Open banking - your transactions in untied

untied uses a way of bringing in transactions from your bank or building society account called Open Banking. It can also be used for some card accounts.

It's the same technology used by major accounting platforms.

All major banks and building societies are required to offer this. But the amount of data they share can vary - some may offer 18 months of transactions, others 7 years. The way they share data can vary as well. We help it make sense to you.

We sometimes do this directly with banks. More commonly we use "aggregators" which are specialist companies that link to banks, and take steps to send the data to us in a consistent way. It costs us money to do this, but also saves us time.

We have controls in place to help you. But we can only show you the data we get from the banks. Checks we would do in a company accounting system are harder for personal accounts.

And sometimes we don't get what you may expect. Banks treat things differently - like pots or pending transactions. They have different ways of identifying transactions. And some banks give us running balances to help us keep on top of each transaction, while others don't (this means there's a greater chance of duplicates or missing transactions). They can also change references on transactions when they move systems.

Overall Open Banking is a good way to keep track of transactions. We and others work so that everyone is aware of the strengths and limitations of doing it this way - including HMRC. But you also need to keep an eye on things in case something significant is missing. If in doubt, get in touch and we can help you look into it.