Welcome to the Fit Small Business Xero Training Course. In this lesson we're
going to cover how to set up bank and credit card accounts, and download
transactions in Xero. To follow along with me, log in to your Xero account now
or click the link below this video for a free 30-day trial of Xero. You can also
click this link to access our full Xero course and other helpful resources.
Let's get started. Most of the purchases that you make for your business are either
deducted from your bank account or charged on a business credit card.
Therefore, to ensure that every transaction has been included in your
financial statements, you should setup all business, bank, and
credit card accounts with an automatic bank feed that will import your bank and
credit card transactions into Xero. By setting up an automatic feed, it will
save you time that you would have spent manually entering transactions from your
bank and credit card statement into Xero. In this lesson we will discuss how to
set up and import bank and credit card transactions in Xero. First let's discuss
the three ways that you can import bank and credit card transactions into
Xero. The first way is called Direct Feeds. Direct feeds allow you to
automatically download bank and credit card transactions into Xero from your
bank or financial institution. There are three banks that support direct feeds:
City National Bank, Silicon Valley Bank, and Wells Fargo. If you use one of these
three banks then you can head over to the Direct Feed section for step-by-step
instructions on how to set up a bank feed. If you don't think with one of
these three financial institutions that we just discussed you will use a third
party called Yodlee to download your bank or credit card transactions. Yodlee
integrates seamlessly with Xero to connect to thousands of online banking
websites and financial institutions worldwide. Most small and larger
financial institutions allow Yodlee bank feeds. Please note while Xero does not
charge to set up these type of feeds, your bank or financial institution may
charge you a fee for this service. Despite the fact that they are a
third-party service setting up a Yodlee feed is just as easy
as setting up a direct feed in Xero. We will walk through the steps on how to do
this in a few minutes. Like direct feeds Yodlee feeds will update your bank
transactions at least once per day. The third way is to import a bank or credit
card statement. If you are not able to set up a direct feed or Yodlee feed for
your bank or credit card account, then you can import your monthly bank or
credit card statements into Xero from a file. In order to do this you will need
to request an electronic copy of your bank or credit card statement in one of
the following formats: OFX, QBO, QFX, QIF, or CSV. The formats that
work best are the first three: OFX, QBO, and QFX. The only users that can add a
bank or credit card account are the standard user and the advisor. To learn
more about user permissions, check out our How to Invite a User Lesson for more
details. You can click here to access this lesson. Let's go ahead and walk
through the steps on how to set up a direct feed in Xero.
From the accounts menu we'll go ahead and select bank accounts. And let's
scroll down and go ahead and click the add bank account button. And we'll go
ahead and type the name of our bank here in the search box. So please note that
your bank may be listed several times, so you want to make sure that you select
the correct one. You'll also notice that you may have the bank listed and then
you'll have maybe the credit card listed if that's an option. So we'll go ahead
and select this bank here. Click the blue log in and connect accounts to go ahead
and connect to your bank's website. Once you see the login screen for your bank
or financial institution, go ahead and enter your login ID and password that
you normally use to sign on to online banking. And then click the sign on
button. In the next screen you will see a list of bank accounts that are available
for a direct feed. You can select the accounts individually or select all
accounts as this is automatically defaulted to here. There's a note down
here also that says please connect any newly opened or newly eligible accounts
automatically with Xero Online Accounting. Note that this option is
automatically selected. If this is not something that you want to do you want
to go ahead and remove that check mark. Once you have the bank account that
you'd like to connect selected, go ahead and click continue. In the next screen
here, we've got the account that we selected that we want to go ahead and
connect up with the direct feed. And let's accept the terms and conditions, and then
go ahead and click the connect my accounts button once more. After you have
set them up, your bank and credit card accounts will appear on the Xero
dashboard so that you can easily keep an eye on them. Similar to direct feeds, the
steps for setting up a Yodlee feed for a bank or
credit card account are identical. So we'll go back to accounts and select bank
accounts. We'll go ahead and click on add bank account here, and then we want to
type the name of our bank in the search field as we did before. And then again
just be aware that you'll have various versions of your bank come up so you
want to make sure you select the correct one. So we'll click this one. In this
screen you will need to enter the account name, the account number, and the
currency that you want to track this account in. For account name enter the
name that you would like to use to track this account in Xero. Please note if you
have more than one business checking account, be sure to use the name of the
account and maybe the last four digits of the account number as the account
name as we have done here. The account number field should include the full
account number. Please do not include any slashes or dashes in this field.
