To disconnect a bank feed in QuickBooks Online, open Bank transactions, select the account's tile, select the pencil icon, choose Disconnect account and confirm. Before you do, add or match everything still waiting for review, because QuickBooks drops those unreviewed lines. Transactions already in your books stay where they are.
What does disconnecting a bank feed keep and remove?
Disconnecting a bank feed cuts the link that downloads new lines from your bank. It does not delete the bank account from your chart of accounts, and it does not remove the transactions you already added or matched, because those are ordinary entries in the account register. What you lose is the queue of downloaded lines nobody has reviewed yet.
Intuit's article on disconnecting accounts connected to online banking states it plainly: when you disconnect, QuickBooks removes any transactions still in the Pending tab, which some screens call For review. The same page says disconnecting does not make the account inactive, so you can connect it again later.
Here is what a disconnect does to each kind of record:
| Record | After the disconnect |
|---|---|
| Transactions you added or matched from the feed | Stay in the register and in every report |
| Transactions you entered by hand | Stay, untouched |
| Reconciliations already finished | Stay, untouched |
| Lines still waiting in For review (Pending) | Removed |
| Lines you excluded | No longer part of the feed queue; treat them as gone |
| New transactions at the bank | Not downloaded until you connect again |
The excluded row is the cautious reading. Intuit's page does not say what happens to excluded lines, so assume you will not get them back and deal with any you might need before you disconnect.
Steps to disconnect a bank feed from the Bank transactions page
The disconnect option sits behind the pencil icon on the account's tile on the Bank transactions page. It only appears when QuickBooks is not in the middle of a download, so if you cannot see it, wait a few minutes and reload the page.
- Go to All apps, then Accounting, then Bank transactions.
- Select the tile for the account whose feed you want to stop.
- Select the pencil icon, then select Disconnect account.
- Select Disconnect to confirm.
QuickBooks Solopreneur uses different wording. There you open the New transactions dropdown, choose Manage connections, select the three dots next to the account and choose Unlink. The result is the same: no more downloads.
If you are disconnecting so you can connect the same bank again with a fresh login, read reconnecting a bank feed in QuickBooks Online before you start. The order of the steps matters there, and a slip creates a second copy of the account.
Clearing the Pending tab before a feed disconnect
The Pending tab, also labelled For review, holds downloaded lines that are not yet in your books. A feed disconnect deletes that queue. Work through every line first: add it, match it to an existing entry, or decide on purpose that you do not want it. Then disconnect.
Intuit notes that some banks resend pending items when you connect again, but this is not guaranteed. There is also a hard limit on what a reconnection can fetch: lines older than 90 days cannot be downloaded again. So a line you lose to a disconnect today may never return through the feed.
A short check before you press the button:
- The For review count on the tile reads zero.
- The newest transaction in the register is close to today's date.
- You have noted the date of that newest transaction, so you know where any future upload has to start.
If you do lose lines, you can still bring them back from a bank file or a statement. The window a feed can reach is covered in how far back a QuickBooks Online bank feed goes, and anything beyond it is handled in importing older bank transactions into QuickBooks Online.
Should you disconnect the feed or make the bank account inactive?
Disconnect the feed when the account is still open but you want downloads to stop, for example while you switch a login or move to another company file. Make the account inactive when the account itself is finished and you no longer want it in your lists. Making it inactive also disconnects the feed.
The two actions differ in what you see afterwards. A disconnected account still appears everywhere, with its tile on the Bank transactions page and its name in every account list. An inactive account shows "(Deleted)" next to its name, yet Intuit is clear that the account is not gone: its transactions stay in your reports and you can make it active again.
Intuit also asks you to check that the balance is $0 before you make an account inactive. If a balance remains, QuickBooks posts an adjusting entry and moves that balance to other accounts. For a closed checking account, that usually means one last transfer or reconciliation first. If you are unsure, ask whoever prepares your tax return before you continue.
Disconnecting a bank feed that is showing an error
A bank feed with a connection error is the worst moment to disconnect. Intuit warns that an account disconnected while it has an error may download duplicate transactions when you connect it again. Fix the sign-in or connection problem first, then disconnect from a clean state.
Many errors clear up with Edit sign-in info on the tile, which updates the saved login without breaking the link. Intuit's guide to fixing duplicate transactions in bank feeds recommends that route over a disconnect for sign-in trouble. The same page explains why: disconnecting and reconnecting makes QuickBooks download past transactions again, which creates more duplicates.
Watch for one more trap after any reconnection. If the bank prints dates without a year, or the start date you pick crosses January, lines can land in the wrong year. Imported transactions with the wrong year shows how to spot and fix that before it reaches a report.
If the feed stays broken and you just need the missing weeks in your books, a file upload is often quicker than fighting the connection. SimpleBankConvert is being built to turn a PDF statement into a CSV or QBO file that the QuickBooks Online upload accepts, so a gap can be filled from the statement itself.