Bank Feed Betrayal

🎙️ Episode: Bank Feeds Betrayal 

Welcome to No Se Habla Taxes—the podcast where a CPA does her own bookkeeping and sometimes gets betrayed by QuickBooks itself. 

I’m Melissa Armstrong, fractional controller, solo practice owner, and financial translator for founders who’d rather wrestle with client work than with their bank feeds. 

And today’s confession? 

 I trusted QuickBooks’ little green “Add” button a little too much… and for three whole months, it lied to me. 

✨ Adobe as meals & entertainment. 

 ✨ Zoom living under telephone expense. 

 ✨ Contractor payments sitting in Ask My Accountant. 

On the surface? My books looked tidy. 

 In reality? They were misleading, messy, and costing me clarity. 

In this episode, I’ll share: 

• 🚨 Why blindly trusting bank feeds is dangerous for your business 
• 🧐 How miscategorized expenses distort your P&L (and your decisions) 
• 💡 Five practical fixes: rules, memos, reconciliations, and more 
• 🛑 Why “QuickBooks told me to” isn’t a valid IRS defense 

Plus—you’ll meet Marta Spirk, a speaking coach and TEDx speaker helping women entrepreneurs turn their business into a stage for authentic visibility. 

If you’ve ever hit “Add” in QuickBooks just to get it over with, this episode is for you. Clean books mean clean decisions—and messy books cost you more than time. 

🎧 Listen in for today’s confession, a few hard-earned lessons, and tips to stop your bank feed from betraying you. 

📥 Want my free Bank Feed Cleanup Cheat Sheet? Grab it here 

👉 Don’t forget to subscribe to No Se Habla Taxes wherever you listen, and stay scrappy, stay smart, and double check those Adobe charges. 

Www.martaspirk.com
Www.instagram.com/martaspirk
Www.youtube.com/martaspirk
Www.linkedin.com/in/marta-spirk 

 

Let's connect!

LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/armstrongmelissacpa/

Website: https://steadyhandaccounting.com/

Coaching Program Waitlist: https://steadyhandaccounting.myflodesk.com/ofgzp2o7tc

Episode Transcript

(00:10):
Welcome to No Se Habla Taxes,the podcast where A CPA does her
own bookkeeping and somehowmanages to get betrayed by
QuickBooks, little add button.
I'm Melissa Armstrong fractionalcontroller, solo practice owner
and financial translator forfounders who'd rather wrestle

(00:31):
with client work than wrestlewith their bank fees.
And today as usual.
I have a confession.
So you know those magical littlegreen buttons in QuickBooks, the
ones that suggest a category forevery bank transaction?
Every expense.

(00:52):
Yeah.
I trusted their ai.
Somewhat blindly.
I thought, oh, look, QuickBooksknows me.
It knows what I buy.
It's practically my bookkeepingBF F, until one day.
I realized that for threemonths, let me say that again.

(01:14):
Three months.
QuickBooks had been categorizingmy Adobe subscription as meals
and entertainment.
Now I love Acrobat, but I've yetto eat a PDF.
I dunno about you, and this wasjust a start.

(01:37):
Dropbox got coded to officesupplies.
Zoom was heavily living undertelephone expense, which I guess
isn't technically wrong, but itjust wasn't where I needed it
for reporting and the contractorpayment somehow ended up ask.
My accountant, can you believethat I am an accountant?

(02:00):
If I code things to ask myaccountant, what does that say
about me and who am I gonna ask?
And I also noticed that myAmazon orders, QuickBooks
decided that those weremiscellaneous expenses, which is
basically code for, I have noidea what this is.
Please don't audit me.

(02:21):
It looked very tidy, it lookedvery organized, and that's the
dangerous part because it wasall wrong.
So why does this matter?
Well, when you trust the bankfeed to be smarter than it
really is, your books might lookfine, but they're lying to you
and lies cost you money.

