Introduction
How Bank Feeds Work
Bank Feeds let you automatically import bank statement lines from your bank or financial institution for Bank Reconciliation purposes. This removes the need for manual imports.
Once a bank feed connection (consent) has been made between your bank and the system, bank statement lines are imported up to four times daily, ensuring your data is up to date. Thereafter, Bank Consents must be renewed every 90 days to comply with Open Banking Standards.
Alternatives to Bank Feeds
If your bank does not have a feed:
- Manually import bank statements. See Manual Bank Reconciliation for more details.
- Use electronic statement files. For further information, see Generating Bank Statement Files (Online Banking). The refer to Automated Bank Reconciliation to complete the process.
Prerequisites to using Bank Feeds
- Online banking details
- Admin user role
- "Bank Feeds Setup" permission in the User Profile Management screen. See Setting Up System Users for more details.
See:
Setting up Bank Feeds
In order to automatically import bank statement lines to AccountsIQ, you need to create a consent with your bank and link this to one or more Bank Account codes in AIQ.
Creating a new Consent
- Go to Bank > Bank Feeds.
- Click on Connect Feed.
- Click Continue to securely connect to your bank using Plaid (see FAQs for more information on data sharing and security with Plaid).
- Select your institution, you will be directed to authenticate your credentials with that institution.
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Finally, you will be redirected to AccountsIQ to link the bank accounts for this consent to Bank Accounts set up in AccountsIQ. Enter the synchronise from Date which:
- Should be when you want to start importing statement lines from.
- Can be adjusted once the consent has been set up if needed.
- Can be up to 12 months ago.
Use One Consent per Institution
If you hold more than one bank account with a particular institution, you can create a single consent which will cover all accounts held with that institution (this will cut down on the number of consents you need to renew). Note the following:
- You will only be able to create consents for accounts that you have online banking access to.
- Certain banks may have rules over the number of consents that can be created and /or the number of users who can create consents.
Managing Bank Feed Consents
Consent Status
Consents for Bank Feeds expire every 90 days, this is to keep your data safe and to comply with Open Banking regulations. The status of bank feeds appears in the Online Banking column in the Bank List. You will see a warning when consents are due to expire in the next 7 days. You can renew or revoke consents at any time.
Revoking a Consent
If you want to revoke a bank feed to stop importing transaction lines automatically:
- Go to Bank > Bank Feeds Setup and find the relevant consent in the list.
- Go to Actions > Revoke Consent.
Note
If the consent applies to more than one bank account, all bank feeds for the consent will be revoked. If you want to keep some bank feeds, you will need to recreate new consents for these accounts.
Renewing a Consent
Renew a consent at any time in any of the following:
- In Bank Feeds Setup go to Actions > Renew Consent.
- From Actions > Revoke Consent.
- Via Connect Bank Feeds as described earlier.
Viewing Consent History
A full history of all consents can be viewed from Bank > Bank Feeds Setup. A number of filters have been set up to help you view and manage your consents.
You can download a consent activity log, from Actions > Download Activity Log. This shows the details of the feed and also the imported transactions.
Bank Account Security
How do I know my bank account details are safe?
AccountsIQ has partnered with Plaid to provide the technology that enables consumers to connect payment accounts and other financial accounts to our accounting software. Plaid is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority under the Payment Services Regulations 2017 (Firm Reference Number: 804718) for the provision of payment services, listed in the Open Banking directory.
Find out more about Plaid and Account Information Services here.
Import Bank Transactions using Bank Feeds
Once you have created a consent for a bank account, to view the imported statement lines:
- Go to Import Bank Transactions.
- Select the bank account from the dropdown. Bank feeds import all bank statement lines from linked accounts four times a day. The feed will refresh automatically until the consent expires or is revoked. You can also click Synchronise Transactions at any point to refresh the feed (for example if you want to start using a feed straight away after creating the consent).
- To match all your imported transaction lines to posted transactions, you can use Bank matching rules and suggested Auto postings. Then reconcile the bank as required. See Automating Bank Reconciliation for more details.