FreeAgent bank feed

[Spoiler]

Recently started using FreeAgent, and now looking to get transactions in from a Metro bank account. My accountant has suggested turning on the bank feed feature, but I'm still a little sceptical about handing over my login details.

Have read the stuff on the FreeAgent site about the process. Seems the feed provider (Yodlee) is widely used for scraping bank feeds by lots of other apps
I have not read up on what Metro's T&Cs are - but I'm guessing they don't promote it as a great idea.
Found a Guardian article which mentions Yodlee - and isn't too scary.

Anyone else use the FA bank feed, or not ?!

[northernladuk]

Yep. Use it with my Santander accoubt. Works perfectly and I've no worries about it.

It uses Yodlee which Sage and other groups use so if you are worried do your own research on them.

[Spoiler]

Yep. Use it with my Santander accoubt. Works perfectly and I've no worries about it.

It uses Yodlee which Sage and other groups use so if you are worried do your own research on them.

Thanks. My accountant suggests using it - but I first wanted to check with a bunch of random strangers to get some additional comfort

[Gomez]

I thought about it long and hard. I just don't feel comfortable giving bank credentials to anyone else.
I work in InfoSec which probably doesn't help although I have no knowledge/evidence of there being security issues.

[dingdong]

Definitely worth checking your T's & C's though - many banks will transfer liability for any losses/fraud to you if you have shared your login details with third party services.

Many banks put a stop to third party access like this by bringing in two factor authentication.

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

Yes, though I have always had my concerns about it.

Its not automated if you have 2FA as many banks do though. I still have to sit there, click a button and enter my TOTP code, but its less hassle than manually downloading statements.

[Maslins]

We have two FreeAgent accounts for businesses I'm directly involved in.
- One banks with HSBC. We don't use the direct feed for this one.
- The other banks with Cater Allen. We do use it for this one.

Reason is only that the two factor authentication with HSBC makes it a pain. Same issue as TCP says, but I ended up coming to a different conclusion, that I found download/uploads easier.

I'm not overly concerned re security. I'm happy that if big banks use it themselves and so do thousands of average Joes like me across the country (if not world), the bank can't really criticise me too much for doing so if things go wrong.

[pr1]

I don't as after reading my bank T&C's there was something about if you've given your information to any third party, you lose some of your rights if you do get hacked or anything in the future (regardless of whether that came from the specific third party you gave them to)

Given how quick and easy it is to report out a statement and upload it to freeagent (~20seconds), I just do that once a week/fortnight instead

[Fred Bloggs]

I used the bank feed when I had a free trial and it worked fine. But in real life I decided that saving a minute or two each month/week wasn't worth the risk. So I do a manual down > up load a couple of times a month. Works just fine that way since the actual number of transactions is minimal and FA does a pretty good job of identifying the transactions automatically too.

At the end of the day, I do not really know what the actual risk is, but it feels best not to have a link between FA and the bank set up.

[SuperLooper]

I use it with my Santander business account, and it works flawlessly. I can't imagine having to cope without it. Life is too short for manual data entry.