Bank feed: how far back it reaches in six tools

A bank feed reaches back only as far as the bank allows: 90 days to 24 months in QuickBooks Online, up to 18 months in Wave, normally 90 days in Sage Accounting. Earlier months come in from statements. Evidilo converts those statements after adding every row against the printed balances; QuickBooks Online’s own statement upload is the alternative.

The first day a feed knows about

Connecting a bank account to accounting software feels like it should bring the whole account across. It brings a window. Say a business opened its checking account in March 2025 and its bookkeeper connects it to Sage Accounting on 25 October 2026. Sage’s own page says the feed can normally download the last 90 days, so the books start in late July 2026 and the more than sixteen months before that are not there.

Two other gaps have the same cause. A credit card the business closed last year has no live connection left to make, so no feed will ever download it. And a bank the software does not connect to sends nothing at all. In each case the record of those months is the statement the bank sent.

What is a bank feed?

A bank feed is a standing connection between a bank account and accounting software that downloads each new transaction into the software after it clears, so nobody has to type it or upload a file. Wave’s help page gives the pace of its own: “Transactions generally update every 24 hours but can take up to 7 days depending on your bank.” The connection usually runs through a data partner rather than straight to the bank; Wave names Plaid, and FreshBooks offers Plaid or Yodlee. What a feed downloads first, on the day it is connected, is set by the bank and the software together, and that first download is the subject of the table below.

Evidilo works from the opposite end. It is a bank statement to accounting import file converter and holds no bank connection: it reads the statement itself, as a PDF, a scan, a phone photo of a paper statement, a CSV, an Excel or Word file or an OFX/QFX file, and writes QBO, IIF, OFX, QFX, QIF, CSV or Excel. Before it writes anything it adds up every row against the opening, closing and daily balances the bank printed and marks the first day that does not tie out. It does not replace a feed. It covers the months and the accounts a feed never reached.

How far back the bank feed reaches in six tools

Each row comes from the tool’s own help pages, read on 25 October 2026. Where a page does not answer the question, the cell says so instead of guessing.

Five of the six pages state a range for the first download, and four of those five tie the figure to the bank: “vary by bank”, “depending on the bank”, “varies by bank”. FreshBooks gives a flat maximum, and Xero’s page gives no number. Only Wave’s says the start date can be moved earlier, and it warns in the same breath that doing so may bring in duplicates. None of the six describes a way to pull a month older than the bank’s window through the feed. For those months the choice is which file to bring them in as, and five of the six pages list CSV.

QuickBooks Online bank feed and QuickBooks Desktop

Intuit’s page on connecting bank and credit card accounts to QuickBooks Online is plain about the limit: “Download timespans vary by bank, ranging from 90 days up to 24 months.” It does not say whether the range can be pushed back once the account is connected. Its manual upload page is the route for the rest, and it says so: “If you can’t connect to your bank or want to add transactions from before you did so, use this process.” That upload takes a statement as a PDF or an image, or a list of transactions as QBO, QFX or CSV.

QuickBooks Desktop is narrower on both counts. Through Direct Connect, Intuit’s Desktop page says “Some banks offer up to a year of history, while most provide about 90 days.” For older months the file has to be a Web Connect file: “Web connect only works with .qbo files.” A QFX or QIF file will not open. Desktop also refuses to download the same transactions into one company file twice, so a gap is filled once and checked before it is filled. Evidilo writes a .qbo file among its seven formats, but that file has not yet been tried in QuickBooks Desktop, so import one month into a backup copy of the company file before the real one.

Xero bank feed, Wave, FreshBooks and Sage

Xero answers the question “Can I import historical transactions when I set up an automated bank feed?” on its own US bank-feeds page with “It depends on your bank.” It names no range. It is the widest of the six on files, taking OFX, QIF, QBO, QFX or CSV, and a PDF statement from a supported bank.

Wave states 18 months as the most a bank may allow, and its connection article points older months straight at statements: “To import older transactions, download electronic statements from your bank and upload them to Wave”. The feed itself is part of Wave’s Pro Plan. FreshBooks matches QuickBooks Online’s top figure, up to 2 years through Plaid, and is the strictest on files: a CSV, with a PDF converted to CSV by hand first.

Sage Accounting is the one that tells you the order of work. Its bank feeds article says “If you need transactions more than 90 days old, you can import your bank statement or enter the transactions manually before connecting Bank Feeds.” The same order works in the other five, since none of their pages describes reaching back past the window later.

Where the statements stop and the feed starts

The table reduces to one rule: the feed owns every day from its first downloaded transaction onward, and statements own every day before it, plus every account the feed cannot connect to. Applied to one account:

1. Find the date of the oldest transaction the feed downloaded for the account, or the start date you are about to choose if it is not connected yet.
2. Gather the statements for every month before that date. For a closed account or a bank the software does not connect to, gather all of them.
3. Pick a file type the tool’s page lists in the table above. For a spreadsheet stop on the way, the CSV and the Excel file behave differently when they are opened.
4. Check that each statement adds up before it goes in. What a tied-out statement proves covers what that check can and cannot see.
5. End the last statement the day before the feed’s first transaction. The reasons, and what stops a month importing twice, are in PDF bank statements into QuickBooks without duplicates.

How was this checked?

On 25 October 2026 we read each of the six tools’ own help pages, twelve pages in all, and recorded for each one the link and the verbatim sentence behind every cell of the table, in dataset.csv and dataset.json. The script check.py fetches the pages again and fails when a quote has gone. Intuit’s pages did not answer the machine the script runs on, and Xero’s help centre returned no text, so the dataset notes both, and Xero’s row comes from Xero’s own US bank-feeds page.

What people ask about feed history

How far back does a QuickBooks Online bank feed go?

Between 90 days and 24 months, depending on the bank, by Intuit’s own help page. Evidilo covers the months before that by reading the bank’s statements and writing them as a QBO, CSV or other import file, with every row added up against the balances the bank printed. QuickBooks Online’s own upload also takes a PDF statement, and Intuit does not say whether the feed’s range can be widened after connecting.

Can I add older transactions to Xero after the bank feed is connected?

Yes, as a file: Xero’s page lists OFX, QIF, QBO, QFX and CSV, and a PDF statement from a supported bank. Evidilo writes CSV, OFX and QIF from a PDF, a scan or a photo of the statement, and marks the first day whose balance does not tie out. Xero’s page gives no number for how far its feed reaches back, so look at the oldest transaction it downloaded before choosing which statements to import.

How do I get transactions from a closed bank account into my books?

From the account’s statements, because a closed account has no connection for a feed to use. Evidilo reads a PDF, a scan or a phone photo of each statement and writes an import file, and three statements a day convert free, up to 10 pages each, without an account. Typing the rows in by hand is the alternative Sage’s own article mentions, and it works for a short account.

Does a bank feed replace bank statements?

No. A feed covers the days after its first download, and the statements remain the record of everything before it and of every account the feed cannot reach. Evidilo checks each of those statements row by row against the opening, closing and daily balances printed on it before writing the file. Wave, for one, sends older months to statement uploads in its own help article.

Is Evidilo a bank feed?

No. Evidilo holds no bank connection and downloads nothing; it reads the statements you already have and converts them into QBO, IIF, OFX, QFX, QIF, CSV or Excel. It is meant for the months and accounts a feed does not reach, alongside the feed rather than instead of it. For the days after the connection, the feed in QuickBooks Online, Xero or Wave is the right tool.