As I work extensively with my clients and tutoring them to work more effectively in Xero the csv download has become a notable subject. It isn’t as simple as it seems from the outset. Download the csv file from the bank and upload it into Xero, right, simple? Maybe not!
I haven’t decided which bank is at fault particularly or whether it’s the majority or all of the bank but the date span and the download since previous download is quite misleading.
Plus on top of that are the bank transactions that seem to fall through the net because they haven’t been applied to the account on the morning that the download is taken. So, for example, nine am you log into the bank and download since the last download up until yesterday. Unknowingly the yesterday date hasn’t quite finished applying lines to your bank statement. So when you download what you think is from the last download until yesterday there could be in fact a couple if not more items missing.
I tell my clients to download by date, take a look in Xero at the bank reconciliation screen and then the reconciled items tab to see what actually was downloaded last time. Look in particular at the date and items. If the last dates in Xero are, for example, the 10th of the month then go back to the 9th of the month and download these as the csv file. Downloading more is better than missing some items. If you upload more then Xero will tell you there are duplicate lines. But what you can do is to be vigilant and check your downloaded csv file against the bank reconciliation module if some of the items there are duplicated then delete them from the csv file. Then check the reconciled items tab and see if there is anything duplicated here. If there is delete the items. It is far better to do it this way than wonder why the bank reconciliation report isn’t balancing.
If your business banking account is with HSBC in this country then spend the £3 (excluding VAT) on bank feeds, and then you know everything should be there. However, I would also check the paper bank statement against the bank reconciliation report as it has been known for an item or two to be missing.