Hi Graham, yes just do a ‘get bank transactions’ please see link. http://www.kashflow.com/developers/soap-api/getbanktransactions/

If you need any help with setting this up please contact support@kashflow.com

Thanks,
Russell

Potentially, a little bit of all of the above. Another possibility is the fear that bank systems, many of which are outdated and slow, wouldn’t be able to handle such large quantities of real-time data!

Although what would incite the banks to do such a thing? what would they gain?

Cheers.

“Do we really have to wait for all the banks to agreed common standards and open up together before KashFlow will develop an auto reconciliation function?”

No, you don’t.

Do we really have to wait for all the banks to agreed common standards and open up together before KashFlow will develop an auto reconciliation function?

Is this the issue stopping you from getting just HSBC up and running?

It doesn’t *appear* to be security, liability or technical reasons.

They use a third-party. Security and liability issues aside, they’re very unreliable.

See http://www.accountingweb.co.uk/group-thread/bank-feeds-you-know-theyre-dodgy-right

We have a good relationship with the BankLink guys. I’s not quite possible – yet. But it’s a route we’re exploring.

We are with HSBC and a move has been discussed in order to take advantage of this – resisted so far 🙂

So could KashFlow get up and running with HSBC now – and then work to get the other banks on at a later date?

Open letters are fine and all that, but that is rather telling us all that bank feeds are not just around the corner for KashFlow.

A good read as always, but may I suggest another route?

How about approaching one or two of the leading UK banks and using your suggested reciprocal benefit of them gaining access (with permission of course) to their clients financial data a bait, incentive or inducement?

KashFlow, with over 10,000 businesses using the software, would I’m sure be at least be given an ear to the right person in the bank.

I’m sure you’ve thought of the benefits to the bank a hundred time over, but a smart UK bank should jump on this, even going as far as sponsoring development costs if they became the first bank to integrate with KashFlow.

They would get:

1) The ability to have a 360 view of the client’s financial history and pipeline for making lending decisions

2) The ability to sell ‘just in time’ products and services – for example, a customer paying over £xxx for insurance gets offered the banks competing cover, or a customer where the average time customers take to pay is 60 days gets offered factoring services

3) As the only integrated bank, I wouldn’t be surprised if the time-saving and value-added benefits resulted in hundreds, or even thousands of KashFlow customers switching banks to them, especially if they promoted their assisted switcher services, where all DD’s and standing orders are automatically transferred.

We started evaluating accounting platforms last month and seamless bank reconciliation was high on our list of required functionality. A competing product had legitimate access to e-statement streams of one leading UK bank and for a while this did sway us, although KashFlows API and other features useful to us settled the decision. If KashFlow linked up with at least one UK bank, there wouldn’t even have been a debate.

Yes, I intend to.

Will you post a follow up with the response (or otherwise) that you receive?

Personally I would feel rather concerned if my statements would be made available through an API. It would be much better if KashFlow could parse the bank statement data finally.

It drives me mad that banks are ten years behind everyone else online. Simple things are nearly impossible – I changed banks because the Co-Op online banking was so terrible. The one I’m with now has issues like 40 codes for the transaction search, where in general, you are putting in an amount and just want to tell it ‘money in’ or ‘money out’!
I would also love to simply be able to add a short comment to a line item where I feel one is needed (mostly ones where the bank codes are opaque!)