I review a lot of takeover QuickBooks Online files for service and install contractors, and I keep seeing the same mess when shops rely on AI bank-feed suggestions. After years building job-costing tools for mechanical contractors, we tested unassisted AI models on our month-end close checks across real contractor QBO files covering bank cutoffs, supply-house AP bills, undeposited funds, and customer deposits. Those unassisted runs topped out at 71% raw accuracy on our month-end close checks, and the misses were almost never on simple gas station or software receipts.

The real trouble starts where the QuickBooks bank feed meets accrual timing in HVAC and plumbing shops. Say a customer pays an upfront deposit in late October, and the install gets pushed to mid-November because of an equipment backorder. Under accrual accounting, those upfront deposits belong in an unearned customer deposit liability account until the crew mobilizes and incurs the job costs. But the QuickBooks bank feed only sees cash hit checking in October, so an AI suggestion mirrors prior coding or pushes the deposit into an income account because it cannot see the rescheduled dispatch date sitting over in ServiceTitan or BuildOps. October gross margin looks artificially high, the owner thinks they had a great month, and then November gets crushed when the install crew payroll and supply-house bills land against zero remaining revenue.

The second place it consistently breaks is client takeovers where a previous bookkeeper left a row in uncategorized expense and fixed it with a manual journal entry rather than matching the bank feed. Unassisted AI categorizes the bank line a second time and doubles the expense on the P&L.

In the books I review, we end up disabling AI bank-feed suggestions on everything except routine fuel and card spend. For others here cleaning up contractor QBO files, are you seeing any bank-feed automation hold up on deposits, progress draws, or supply-house statements, or are you walling those off completely too?