QuickBooks Online Bank Rules: How Intuit Describes Them

This guide follows Intuit’s help article “Set up bank rules to categorize online banking transactions in QuickBooks Online.” Intuit says bank rules automatically categorize transactions downloaded from your bank so they post to the correct accounts, and that the app learns how to read transactions the more your rules are used.

Intuit also says a rule can add details beyond the category, such as a payee, customer or project. It notes that adding a payee helps with accurate records, reconciliation and reports.

If you build transaction lists from statements yourself, rules are worth thinking about before you upload, because Intuit’s upload article recommends setting up bank rules first so transactions are categorized as they come in.

Intuit gives the path as All apps, then Accounting, then Rules, then New rule. The article lists these elements:

• A name for the rule.

• Whether it applies to Money in or Money out.

• Which account: a specific bank or credit card account, or All bank accounts.

• Conditions that test Description, Bank text or Amount, using Contains, Doesn’t contain or Is exactly.

• Settings to apply, including Transaction type, Category, Tags and Payee.

Intuit states two limits: up to 2,000 bank rules per company, and up to 5 conditions per rule. Its video also mentions testing a rule against unreviewed transactions before saving, and splitting a transaction across categories by percentage or amount.

A shortcut is described too: on the For review tab, select a transaction and use the Create a rule link.

Intuit defines bank text as the raw information from the bank, as it appears on your statement, and Description as a simplified version such as a vendor name. The article says a rule that does not fire is often built on the wrong one of the two. To see bank text, it points to Bank transactions, the Settings gear, and Show full bank description.

Only one rule can apply to each transaction. Intuit says rules are checked in the order shown on the Rules page and that you can drag a rule using the reorder icon, with the highest-priority rule applied first.

Imagine two synthetic rules. Rule A: Money out, Description contains “Fuel,” category Vehicle expenses. Rule B: Money out, Amount is exactly 45.00, category Office supplies. A 45.00 fuel purchase meets both, so according to Intuit’s description only the one higher in the list applies.

Intuit says rules apply automatically to transactions on the For review tab, which it suggests reviewing daily. A RULE badge appears in the Category field when a rule applies, and an AUTO badge appears for auto-post rules.

Auto-post is turned on in the Rules window under the heading “Automatically confirm transactions this rule applies to.” Intuit says auto-post rules add matching transactions without review, and that they run when you sign in, upload a file, or create or modify an auto-post rule. The article’s video advises using it with caution and starting with simple, consistent transactions such as rent or gas.

The article itself is not fully consistent on tab names, referring to the Pending tab in one place and to Posted for confirmed transactions in its video. Intuit’s other articles say Pending and For review can be the same place under newer layouts, so check which label your account shows.

On the Rules page, Intuit says the Actions dropdown lets you Copy, Disable or Enable, or Delete a rule. Disabling is temporary, while deleting is permanent. Rules can be exported to an Excel file or imported from a file using the New rule dropdown.

You can filter the Bank transactions list by Rules, No rules or Auto-post rules using the All transactions dropdown.

We did not find statements in the article about how rules treat transactions already reviewed, so we leave that out. PDFtoRow converts bank statement PDFs to Excel or CSV if you want to inspect statement lines in a spreadsheet before deciding what conditions to use.