert, QBO output is on the Plus plan ($29 a month) and above, or the $39 one-time pass; the file is built from the PDF you upload, not from a login to your bank.

Whichever way you build an older file, run it through the QBO file checker before importing. It reads the file's header, account fields and transaction list and tells you whether QuickBooks is likely to accept it, which is far quicker than a failed import and a restore from backup.

Avoiding duplicates and reconciliation trouble

QBO files carry a unique transaction ID for each row. QuickBooks uses those IDs to skip rows it has already downloaded, which is why repeated bank downloads rarely double up. A file rebuilt from a PDF cannot carry the bank's original IDs, so QuickBooks has no way to recognize a row it previously took from the bank's own download. Keep your date ranges from different sources from overlapping.

After importing, reconcile the account against the statement for the same period. If the ending balance in QuickBooks matches the statement's closing balance, the import is complete. If it is off by one transaction amount, look first at the boundary days, where a charge can post on the last day of one statement and the first day of the next file.

Related guides

• Bank of America statement conversion
• Bank of America transaction export to CSV
• QBO file checker
• PDF statements to QBO
• QuickBooks integration overview