QuickBooks Online Ready to Post: Why Transactions Sit Held for Review
QuickBooks Online marks bank transactions Ready to post or Held for review; here is how the rules work and where to change them.
The redesigned banking page in QuickBooks Online ships with an automated review stage called Ready to post. It batches feed transactions the software can categorise with confidence, so you post them in one pass instead of one at a time. Two questions dominate the discussion around it. Some users cannot find the feature at all, and others watch ordinary bank charges land in Held for review instead. The accepted guidance explains both, and the answer runs through your plan, your history, and your posting policy.
What is Ready to post?
Ready to post sits inside the automated categorisation experience of the bank feed. When you connect a bank account, QuickBooks Online imports your transactions and suggests categories from your chart of accounts. Ready to post extends that suggestion into action. It looks for transactions it can categorise with high confidence, marks them, and lets you review and post them as a batch. The engine behind it is Accounting AI, Intuit’s automation layer, which compares each incoming item to transactions you have already categorised and to a set of standards you define yourself.
Which plans can use it?
Availability is the first stumbling block. Ready to post works with QuickBooks Online Essentials, Plus, and Advanced, and only on the new AI-powered banking page. Simple Start does not get it. If your subscription sits on that entry plan, the section will not appear no matter what you change in settings. An account still on the older banking layout is in the same position. The accepted guidance we reviewed is published for the Australian edition of QuickBooks Online.
How does a transaction earn the ready mark?
Three requirements govern the decision. First, your history is the evidence. The software looks for similar transactions you have posted before under the same category. Without that history to lean on, a transaction waits for your review even when the suggested category looks right to you. Second, the transaction needs a single confident category. Where more than one category could apply, the software reserves the item for fuller review rather than guessing.
Extra fields matter as well. Many companies record a payee or customer, a class, or a location on some or all transactions. If your history shows you usually fill one of those fields, the software wants a confident suggestion for that field too before it marks anything ready.
Why do transactions land in Held for review?
This is where the confusion usually settles. If you require only a category, a confident category suggestion is enough for a transaction to be marked ready. The moment additional fields are required, the bar rises. The transaction becomes ready only when the category and those fields are all high confidence. If any required field comes back low confidence, the item is marked Held for review and never reaches the Ready to post list. Nothing is broken in that case. The software is declining to guess on a field your own habits treat as mandatory.
Your criteria live in the Transaction posting policy
The behaviour is not fixed. The standards a transaction must meet are defined in your Ready to post criteria, which you set through your Transaction posting policy. That policy is what keeps the automation aligned with your company’s conventions instead of a generic default. If the Held for review list swells while Ready to post stays thin, the policy is the first place to look. You can change which fields are required there, and the automation follows whatever you decide.
Does anything post without you?
No. Automation here stops at suggestion. You review the flagged transactions, make any edits, and post them when you are ready. Transactions that do not qualify simply stay in the bank feed for your usual review, so nothing reaches your books untouched. Treat the ready mark as a filter that saves clicks, not as an instruction to accept the software’s judgement.
The short version
If Ready to post is missing, check the plan and the page before anything else. Essentials, Plus, and Advanced on the new banking page have it; Simple Start does not. If the feature is present but quiet, two things deserve a look: the history the software can learn from, and the fields your posting policy requires. A short history or a demanding policy will hold transactions for review every time. Once history and policy line up with your habits, the batch review does the sorting for you.