FreeAgent bank data import - more trouble than it's worth?

[Maslins]

I'm with barclays, it just works for me, I think it does it overnight. Sometimes the previous/same days aren't there but it will catch up the next day. Not a problem as I don't need it to be real time up to date. I've never had to do it manually.

I don't know the details of every bank, but thought I'd add a bit of context to the above.

FreeAgent have bespoke direct live feeds agreed with a few banks. Barclays was the first, I believe NatWest/RBS now have something similar, may be some others too. This should be very reliable, and automatic once set up. Ie you login to FreeAgent, transactions are there (possibly a day behind).

FreeAgent uses Yodlee screen scraping for other banks. If your business bank doesn't use two factor authentication (eg Cater Allen, again, probably others) then this works seamlessly. It may be a day or so behind, but when you login to FreeAgent, transactions are there.

If your business bank does use two factor authentication, whilst more secure, it's a hindrance to this. You need to login to FreeAgent, tell it to import transactions, wait a bit whilst Yodlee does part of the login process, then do the 2 factor bit, then wait a bit longer whilst it pulls through transactions. This is how HSBC currently works, and in my opinion it's sufficiently painful that manual statement download/uploads is better.

Yodlee causes concern for some people, as you are typically breaching your bank's Ts&Cs by handing out login details to a third party. Also it's not 100% reliable, as every now and then a given bank will make changes to its online banking, which often means Yodlee won't work for a while, until they make whatever equivalent tweaks are required.

In the fairly near future, open banking should be fully in place for all banks, meaning they all follow a standard format. When this is in place, it should be much easier for software platforms like FreeAgent (of course following various security checks/whatever) to get read only data from all banks, without manual 2 factor authentication, and without screen scraping. We're not quite there yet.

[d000hg]

Open Banking sounds awesome!

Yeah since HSBC requires 2FA using the dongle, I assume this means it can ONLY work with manual imports?

Also it's SO slow. I could login to HSBC, download the file and upload it way faster. Can I just turn off the imports so I know exactly which transactions are uploaded (i.e. the ones I upload?)