Bank feeds play an important part in your bookkeeping, in fact it’s a favourite feature of ours in Xero. It ensures accuracy and efficiency of your books and means you get real-time reporting. A few years ago it was the norm to have to fill out paperwork manually to enable a bank feed connection, and this took time, but now it’s much more simple than this.

Setting up your bank feed in Xero is easy, and it saves time so that you don’t need to manually import bank transactions. Once your bank feed is connected it can recognise transactions you have made and we can set up automations for reconciliation, leaving no room for human error. 

How secure is it?

For security reasons you will need to renew your bank feed every 90 days. Unfortunately we cannot do this for you as it needs to be the account holder. It’s a quick and easy process, just login to Xero and go to the accounting tab, along the top click bank accounts> renew bank feed, you will then be prompted to login to your online banking. This ensures that no one else gets access to your login details. You will need your account details to hand and also know what your recent transactions are to pass security.

Xero reads transaction data but doesn’t have access to your accounts, therefore it is very low risk. We do still ask that you send your bank statements at certain intervals such as year end so that we can check that the feed is working as it should and that there aren’t any discrepancies. 

The data which Xero stores is encrypted. They have various layers of firewalls and access to accounts is monitored 24/7. They perform regular security audits and have introduced Multi-Factor Authentication when accessing your account, for that extra reassurance that only you can access your data. 

What if I don’t refresh every 90 days?

We will send you a reminder when your bank feed is expiring and needs to be refreshed. If you don’t refresh we will no longer have access to your live bank feed, making our job more difficult and meaning that your reports are not as accurate. 

If you struggle with this process please pick up the phone and we will talk you through it no problem at all!