The whole process takes about five minutes in QuickBooks Online. Go to Transactions in the left menu, then click Connect Account. Search for your bank by name, enter the username and password you use for online banking, and select which accounts you want to link. QuickBooks will pull in recent transactions, usually going back about 90 days.

Before you start, make sure you have online banking set up directly with your bank. If you can’t log into your bank’s website on your own, you won’t be able to connect it through QuickBooks. You need your online banking credentials, not your account number.

Multi-factor authentication trips people up more than anything. Most banks send a verification code to your phone or email when they detect a login from somewhere new, and QuickBooks counts as somewhere new. Keep your phone nearby so you can enter the code when prompted. Some banks also require you to approve the connection from within their own mobile app before it goes through.

Once connected, transactions flow into QuickBooks automatically, usually within 24 hours of clearing your bank. But here is what a lot of business owners get wrong. Connecting the bank doesn’t mean your bookkeeping is done. Transactions still need to be reviewed, categorized to the right accounts, and matched properly. If you’re a contractor or trades business owner, that might mean assigning costs to specific jobs or splitting a single purchase across categories. If you just accept whatever QuickBooks suggests without reviewing it, your books will be unreliable by the time tax season comes around.

If your bank doesn’t show up in the search results, it might not support direct connections. Some smaller credit unions and local banks fall into this category. The workaround is downloading a CSV or QFX file from your bank’s website and uploading it into QuickBooks manually. It adds an extra step each month but gets you to the same place.

Bank connections also drop from time to time. Banks update their security protocols or change systems, and the link to QuickBooks breaks. When that happens you’ll see a notification asking you to reconnect. Don’t ignore it. The longer the gap, the more transactions pile up and the more cleanup you’re looking at.

If you’re setting up QuickBooks for the first time, getting the chart of accounts and bank feeds right from day one matters more than most people realize. QuickBooks Online setup and training can save you from building on a shaky foundation that causes headaches later. And if you’d rather hand off the ongoing work entirely, bookkeeping for trades businesses starts with having properly connected accounts so nothing falls through the cracks.