Importing bank transactions?

[tacks]

What is the purpose for importing bank transactions on to Quickbooks?

Why would one would one import an IIF file provided by the bank? Does it somehow save one the trouble of manually entering transactions on to QB? Does it make the bank rec a piece of cake?

Could someone point me to some posts which I can read so that i might understand the benefit? Send me a clue?

Pardon my ignorance. But i'm at a loss. More often i get the type who comes to me with a bag full of receipts and wants me to clean it up before April 15th. Or someone asks me to do their return and i instead get busy amending prior years before the statute runs out.

This fellow that i just met with is way more sophisticated and i wish i could get clients like him.

[If this forum would allow 'Image' codes i'd post up the 'help me' smilie.]

[tacks]

Client just called and informed me that over the holidays a buddy of his looked at his QB issue and was able to fix it. [EDIT: Ooops. He's not really my 'client' rather he's someone whom i wish was my client.] Hence i wont be visiting him trying to fix his import file problem. (He did tell me that he'd like to consult with me for taxes which is an area in which i'm much more proficient.)

But i'm still real curious as to what are the benefits of importing bank transactions. There's no longer any sense of 'urgency' involved in this question but i'm still interested to read any responses posted.

[erchess]

I don't use Q B

but it seems obvious that uploading a bank statement would be easier than manually entering the information. I believe also that some tax software packages will let you load in QB files. Lacerte is the only one I am sure I have read has this capability but I would expect that there are or soon will be others. Drake which I use has a similar ability to take files from its own Bookeeping Program which is definitely not as full featured as QB. Drake can also accept a printed list of Sch D Transactions and again the time savings seems obvious and again I doubt they are the only package that can do this.

[geekgirldany]

I haven't tried importing a bank statement into QBs in awhile. Previously it was easier for me to enter the transactions then do that. I still had to code them to the correct account. It did not remember the previous times I had done it because some stores put numbers at the end of their name in the transaction. So it looked like a new vendor everytime. I will probably be giving it a try this week because I have a new bookkeeping customer that has a employee gas card that needs the transactions entered. About 6 months. So I may give it a try again.

Hey you know I ready that Drake is now doing QuickBooks import. Is this new for 2009?

[tacks]

Hey Erchess and Dany,

Thanks to the both of you for responding.

Dany,

Your comments were most helpful as i've read the same thing elsewhere. People don't always find that importing bank transactions saves a ton of time. Another accountant had his client STOP doing it because fixing the import was more work than manually entering transactions.

If you try it again I'd be interested to know it works out.

Tacks

[tacks]

This fellow, JZeiger, from a QB forum gave me what i thought to be very comprehensive answer -- consistent with everything else i've read.

Here's the link if anyone's interested and/or this subject comes up again:

http://forums.quickbooksusers.com/showthread.php?p=111047&posted=1#post111047

[Gretel]

I never used bank import but have a client who loves it. With QB 2010 it's supposed to have much changed and the problem of creating a vendor for each transaction is gone since one can tell QB to which vendor these transactions belong.

But we only know if we try and I am not inclined to do so.