How bank feeds work in AccBooks AI

What is a bank feed?

A bank feed is a live, read-only connection between your bank account and AccBooks. Once connected, your bank automatically sends transaction data to AccBooks throughout the day — no manual CSV downloads required.

The Open Banking standard (PSD2)

AccBooks uses the UK Open Banking standard, which is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Under Open Banking:

• You authenticate directly with your bank using your own credentials.
• AccBooks receives a read-only access token — it can see transactions but cannot initiate payments or change anything.
• The connection must be re-authorised every 90 days (a regulatory requirement, not an AccBooks choice).
• You can revoke access at any time, directly from your bank’s app.

How the sync works

Your bank account
    ↓ (Open Banking API, every 4–6 hours)
AccBooks transaction store
    ↓ (AI classification engine)
Reconciliation queue
    ↓ (you approve)
Posted ledger entries

1. Fetch: AccBooks polls your bank’s Open Banking API every 4–6 hours. Most major UK banks support real-time webhooks, which can reduce this to seconds.
2. Deduplicate: AccBooks assigns each transaction a unique bank reference ID to prevent the same transaction appearing twice.
3. Classify: The AI engine matches each transaction against your chart of accounts using merchant-name recognition, amount patterns and your historical posting behaviour.
4. Score: Each classification gets a confidence score (0–100%). High-confidence matches (90%+) are grouped for bulk approval. Lower scores are flagged for individual review.
5. Queue: Transactions appear in the Reconciliation queue, sorted by confidence score.

What data is imported

Each transaction record contains:

• Date
• Description (the narrative from your bank)
• Amount (positive = credit, negative = debit)
• Running balance
• Bank reference ID (used for deduplication)

AccBooks does not import:

• Your login credentials
• Your sort code or account number in full (only the last 4 digits for display)
• Any data from accounts you haven’t explicitly connected

Feed latency

Bank type	Typical delay
Major UK banks (Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, NatWest, Santander)	2–6 hours
Challenger banks (Monzo, Starling, Tide)	Near real-time via webhooks
Smaller and regional banks	Up to 24 hours
Credit cards	24–48 hours

Security

Your bank credentials are never stored by AccBooks. The Open Banking token is encrypted at rest using AES-256 and stored in an isolated secrets vault separate from the main database. AccBooks is an FCA-authorised account information service provider (AISP).

What happens when a feed breaks?

If your bank’s Open Banking infrastructure changes, or your 90-day consent expires, the feed pauses and AccBooks sends you an email alert. No transactions are lost — when you re-authorise, AccBooks fetches any missed transactions automatically (up to 90 days back).