Live bank feeds: connect your bank and bring in new transactions

Live bank feeds bring new transactions from your bank and credit card accounts straight into Banking → Bank Feeds, where you match or add them exactly as you would lines from a downloaded statement. Banks in the United States and Canada are connected through Plaid.

Who can use it, and what it costs

• Live bank feeds need an activated AcboBooks licence; they are not part of the free trial. In the trial, use Import File… with a statement downloaded from your bank.
• They are included free for the first year after you buy AcboBooks. After that they are part of the yearly Updates and Payroll + Updates plans.
• If the plan ends, Update stops bringing in new transactions and tells you so. A bank still connected 30 days later is disconnected; everything already brought in stays in your books, and you can connect it again after renewing.

Which banks work

Most banks and credit unions in the United States and Canada can be connected, including the large ones such as Chase, Bank of America, Capital One, Citi, PNC and U.S. Bank, which send you to their own website to approve the connection. If your bank isn't listed or won't connect, download a statement file from your bank and use Import File instead.

First: a password on your company file

Live bank feeds only work in a password-protected company file. Bank transactions are kept inside your company file, and a protected file is encrypted (AES-256), so nobody who gets a copy of it can read your banking.

• Company files made with AcboBooks 0.2 or later are protected from the start, so there is nothing to do.
• An older file shows Not protected under Company → Company Settings. Click Protect this file…, choose a password and keep the recovery key it shows you somewhere safe. It takes a few seconds; see File password and recovery key.

If you click Connect a bank in a file without a password, AcboBooks asks you to protect it first.

Connect a bank

1. Open Banking → Bank Feeds. The Live bank feeds panel is at the top.
2. Click Connect a bank…. A secure window from Plaid opens.
3. Find your bank, sign in with your online banking details and choose the accounts to share. Some banks send you to their own website to approve it.
4. When you finish, the window closes and your bank appears in the panel with its accounts.

Choose which account each one feeds

Next to each bank account, pick the AcboBooks bank or credit card account it feeds in Feeds into. One bank account feeds one AcboBooks account.

Bring in from sets the first date to download. If your books are already up to date to the end of last month, choose the first of this month so nothing is brought in twice. Leave it empty to bring in everything your bank has, up to two years.

Bring in new transactions

Click Update. New transactions appear in the Bank Feeds list below, already matched to entries you made where the amount and date agree, and with your rules applied. Then accept the matches and add the rest, as described in Review downloaded lines.

• Only transactions your bank has finished processing come in; pending ones arrive once they post.
• Lines already brought in are never added twice.
• Right after you connect, your bank may still be sending its history. If Update says so, try again in a minute or two.

Reconnect, add accounts and disconnect

• Sign in again: banks ask you to sign in again from time to time, or after you change your online banking password. Click Reconnect and sign in in the window that opens.
• Add accounts…: opened a new account at the same bank? Click it, tick the new account on your bank's page, then choose what it feeds into.
• Disconnect stops the feed. Lines already downloaded stay in Bank Feeds.
• Each bank can be connected once per company file; connecting the same bank again is refused, so use Update or Add accounts instead.
• A bank nobody has updated for 90 days is disconnected automatically. Connect it again whenever you need it.

Your bank login and your data

• You sign in to your bank on Plaid's secure page. AcboBooks never sees or stores your bank user name or password.
• Transactions are kept only in your encrypted company file on your own computer. Our server passes them from Plaid to AcboBooks and does not keep them.
• The connection to your bank is saved encrypted in your company file and only works with your AcboBooks licence. We keep one encrypted copy of it only to disconnect the bank at Plaid if you stop using it.
• Read-only: live bank feeds can never move money.

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