BMO Not Connecting to QuickBooks? Import It With a CSV
No account needed for your first conversions. We never store your bank login.
Short answer: If your BMO account will not connect to QuickBooks, or it connects but no transactions come through, the problem traces back to BMO's platform migration, not your QuickBooks file. The fix that works today is to download your BMO activity as a CSV, convert it to a QuickBooks Web Connect (.qbo) file, and import that file into the account. It takes about a minute and brings in every deposit, withdrawal, and card charge cleanly.
BMO retired the BMO Harris brand in September 2023 and folded its US banks into BMO Bank, N.A. after acquiring Bank of the West. Along the way it moved its core and digital banking systems onto a new platform. Bank platform migrations are notorious for breaking accounting integrations, and BMO business customers have reported exactly that in QuickBooks: connections that fail to authorize, or reconnect and then import nothing.
Why did BMO stop downloading into QuickBooks?
Because the login flow, security prompts, and transaction feed all changed when BMO migrated accounts to its new digital banking platform. Two errors show up most often. Error 350 says QuickBooks cannot connect to accounts from this provider right now. Error 185 is a security prompt the bank sends, usually a verification code, that stalls the automatic sync. Neither is something you can fix inside QuickBooks, because the change happened on the bank side.
How to get a BMO account into QuickBooks with a CSV
The manual route skips the broken feed and gives you a file QuickBooks always accepts. Here is the full sequence.
1. Download the CSV from BMO. Sign in to BMO Digital Banking, open the checking, savings, or credit card account, and go to its transaction history. Pick a date range or a statement period and export it as a CSV or spreadsheet file.
2. Convert the CSV to a .qbo. Upload the file to the BMO Harris CSV to QBO converter. It reads the date, description, and amount columns, fixes the date format, and writes a QuickBooks Web Connect file with the signs correct.
3. Import the .qbo into QuickBooks. In QuickBooks Online, go to Transactions, then Bank transactions, choose the BMO account, and upload the .qbo. In QuickBooks Desktop, use File, then Utilities, then Import, then Web Connect Files.
4. Review and reconcile. QuickBooks lists the imported transactions for you to categorize and match. Reconcile against your BMO statement to confirm nothing is missing.
Which BMO accounts does this cover?
All of them. BMO business checking, BMO business savings, and BMO credit card accounts each export a CSV, and the converter handles each one. Set a BMO checking or savings account up as a Bank account in QuickBooks and a BMO card as a Credit Card account, so purchases increase the balance you owe and payments reduce it. The account type controls how signs post, so getting it right up front saves you a cleanup later.
Why not just wait for BMO to fix the feed?
You can keep the connection and try to reconnect it, but your books should not sit and wait. Even after a bank restores a feed, it rarely backfills the weeks it missed, so you are left importing that gap manually anyway. Converting a CSV now keeps your month closed on time, and you can reconnect the automatic feed later once it is stable. If you have not settled on a tool yet, it is worth knowing that only some of them write a genuine Web Connect file, which is the point our comparison of the best CSV to QBO converters tests for. Clean, current books are also what a lender or a business valuation review will scrutinize first, so falling behind on reconciliation quietly costs you when it matters.
Does the converter fix the Error 185 security prompt?
It sidesteps it. Error 185 is a bank-side security challenge that interrupts the automatic sync, and there is no QuickBooks setting that clears it. Because a CSV export and a .qbo import never touch the live bank connection, the security prompt never enters the picture. You log in to BMO once in your browser to download the file, and everything after that happens inside QuickBooks.
What if BMO only gives me a PDF statement?
Turn the PDF into a spreadsheet first, then convert that. Some BMO account views only offer a PDF for older statements. Extract the transactions from the PDF into a CSV or Excel file, then upload that to the converter. The rest of the process is identical, and you still end up with a clean .qbo that imports without the connection errors.
Does BMO support QuickBooks bank feeds at all?
Yes, which is exactly what makes the failures confusing. BMO Bank, N.A. is listed as a connectable institution in QuickBooks Online, so the setup screen finds it and accepts your credentials. What breaks afterwards is the handoff: the authorization completes and then either nothing downloads or the connection drops within days. A listed bank is not the same as a working feed, and no amount of reconnecting fixes a change made on the bank's platform.
What columns does a BMO CSV need before QuickBooks will accept it?
QuickBooks Online accepts two layouts on a manual CSV upload: three columns, meaning Date, Description and Amount, or four columns, meaning Date, Description, Credit and Debit. On the four column layout you fill either Credit or Debit on a row, never both. The file has to be in English, use one consistent date format throughout, and stay under 350 KB and 1,000 rows per upload. Converting to .qbo sidesteps the column rules entirely, because the converter maps the columns for you in whatever order BMO exported them.
Should the amounts be positive or negative in a BMO export?
In a single Amount column, money coming in is positive and money going out is negative, written with a minus sign. Accounting style parentheses around a number, as in (84.50), are not read as negative and will fail. Strip currency symbols too. If a BMO export gives you every amount as a positive number with a separate type column, the signs have to be set before the file is any use to QuickBooks.
Why is my BMO credit card balance backwards after importing?
Because a credit card is a liability, so the sign convention inverts compared with a checking account. Purchases increase what you owe and payments reduce it, which means a card file loaded into a bank type account posts every line the wrong way. Confirm the BMO card is set up as a Credit Card account in QuickBooks before importing, not as a Bank account, and the direction takes care of itself.
How far back can I import BMO transactions?
As far back as BMO will export. This matters because a restored bank feed pulls roughly ninety days of history on a first connect, and it will not go back and fill the gap it missed. File imports have no date limit at all, so if BMO lets you export a full year of activity you can bring that year in as a single .qbo on QuickBooks Desktop. On QuickBooks Online, the 350 KB and 1,000 row cap usually means splitting a long backfill by quarter.
Will importing a BMO CSV create duplicate transactions?
Not if the date ranges do not overlap. Every transaction in a converted .qbo carries a unique ID, the field QuickBooks checks against activity it has already recorded, so a repeated import is normally recognized and skipped. The habit that avoids trouble is importing one clean period per account and reconciling it before loading the next. If duplicates do slip in, exclude them first and then delete them from the Excluded tab.
What happens to BMO bank feeds in QuickBooks Desktop after October 30, 2026?
Any Desktop account that pulled transactions over Direct Connect goes quiet on that date, because Intuit is retiring the service itself rather than any single bank withdrawing it. Web Connect .qbo imports are not affected and keep working, which is why converting is the route that survives the change. Check BMO's own notice for the date that applies to your accounts, since some institutions have set earlier ones. The full picture is on the CSV to QBO Direct Connect alternative page, and the column and formatting rules are collected in the QuickBooks CSV import template guide.
The bottom line
BMO's move off the BMO Harris platform left a lot of QuickBooks connections broken, and there is no switch on your end that fixes a bank-side change. Downloading a CSV and converting it to a .qbo is the dependable workaround: it works on every BMO account, avoids the Error 350 and Error 185 messages, and gives QuickBooks a file it always accepts. When you are ready, the BMO Harris CSV to QBO converter handles the conversion in under a minute, and you can convert any other bank or card the same way with the CSV to QBO converter.