A bank reaches Finthy in one of three ways. Which ones you can use depends on the country the bank is in and on your plan.
Open the flow
Go to Banks in the sidebar and choose Add Bank. The first question is Where is your bank located?, because the country decides what is possible.
Each country in the list says underneath it what it supports:
- Sync automatically, or add accounts manually for the United States and Canada.
- Add accounts & transactions manually for every other country in the list.
Automatic sync
Available for banks in the United States and Canada, through our provider Plaid, and it needs a paid plan. On the free plan the Connect automatically card shows a padlock, and choosing it takes you to the upgrade screen instead of your bank.
With a paid plan, choosing it opens Plaid’s own window, where you sign in to your bank. Finthy never sees those credentials. You then pick which accounts to bring in, and Finthy shows a syncing screen while it pulls your accounts and their history. After that the connection refreshes on its own.
Adding a bank by hand
Free on every plan, and available in every country in the list. Pick your bank from the list below the automatic option, then add its accounts yourself and enter or import transactions. You can import a statement immediately after creating the account.
Some banks are flagged for our Chrome extension, which would capture transactions while you are logged in to your bank’s website. That is still in development: today those banks behave exactly like any other bank you add by hand.
What a connection holds
One connection is one bank. The accounts live inside it, which is why Banks lists connections and View Accounts opens what is inside one.
Your plan counts both separately. The free plan allows 2 bank connections and 4 visible accounts in total, across every bank. Hidden accounts do not count, so hiding an account you no longer use frees a slot. At the limit you get “You’ve reached your plan’s bank connection limit. Upgrade to connect more banks”, and the fix is to remove a connection, hide an account, or upgrade.
Connecting the same bank twice
If you already have an active connection to that bank, Finthy warns you before you start: You already have an active connection to {bank}. Connecting it a second time produces duplicate transactions, so take View Existing Connection unless you really mean to replace it, in which case Remove & Reconnect does both steps in order.
When a connection needs attention
Two badges appear next to a connection on the Banks page.
- Expires {date}: your bank asks you to confirm access before that date. Choose Reconnect and sign in again. Nothing is lost if you do it in time.
- Reconnect needed: the connection has already stopped syncing, and transactions after that point are missing until you reconnect. The accounts, their history and your categories all stay where they are.
Reconnecting never creates a second connection and never re-imports what you already have.
Two other states show the same way. New accounts have been detected at your bank means you opened an account since you connected, and reconnecting adds it. A pending first sync means the bank has not sent its transactions yet, which usually clears within a few minutes.
When automatic sync stops working for good
Sometimes a bank and Plaid stop getting along and reconnecting does not help. A connection that has failed can be kept as a manual one: it keeps every account, every balance and every transaction you already have, and from then on you add new transactions yourself or import a statement. You can only do this to a connection that has actually failed, which is why a working connection answers “This connection still works, so it can’t be switched to manual”.
The reverse also exists. If you have been tracking a bank by hand and automatic sync becomes possible for it, you can connect it with Plaid and move your manual accounts into the new connection, pairing each manual account with the one the bank reports, so your history carries over instead of starting again.
Who can do this
In a shared workspace, the owner and contributors can add, reconnect and remove connections. Someone with the viewer role cannot, and sees “Ask a workspace owner or contributor to reconnect this bank” instead. Within a workspace, a connection can only be changed by the member who added it: anyone else gets “Only the member who connected this bank can change it”.
Removing a connection
Delete Bank removes the connection, its accounts and all of their transaction history, permanently and on our servers. Finthy asks you to confirm with Yes, Delete Everything because there is no undo. For a Plaid connection it also revokes our access at Plaid.
If what you actually want is one account out of your totals, use Hide account instead. A hidden account and its transactions stop appearing in your lists, balances and reports, nothing is deleted, the account keeps syncing, and showing it again puts every total back exactly where it was.