Question

RBC 2FA affecting accounts - disconnected when bookkeeper tries to update

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
November 20, 2023
10 replies
0 views

I am having an ongoing issue between QB and RBC that I cannot seem to get a resolution for - both sides are quick to point the finger at the other and I am left with no solutions.

I have no problem connecting my RBC accounts in QB, but when my bookkeeper logs into the account and tries to pulls the transactions from their end in everything disconnects.

I have 2FA and personal verification questions turned on for RBC which I have been told are likely the culprits - when the Intuit server is sending the query to RBC (either from bookkeeper or daily updating) it is being flagged because it is unable to complete the 2FA correctly, as the notification gets sent to my cellphone.

RBC says QB is aware of the issue but has not yet provided a solution. I think its absurd that I would need to turn off 2FA/PVQ and compromise my accounts in order to get this to work.

Any help would be appreciated! I am using Quickbooks Online Essentials

QuickBooks Online

A

Amanda-B

Hey there, HONE_Workshop.

Thanks for turning to the Community for support. Making sure you get the support you need is important. With that being said, I recommend having your bookkeeper clear their cache and cookies, or trying a private browser, as it may be browsing data that is preventing the software from doing what it is supposed to do.

Feel free to le me know if this works!

H

HONE_WorkshopAuthor

Hi, Thanks for getting back to me. I should have specified that this is not always specific to the bookkeeper, it also happens when QuickBooks is trying to do its daily update from the RBC accounts. This seems to happen in the middle of the night and I wake up to a missed 2fa authentication attempt and my QB bank accounts disconnected.

A

Amanda-B

Hey there, HONE_Workshop.

Thanks for getting back to me here. In this case, I recommend reaching out to the phone support team for further assistance. They'll be able to escalate the issue if they see fit. You can reach them by following one of these methods:

Schedule a Callback or start a Chat: click (?)Help in the upper right > type and enter "Contact support" into the QB Assistant > click Contact Us > explain your situation > click Let's Talk > choose Get a callback or Start a Chat.
Social Media: Facebook and Twitter

If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out here.

M

mjohnson4

Just going to piggy back this. I have been having this issue with RBC for a long time now and it's really starting to drive me insane. The only time I can get QB to update is to log into it, then log into my RBC app then hit retry multiple times. It's a real pain trying to keep my books up to date. Is there any timeline for a fix? RBC is aware Quickbooks is having this issue but no resolution has been proposed other than disabling MFA which is not even an option in my eyes.

T

Trish_T

Hi mjohnson4,

Thanks for joining us here. For security reasons, I agree that turning off MFA, is not the best course of action. However, it is important that you're able to update your transactions, so your account remains accurate. I suggest that you contact our Customer Care team outside of Community, for an in depth review of your situation and any error codes you receive. They will have the ability to escalate the issue to our Development Team for further investigation and resolution. In addition, they can ensure you receive an email notification when the issue has been fixed. In the interim, you can manually upload your transactions.

If you have other questions, feel free to reach back out. We would be glad to help!

H

HONE_WorkshopAuthor

Hi Trish,

I have spoken with the Customer Care team and they have created ticket No. 15108084704 for this issue and have told me that my information has been added to an ongoing investigation into this issue.

While this sounds like progress on the surface, it is the same answer I have been given each time I have contacted Support over the last couple years. I never hear back, and the issue remains unresolved. Can you advise on how we can effectively navigate this issue and find a solution that doesn't involve turning off 2FA? I do understand that there are manual import/workaround options but the whole syncing thing is kinda the whole point of using Quickbooks in the first place.

Thank you

W

WBrassard

We've been scratching our heads trying to figure out if someone is consistently trying to hack our bank accounts or if it's QBO. It's been so very frustrating. Like everyone else we don't want to turn off 2FA. There has to be a way for QB to sync. Other transactions such as auto payments, deposits etc, things that go directly in and out of our accounts aren't sending us notifications, so why can't this be set up with QBO?

