QBO or CSV for QuickBooks Online?

QBO, if you can supply the bank ID. It goes through the banking feed, which matches against existing transactions and warns about duplicates. CSV skips that entirely, so a second import of the same month silently doubles everything.

Does QuickBooks Online accept IIF?

No. Intuit removed IIF import from QuickBooks Online. IIF is Desktop only, and choosing it for QBO means finding out at the point there is no import button to click.

Why does QuickBooks say my file is not from a supported financial institution?

The INTU.BID in the file does not match an institution QuickBooks knows. Same underlying cause as OL-301: the tag, not the connection.

Bank statements into QuickBooks

QuickBooks accepts three different things depending on which QuickBooks you have, and the one most people reach for first is the one most likely to be rejected. Here is which to use.

Which format to use

Start here

QBO for QuickBooks

QBO enters through the banking feed, where QuickBooks matches against transactions it already holds and catches duplicates before they are posted. Nothing else here does that.

PDF bank statement to QBO

CSV

When a bank ID is not available. Three-column CSV imports into QuickBooks Online without one, at the cost of duplicate detection.

Convert to CSV

IIF

QuickBooks Desktop only. Writes straight into the register rather than through the feed.

Convert to IIF

The bank ID is why your .qbo file was rejected

Every QBO file carries an INTU.BID tag, and QuickBooks checks it against its own list of Web Connect institutions. Get it wrong or leave it out and the import fails with OL-301 or OL-249 — errors that describe a connection problem and say nothing about the tag that caused it. Your bank’s BID appears inside any .qbo file the bank itself has issued you: open one in a text editor and read the INTU.BID line. Our converter asks for it rather than guessing, because a guessed BID produces exactly this error.

How to import it

1Convert the PDF statement to QBO, entering your bank’s INTU.BID when asked.
2In QuickBooks Online: Transactions → Bank transactions → Link account → Upload from file.
3In QuickBooks Desktop: File → Utilities → Import → Web Connect Files.
4Review the matched transactions before accepting. QuickBooks flags likely duplicates here.

Questions

QBO or CSV for QuickBooks Online?: QBO, if you can supply the bank ID. It goes through the banking feed, which matches against existing transactions and warns about duplicates. CSV skips that entirely, so a second import of the same month silently doubles everything.
Does QuickBooks Online accept IIF?: No. Intuit removed IIF import from QuickBooks Online. IIF is Desktop only, and choosing it for QBO means finding out at the point there is no import button to click.
Why does QuickBooks say my file is not from a supported financial institution?: The INTU.BID in the file does not match an institution QuickBooks knows. Same underlying cause as OL-301: the tag, not the connection.

Every format we write

QBO CSV IIF All formats

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