To download a QBO file from Truist, sign in to Truist online banking on a computer, open one account's transactions, choose the download option, pick the QuickBooks or Web Connect format and set a date range inside what Truist allows. If the file comes out empty, the range, the account or pending activity is the usual cause.
Where Truist online banking puts the QuickBooks download
The Truist QuickBooks download sits on an account's transaction page in online banking. You open the account, look for a download control near the transaction list, and pick a QuickBooks format. Truist may rename these controls, so the steps below describe the path rather than quoting labels.
- Sign in to Truist online banking in a desktop browser.
- Choose a single account. A QBO file belongs to one account only.
- Open its transactions or activity.
- Find the download option beside the list.
- Select the QuickBooks or Web Connect format, not Quicken, CSV or PDF.
- Enter the dates and save the file, which should end in
.qbo.
Give the file a name that says which account and month it holds. When you have two or three Truist accounts, a folder of files all called download.qbo gets confusing quickly.
Picking a Truist date range the download accepts
A Truist date range works when it starts no earlier than the history the bank offers and ends no later than today. Truist sets the earliest date, and it can differ by account. This guide gives no number, so find yours by asking for a long range and checking the first date the file contains.
Two QuickBooks rules shape the range as well. Intuit's page on manual uploads to QuickBooks Online limits each file to 350 KB and 1,000 lines. The same page asks for the upload to start at least one day before the oldest transaction already in that QuickBooks account. A month at a time keeps both rules easy to meet.
Why does a Truist QBO file come out empty?
A Truist QBO file comes out empty when the range you asked for holds no posted transactions for that account. Most often the dates are wrong, the range is outside what Truist keeps, or the activity is still pending. The file itself is fine; it simply has nothing in it.
| What you see | Likely cause | What to try |
|---|---|---|
| File downloads, QuickBooks imports nothing | Dates sit outside the download window | Shorten the range to recent months and try again |
| File empty for the last few days only | Transactions still pending | Wait until they post, then download |
| File empty for one account, fine for another | Wrong account picked, or a quiet account | Check the account number inside the file |
| File is tiny and has no transaction blocks | Start and end dates reversed or the same day | Re-enter the dates carefully |
| QuickBooks for Mac says "Nothing imported. Account up to date." | Every line in the file was imported before | Check the dates against your last import |
These causes are examples of what to check, not a complete list. The last row comes from Intuit's article on the "Nothing imported" Web Connect error, which explains that QuickBooks stores an ID for each transaction and skips any ID it has already seen. To look inside the file, open it in a text editor and close without saving. Each transaction sits between <STMTTRN> and </STMTTRN> tags. No such tags means no transactions were sent.
Can a Truist download reach back to SunTrust or BB&T months?
A Truist download reaches only as far back as Truist offers for that account today. Truist was formed from the merger of BB&T and SunTrust, and accounts that started at either bank were moved across. Whether older months come through in a download is something to test, not assume.
Ask for your earliest needed date and see what the file returns. If the history stops short, use the PDF statements in Truist online banking for the earlier months. If you still have statements saved from the old bank, those work too.
SimpleBankConvert is being built to turn a digital PDF statement like those into a CSV or QBO file that QuickBooks Online will upload. It is in early access, and you can ask to be told when accounts open.
Importing overlapping Truist files: the duplicate trap
Overlapping Truist files are two downloads that cover some of the same days. If both go into the same QuickBooks account, the shared days can appear twice. Start each download the day after the last one ended.
Desktop's habit of skipping stored transaction IDs, described in the Intuit article above, is a safety net, not a plan. It cannot help if you import the overlap into a different account, and Intuit's article describes QuickBooks Desktop and Mac, not QuickBooks Online.
Keep a note, per account, of the last date you imported. When you download next, start the day after it. This matters most when you run several Truist accounts at once; the guide to connecting multiple bank accounts to QuickBooks Online covers keeping them apart. If you also bank in the Southeast with Regions or Fifth Third, their routes are in the posts on downloading a QBO file from Regions and from Fifth Third.