LeithG

2FA requires that you authenticate on your secondary device upon every login; of course this impacts the application's ability to pull data.

H

Happier Spaces

Exactly. Basically rendering QBO useless if you want to keep your RBC bank account secure.

Not sure if this is the case for all 2FA bank connections, but based on my search it seems to be a big issue with RBC. And one that has been existing for years.

LeithG

Good implementations like for TDCanadaTrust have you authenticate and then it keeps a token on your account that allows you to continue updating your accounts for a while but you do need to eventually authenticate again. Sounds like RBC and Scotia both did it the dumb way (not surprising).

G

GlebK

I have exactly the same issue, which is repeating every day! My RBC accounts in QBO get disconnected after a certain number of connection requests because 2FA in the RBC app was not confirmed. Definitely, I cannot look at my phone 24/7 to confirm the update request, and I DON"T want to disconnect 2FA in the RCB app to compromise the security of my banking account. The only advice QBO support rep gave me over the phone is to disconnect 2FA.

It is so frustrating and sad that Intuit has been aware of this issue for so long, and nothing has been done to fix it.

H

Henock K

Hi GlebK,

Thanks for joining this thread. It's important to access your banking transactions in QuickBooks Online to keep your books up to date. I'd be glad to point you in the right direction to get the support you need. If you're encountering a problem with your RBC connection, I recommend contacting our customer support team to help you with this. Here are the options available for contacting our team.

Phone: Call us at 1-855-253-1536 from Monday to Friday between the hours of 9 AM and 8 PM EST.
Schedule a Callback or start a Chat: click (?)Help in the upper right in QuickBooks Online > type and enter "Contact support" into the QB Assistant > click Contact Us > explain your situation > click Let's Talk > choose Get a callback or Start a Chat.

Let me know if you have questions, I'll be happy to help.

G

GlebK

Hi Henock K, I appreciate your reply, but it doesn't help at all. I've already contacted the Support Team, and they recommended disabling 2FA in the RBC app, which is not the best advice from a security standpoint. I still need the 2FA option enabled. QBO keeps updating the banking transactions, requiring the connection to be confirmed in the RBC app (2FA), which is extremely inconvenient. I simply cannot do that at night or during the day when I'm busy and not looking at my phone notifications.

J

JG80

Same issue here. Extremely inconvenient and frustrating. The lack of understanding of what the issue actually is in the responses given above is also deeply concerning. I think the only option might be to look for another solution, which I have my accountant doing.

L

LivingHopeChurch

[tldr] Still having this issue today. RBC wants me to validate a login in the middle of the night. If I ignore too many of them, RBC locks the account.

If I log in to QBO, if I then click "Update" on bank transactions - then I get an error. (I also get a 2FA request on my phone).

If I click the button in the error, it does a reconnection, and I get a 2FA request on my phone. It's possible to allow the first 2fa, after the second attempt has been made, and it generates an error on the RBC side, link expired. So, then, I have to do it again.

Manually requesting UPDATE - can work if I go through those steps.

Automatic updates from RBC - happen in the middle of the night. These do NOT work, as I'm not awake to click accept, and, I cannot be sure that it is RBC requesting the update or if it is a hacker.

The Automatic updates fail. If enough fail, RBC locks my account and we have to reset the password to continue.

I'll try calling in, but I have low expectations that QB has a handle on this issue, years later, that they understand the problem with RBC 2FA and automatic updates.

L

LivingHopeChurch

[accidentally replied to a reply, above - posting here to make sure QB sees this message]

[tldr] Still having this issue today. RBC wants me to validate a login in the middle of the night. If I ignore too many of them, RBC locks the account.

If I log in to QBO, if I then click "Update" on bank transactions - then I get an error. (I also get a 2FA request on my phone).

If I click the button in the error, it does a reconnection, and I get a 2FA request on my phone. It's possible to allow the first 2fa, after the second attempt has been made, and it generates an error on the RBC side, link expired. So, then, I have to do it again.

