# How Often Does QuickBooks Online Update Bank Transactions?

- Author: SimpleBankConvert (https://simplebankconvert.com)
- Published: 2026-10-17
- Category: Bank accounts and feeds
- Canonical: https://simplebankconvert.com/blog/how-often-does-quickbooks-online-update-bank-transactions

> How often does QuickBooks Online update bank transactions? The nightly refresh, the manual Update button and why some banks run a day or more behind.
QuickBooks Online updates bank transactions once a night on its own, starting around 10 PM Pacific time, and you can pull new ones at any moment with the Update button. How often new lines actually appear also depends on the bank: some send data daily, others every other day or weekly, so a feed can trail the bank's website.

## How often does QuickBooks Online update bank transactions on its own?

QuickBooks Online refreshes every connected bank account once every night. Intuit's page on [downloading recent bank and credit card transactions](https://quickbooks.intuit.com/learn-support/en-us/help-article/multi-factor-authentication/download-recent-bank-credit-card-transactions/L86TTVI3Y_US_en_US) says the automatic updates normally begin around 10 PM PT. There is no setting to move that time or to make it run more often.

### Retries and exceptions

The same page says that if QuickBooks cannot get data for an account, it tries again up to five more times over the next five hours. It also names one exception: some American Express accounts may download only two or three times a week rather than every night.

For an owner in New York, 10 PM Pacific is 1 AM. So a purchase made in the afternoon usually appears the next morning at the earliest, provided the bank has posted it by then. Transactions the bank still shows as pending are not downloaded at all, so a card charge from yesterday evening may wait another day or two.

## The Update button for an on-demand bank refresh

The Update button asks every connected bank for new data right away, without waiting for the nightly run. It sits on the Bank transactions screen. If QuickBooks asks for a multi-factor authentication code, you enter it and choose Continue update. Intuit's page says the manual update can take a few minutes.

### When to press it

Press Update when you are about to reconcile, before sending a client a cash figure, or the morning after a nightly run failed. Intuit's page also suggests a manual update if you see old data after an automatic one. Pressing it again and again in the same hour does nothing useful. If the bank has sent nothing new, there is nothing for QuickBooks to fetch.

### A note on security prompts

A manual update can stop to ask for a multi-factor authentication code before it runs. Enter it only on the QuickBooks screen you opened yourself. If you are uneasy about what the connection does with your login, [whether it is safe to connect your bank to QuickBooks](/blog/is-it-safe-to-connect-my-bank-to-quickbooks) covers what the connection can and cannot do.

## Why do some banks run a day or more behind the nightly update?

Some banks run behind because they only send new data to QuickBooks on their own schedule. Intuit's update page says some institutions send new information every other day, weekly or on another schedule. In that case the nightly run checks in, finds nothing new, and the feed looks frozen until the bank's next batch.

### Other causes of a lag

- **Bank maintenance.** Intuit's page says automatic updates cannot run during a bank's scheduled maintenance, though a manual update may still work.
- **Posting delays.** Intuit's page on [finding missing downloaded transactions](https://quickbooks.intuit.com/learn-support/en-us/help-article/bank-feeds/cant-find-downloaded-transactions-quickbooks/L6XWbwrbG_US_en_US) says it may take up to 48 hours for transactions to come over, and that pending transactions are not downloaded.
- **Weekends and holidays.** Banks do not post most transactions on non-business days, so Friday's card charges may arrive on Monday or Tuesday.

### What each situation looks like

The situations below are examples. Check the date of the newest downloaded line, then compare.

| Situation | Newest line in the feed | What to do |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Normal nightly update | Yesterday | Nothing |
| Weekend or holiday | Last business day | Wait one business day |
| Bank sends weekly | Up to a week old, then a batch | Press Update after the bank's batch day |
| Bank maintenance night | Two days old | Press Update the next morning |
| Broken connection | A week or more old, or an error | Fix the connection, see below |

## When waiting for the next bank update is the wrong fix

Waiting is the wrong fix when the newest line is more than a week old, when the account tile shows an error, or when a manual update fails. Those signs point to a broken connection, such as a changed password or a security question the bank needs answered. No nightly run will repair that by itself.

### What to check

Open the account in Bank transactions and look for an error message or a prompt to sign in again. Answer it, then press Update. If the error persists, the connection may need disconnecting and reconnecting with a careful start date.

Do not try to fill the gap by typing transactions in while the feed is broken. When the feed comes back, it will download those same days, and you will have two copies of each to sort out. If you need the numbers now, use the bank's own statement as the reference. QuickBooks itself does not keep bank statements, a point covered in [getting bank statements from QuickBooks Online](/blog/how-to-get-bank-statements-from-quickbooks-online).

## Bank transaction updates outside QuickBooks Online

QuickBooks Desktop and file uploads follow different timing from the Online nightly run. Desktop has its own bank feed screens and two working modes, compared in [QuickBooks Desktop Express mode versus Classic mode](/blog/quickbooks-desktop-express-mode-vs-classic-mode). A file upload is the simplest of all: the transactions arrive when you upload the file, and not before.

### When a file beats the feed

A file is useful when the bank is on a slow schedule and you need a month closed today. Download the transactions from the bank's website as a QFX or CSV file and upload only the days the feed has not brought yet. If the bank offers QFX but you want to check the lines in a spreadsheet first, [converting QFX to CSV](/blog/qfx-to-csv) shows how. If all you have is a PDF statement, [SimpleBankConvert](/) is being built to turn that PDF into a CSV or QBO file you can upload.

Then let the feed carry on from the day after your file ends, and exclude any feed lines that repeat what the file brought.