Bank Feeds - Pros and Cons - Worth Turning On?

Stephen Dignam

Hi, I was asked to investigate whether it would be worth our while to turn on bank feeds for our bank accounts in NXT. I was hoping to get some insight from other users as to what the pros and cons of this would be prior to actually making a decision. Could anyone provide some examples of how it works, what is good about it, and what doesn't work so well about it? In your opinion, is it worth enabling this feature?

Thanks,
Stephen

Susan Trippe

@Stephen Dignam
I have been using this for about a year, and it's ok. If you have a large operating account with tons of checks, it works pretty well for clearing those checks. I have found that letting it clear things on it's own is about the extent of it's usefulness though. When I try to use it to clear other items manually, it can be confusing and uncooperative. For instance, if you want to clear something manually, you pull up the page that shows uncleared items from the bank on one side of your screen and uncleared items from your books on the other side. You're supposed to be able to just quickly match up and clear items here, but it's not that simple. Many times I have transactions that were split into 3 or 4 items on the books (due to coding), and on the bank those same items may be split into 2 entries. Their system won't let you match those. Only one side of the equation can be multiple transactions. The other side has to be just one transaction. I haven't checked lately to see if they've remedied this problem, but I would like their system more if this were fixed.

The other problem I've run into is that Yodlee clears checks in the wrong month sometimes. Every month I have one or two checks that it clears in the wrong month. When I reconcile our account every month, the first thing I do is compare the list of cleared checks for the month per the bank to the list of cleared checks for the month per FE. That way I can find and fix those errors and move on.

I do find the check clearing useful and time saving, so I will keep using it. I just think it's not as helpful and user friendly as it should be. It's definitely not error proof. I have a problem with FENXT's bank reconciliation process in general. I find it extremely weird that it requires you to reconcile the “bank register” (whatever that is used for) to the bank, and separately you must reconcile your books to the bank. Why would the bank register ever be different than your books?…that makes no sense to me.

Hope this was helpful.