(02:43):
If software expenses are buriedunder meals, you might think
you're overspending on coffeeand underspending on tech, so
you make the wrong buyingdecisions.
If a contract payment ismiscategorized, your PnL doesn't
reflect your actual cost ofdelivery.

(03:03):
It may also overstate youraccounts payable, and it might
mean that your pricing yourservices blind.
If Amazon charges are allmiscellaneous, you're not just
losing clarity.
You might be missing somepotential tax deductions.

(03:24):
But let me be clear also, if theIRS ever comes knocking, well,
QuickBooks told me to.
It's not really a defensestrategy.
So what to do?
Well, before I share today'slearning moment, I wanna
introduce you to someone from mynetwork.

(03:48):
Meet Marta Spirk.
Marta is a professional singer,TEDx speaker and speaking coach
who helps women entrepreneursincrease visibility, confidence,
and income by turning theirbusiness into a stage for
authentic self-expression andimpact.

(04:08):
She is also the author of theBest Seller, the Empowered
Woman, the Ultimate Roadmap toBusiness Success.
And host of the Empowered WomenPodcast.
To connect with Marta, you cancheck out her socials
www.martaspirk.com.

(04:31):
That is M-A-R-T-A-S-P-I-R-K.com.
Marta is offering a freeconsultation for women who want
to share their story and buildmore visibility.
Reach out to her atwww.martaspirk.com/workwithme

(04:57):
and mention my podcast.
Now back to bank feeds.
The truth is the bank feed is atool.
It's a starting point and notthe final answer.
Think of it like auto correct.
Sometimes it nails it andsometimes it turns meeting into
meat loaf gross.

(05:19):
So what do you do instead?
Always, always review.
Don't just click add and moveon.
Every single transactiondeserves at least a glance
before you approve it.
Tip number two, create somerules on purpose.
Don't let QBO guess for you, youcan create your own bank rules.

(05:43):
So Zoom always goes to software.
Canva always goes tosubscriptions, and Dropbox
always goes to cloud storage.
Tip number three, use memosFuture.
You will thank past you fortyping client lunch with Sam or

(06:04):
website hosting fee instead ofliving it blank, especially when
you are staring at a chargeeight months later, asking
yourself if GoDaddy was for yourbusiness side or that side
hustle that you abandoned in2021.
Tip four.
Reconcile regularly.

(06:24):
Reconciliation isn't just a CPAbuzzword.
It is your safety net, and ifyou're doing it monthly, you'll
catch errors before theymultiply.
Final tip, pay attention toAmazon and PayPal.
These are the wild West ofexpenses.

(06:45):
Amazon could be office suppliesor it could be cat toys.
PayPal could be software or thatEtsy candle you swore was for
the office.
Always, drill down into thereceipt.
So here's the thing.
We hit add without thinkingbecause we just want it done.

(07:06):
We want to get through thebooks, close the laptop, and
move on.
But bookkeeping is like baking.
If you swap sugar for salt, thecake still comes out of the
oven.
It just, it tastes terrible.
And when your books are messy,even if they look neat, you are
not just rising taxes, you'rerisking clarity.

(07:28):
Clarity about whether you canafford to hire clarity about
whether your margins arehealthy.
Clarity about whether you canactually take home what you want
to pay yourself.
Clean books, equal cleandecisions and messy books.
They cost you way more than thefew minutes it takes to slow
down and review.

(07:49):
So that's my confession, guys.
I trusted QuickBooks Bank feedtoo much and it betrayed me.
But here's your takeaway.
Don't outsource your judgment tosoftware.
We all know AI hallucinates,even the CEO of chat, GPT told

(08:11):
us.
So use the tools, review theresults, and keep your receipts
literally and figuratively.
If this episode hit a little tooclose to home, subscribe to No
Se Habla taxes.
And if you want a simple cheatsheet for cleaning up your bank
feed categories, I've got onefor you.

(08:33):
Until next time, stay scrappy,stay smart, and double check
those Adobe charges.