Manually requesting UPDATE - can work if I go through those steps.

Automatic updates from RBC - happen in the middle of the night. These do NOT work, as I'm not awake to click accept, and, I cannot be sure that it is RBC requesting the update or if it is a hacker.

The Automatic updates fail. If enough fail, RBC locks my account and we have to reset the password to continue.

I'll try calling in, but I have low expectations that QB has a handle on this issue, years later, that they understand the problem with RBC 2FA and automatic updates.

L

LivingHopeChurch

Phone call with QuickBooks: was a bit of work to try to explain what's happening and get understood.

They said they will escalate and investigate.

I will respond here with any updates as this forum message is shown under Quickbooks help by the AI, and pops up on Google as the top result.

T

todd_aust

I wish you luck, I've been down that path a few times now!

K

koroshino

Same issue, every since 2021 when RBC implemented 2FA. Quickbooks has admitted fault in a handful of forum posts here, even dating back as far as 2021 and yet still no fix. This is bonkers. Quickbooks chat support rudely told me that I had it wrong and that it was RBC's fault and I should call them. Then I showed the QBO chat rep the forum post and they didn't even respond to it. Getting increasingly frustrated. Same issue as everyone else. QBO tries to update, sends request to RBC, RBC app tries to authenticate when I don't have my phone and then it locks out the account and I have to sign in again on QBO. Every d*mn time I want to update my accounts. This is isane. Intuit, fix this or I'm going to Xero.

M

mjohnson4

I've reached the point now where myself and my accountant are exploring which option is best going forward. Either disconnecting my accounts and manually handling transactions going forward to give us some time to properly migrate to a new service or switching to a different service like Sage or something using a day forward, dumping the historical data from QBO somehow and moving on with a clean slate. This has gone on too long, the monthly subscription fee keeps going up, RBC is getting annoyed with my constant requests to unlock my accounts, and nothing is being resolved. My time is worth too much to keep fighting this issue so it's time to move on.

M

mjohnson4

I'm not even certain that Intuit/QBO support is even following this any longer.

A person has to realize the situation is getting bad when accountants are actively advising AGAINST using QBO because of this very issue. I am taking their advice and moving on as soon as it's feasible to do so without too much disruption.

R

RomanJ

It's May 2025 and this problem still exists. Is there any proposed resolution to this problem?

I've noticed that RBC has a "Manage authorized applications" section now under Security>Enhanced Security. But going into this section doesn't show anything when using Quickbooks Online.

Currently, we cannot use syncing with RBC 2FA on. It will only sync on the 1st attempt. I think the salt on the wound is the fact that Quickbooks is a featured partner on the RBC site. Meanwhile, neither service properly talks to each other with 2FA on. Quickbooks Online these days feels like a deprecated piece of software. There have been ZERO product improvements for years. It still does not even match the old desktop version in terms of features and many of us, the customers, are completely ignored.

J

JeveeAdvin__la

QuickBooks Online adheres to RBC's security requirements, RomanJ. I'll provide further information and suggestions for your complete guidance.

Some banks, like RBC, require additional security measures to connect with third-party apps like QuickBooks. If permissions aren’t set correctly, it may hinder effective syncing. Proper configuration is essential for smooth data synchronization and improved financial management.

To address your concern about achieving seamless integration and syncing between QuickBooks and your RBC account even when 2FA is enabled, I suggest contacting RBC's customer service or referring to their official website to see if they can maintain high level of security with 2FA while not compromising on the functionality of the financial management tools provided by QBO.

For additional guidance, I encouraged you to engage with our live support team at QuickBooks. They are available to provide expert recommendations tailored to your needs.

We can also refer to this resource for step-by-step instructions on reconciling an account in QuickBooks Online: Reconcile an account in QuickBooks Online.

Don't hesitate to reply to this thread if you have additional questions about deactivating 2FA verification. We'll offer prompt assistance. Have a great one.

T

todd_aust

Once again Intuit recommending businesses remove security on their bank accounts.

Bizarre.

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