Currency field: select the currency that you would like to use to track the bank or credit
card activity. One of the many benefits of using Xero is that it has a robust
multi-currency feature that allows you to track foreign bank and credit card
accounts. Check out our Multi-currency Lesson to learn more about how this
works. You can click here to access this lesson. Once you've completed all the
fields, go ahead and click continue and in the next screen you will need to have
available your user ID and password that you normally would use to log into your
account online. And go ahead and complete that
information in this screen. Once you have completed the user ID and pass code go
ahead and make sure you accept the terms and conditions, and then click Next.
So notice we have a notification here that it's connecting to our bank account.
It can take several minutes it says to connect. This process can
actually take up to one hour so you can always leave this page and you'll be
notified within your Xero inbox here when the connection has completed.
Alright, so once the connection is completed basically you can actually
select the account that you'd like to go ahead and set up the import for. So there
could be one account there as we have, or maybe multiple accounts so you want to
select those. In the Import Transaction section here from the drop-down we want
to go ahead and select the start date that you would like to begin downloading
transactions from. Please note that this will be determined by how far back your
bank or credit card company will allow you to go back and download transactions.
If you select all available transactions, Xero will download up to three months
worth of transactions here. Cancel activation allows you to cancel bank
feeds at any time for any bank or credit card account. Once you've made your
selections you can go ahead and click OK. And then you should see this message
that lets you know that the bank feed for the bank account has been activated.
And it says it may take a few minutes for your transactions to appear in Xero.
After you have set up your bank and credit card accounts, they will appear
here on the Xero dashboard so that you can easily keep an eye on them.
Please note click the link below for troubleshooting tips on how to refresh a
feed if it crashes. So for some reason your transactions don't start coming
through, or they stop, you will need to refresh the feed. So check out those
troubleshooting tips for help with that. Now let's talk about how to import a
bank or credit card statement. To import a bank or credit card statement the
first thing that you need to do is download an OFX,
QBO, or QFX bank or credit card statement from your financial
institution's website. If none of these formats are available, click the
link below to learn how to download a CSV file. Here are a few tips to keep in
mind when downloading a bank or credit card statement. Tip Number One: include
the file extension when you save the file. For example if you are downloading
the January statement you can put something like January 2 0 1 7 . OFX to
represent the file type. Tip Number Two: if you have multiple bank or credit card
accounts, be sure to download a monthly statement for each account separately.
So each account needs to have its own separate file (each bank account). Tip
Number Three: if you are downloading an OFX, QBO, or QFX file, which is one of the
recommended file types, there are no modifications needed to the file.
Simply save it and then you want to proceed to import it directly into Xero. If your
file contains more than a thousand transactions, you will have to split up
the file into two. So you cannot import more than 1,000 transactions at a time.
Alright let's go ahead and walk through the steps on how to import that data
into Xero. So we'll go to accounts, and bank accounts. On the right here you want
to click on the manage account button and select import a statement. In this
screen you want to go ahead and browse and locate the bank statement that you
saved to your computer that you want to import. Once you've selected your file it
should appear to the right here of the browse button. Go ahead and click the
import button to proceed with the import. If you need to make changes to a bank or
credit card account, you can do that from the bank account screen or from the
chart of accounts. In this lesson we will show you how to edit a bank account from
the bank accounts screen. So go back to, if you aren't on your bank account
screen here, go ahead and go back to accounts, and
then bank accounts, and once you get to this screen we want to go ahead and
click on the manage account button again. And then select edit account details.
In this screen you can edit the account name field here, this is how it appears
in Xero. You can also edit the account number here. So once you have made the
changes you want to make sure and save your work.
If you close a bank or credit card account you can delete it in Xero if you
have never posted any transactions to it. However, if you have posted transactions to
a bank or credit card account then you will not be able to delete it because of
the impact it will have on your financial statements. Instead you can
archive an account that you no longer plan to use. This will remove the account
from the chart of accounts list and any account drop down while working in Xero.
However, it will still appear on financial statement reports. Later on if
you decide to use the account again, you can easily restore or unarchive an
account that was previously archived. For step-by-step instructions on how to
delete, archive, or restore a bank or credit card account watch our How to Set
Up a Chart of Accounts Lesson. You can click here to access this lesson.
That wraps up the lesson on how to set up bank and credit card accounts and
download transactions in Xero. To access our full Xero course or any of the other
lessons in this series, click this link. You can also find a link below this
video for a free 30-day trial of Xero. If you have feedback about this course
or if you have any questions please leave a comment below.
Also, don't forget to subscribe.