How do I set up a Bank Connection with Plaid?

Plaid, one of our third party connectors, can help you get your expenses automatically imported from your bank accounts, credit cards, and PayPal accounts. All accounts you set up will appear in the Bank Connections section, and any newly imported expenses (up to 90 days of activity) will appear in the Expenses section for you.
 

• Add a Bank
• Automatically Categorize Imported Expenses
• FAQs

Add a Bank

1. Before beginning, ensure you’re using the correct steps by confirming which partner supports connections for your country here
2. Click on the gear icon in the top left corner
3. Click on Bank Connections
4. Click on the Connect My Bank button
5. A pop-up will appear letting you know about Plaid linking to your bank, click Continue to confirm
   
6. Select your bank or type in your bank’s name in the search bar
7. Make sure the result matches the URL you normally log into your bank with online, and click on the result
8. Enter your bank’s login credentials and click on Submit
   
9. Plaid will send your credentials to the bank and authorize with their servers, this can take a few minutes
10. Verify your identity if prompted to by answering any security questions - click on the Next or the Answer button as needed
11. Once all verification is complete, Plaid will send this over to your bank, this can take a few minutes
12. Next, scroll and click on the account(s) to highlight which ones to import into your Expenses
13. Click Continue. 

Your account(s) will now be connected and import new transactions (up to 90 days of activity) into your Expenses section. The connection(s) will refresh every 10 minutes or so for new expenses.

To look for Expenses that have not been assigned a Category, you can click on the filter icon next to the search box, check off both Imported expenses and Uncategorized expenses boxes, and click on Apply.

We recommend checking your Bank Connections on a regular basis to ensure your Expenses are consistently importing with no errors or actions required by you.
  

Automatically Categorize Imported Expenses

To save you time, you can have Categories remembered for future Expenses that are imported in. To utilize this feature, simply edit one of your imported Expenses, and check off the box next to Apply to future imported expenses:
Once you enable this, FreshBooks will recognize imported Expenses from the same Vendor and will categorize them with the remembered Category moving forward. The Vendor field must be filled out in order for the auto-categorization to work.

FAQs

How do I disconnect my bank?

Note that disconnecting a bank will not remove expenses that have already been imported in for that account. To disconnect, follow these steps:

1. Click on the gear icon in the top left corner
2. Click on Bank Connections
3. Click on the bank itself to show the connected accounts
4. Next to the account you want to remove, click on the Disconnect link.

If you're trying to re-add this bank, there is a chance of duplicate Expenses being imported in again upon connection. We recommend checking your Expenses section afterwards to delete any duplicates that appear.