How to solve broken bank feeds and confirm bank balances
The last decade has been nothing short of a revolution in accounting technology. The rise of cloud accounting software such as Xero have made it is easier than ever to maintain accounting and bookkeeping records with their automated capabilities.
Bank feeds have been one of the main drivers, with core accounting software pulling in data and making transactions easy to categorise.
Unfortunately, banks feeds are far from perfect. It’s all too common for them to contain errors such as duplications and omissions, and they can be challenging to set up and repeatedly reauthenticate.
There is a solution. The issues can be overcome by checking bank balances at source, and where necessary generating CSV downloads to upload into accounting software. This can be achieved manually, but much as with the advances provided by accounting software, significant time and hassle can be saved by using smart technology to provide an automated solution.
Broken feeds impacting client delivery
William Stanley & Co Chartered Accountants specialise in hospitality clients, most of whom are on Xero. They often experience delays or issues getting bank feeds set up and live when onboarding new clients.
Fixing them can take a few days and impacts the delivery of client services by not generating up-to-date cash balances, alongside not being able to add further value through insights from analytics.
The firm recently took on a new hospitality client that had broken bank feeds, and rather than waiting for Xero support to look at the issue, they turned to Armalytix:
“To resolve the issue, we jumped on a quick call with Armalytix. This allowed us to get the link to receive up-to-date bank transactions from the client in just a few minutes. After this, we were able to get back the information directly uploaded onto Xero and support the client with analytics insights from Power BI.” – James Couch, Director at William Stanley.
Confirming bank balances for VAT returns
My Cloud 9 accounting is an exclusively Xero-based practice servicing a range of different clients in many sectors. The firm experienced frustrations with bank feeds, finding them difficult to set up for certain bank providers and the occasional instance of duplicate transactions.
The practice recently experienced a problem with bank feeds, where every transaction was duplicated over a one-week period.
Co-founder Alexandra Macleod overcame these issues by relying on Armalytix to confirm bank balances for VAT quarters, and when bank feeds cannot be set up at all, using Armalytix to request all transactions:
“We are massive fans of Armalytix. We use it when we don’t have data at all and as a sense check to confirm balances for VAT returns and monthly bookkeeping.” says Macleod.
Reconciling bank balances for year-end accounts
Similar to My Cloud 9, Michael Beaver & Co chartered accountants, a firm focusing on professional services and trade businesses, also experience missing and duplicate transactions from bank feeds.
As part of the checks and balances completed at year-end for clients, the firm uses Armalytix to confirm and reconcile bank balances.
Michael Beaver says: “We use Armalytix downloads to reconcile at year-end. Around 50% of the time, there are issues with bank feeds that need to be reconciled. Armalytix gets the transactions in faster and gets the information correct in the first place.”
Automation of data collection is one of the missing pieces for future-looking firms. Using tools like Armalytix to fix broken bank feeds and confirm bank balances gives accountants and their clients peace of mind about the accuracy of data and allows for compliance filings to be completed speedily and on time.
