FreeAgent - Enable Bank Feed from Starling

[fiisch]

Good Morning,

I have recently switched business banking provider to Starling having had an awful time with Cashplus. Really impressed with the Starling app and their service thus far, but I am struggling to enable the bank feed on FreeAgent.

I have added the Bank Account to FreeAgent, but when trying to enable a feed, Starling are not listed as one of the available banks from the very long list of banks. Does this mean, despite their app wizardry and general tech goodness, I'll have to manually upload Starling bank statements, or is there another way?

[fiisch]

Ah, Google is my friend....

Starling Freeagent integration is in testing and scheduled for release H1 of 2019, for anyone that was wondering....



So, manual statements it is for the time being...

[Maslins]

Yeah people seem very keen on putting everything with these shiny new banks. It seems just because they don't have branches and claim to be modern doesn't necessarily mean they already have all the snazzy online integrations you may expect.

Don't take this as me slating them...but I think the likes of Starling/Tide etc may be drifting from the "innovators"/"early adopters", but are still some way short of "early majority". May be another year or two before they've got all the kinds of things people expect from a bank. Eg as I mentioned in another thread recently, it seems a few of them don't even support direct debit payments, something I'd assume would be standard for any current account.

[fiisch]

Yeah people seem very keen on putting everything with these shiny new banks. It seems just because they don't have branches and claim to be modern doesn't necessarily mean they already have all the snazzy online integrations you may expect.

Don't take this as me slating them...but I think the likes of Starling/Tide etc may be drifting from the "innovators"/"early adopters", but are still some way short of "early majority". May be another year or two before they've got all the kinds of things people expect from a bank. Eg as I mentioned in another thread recently, it seems a few of them don't even support direct debit payments, something I'd assume would be standard for any current account.

Depends if you're including Cashplus in that statement - they have been atrocious..! I will never ever use them, even with a £1,000,000 free sign-up bonus.

To be fair, Starling have been excellent - the app makes life so easy. Even providing KYC docs was far easier than other banks I have used. I can live without a Freeagent feed for a few months - especially knowing that it is in the pipeline.

[simes]

Eg as I mentioned in another thread recently, it seems a few of them don't even support direct debit payments, something I'd assume would be standard for any current account.

Really?

Am curious as to why a 'bank' would ever think DD was not a part of their day to day functionality of a bank.

Who are the 'few of them'?

Thanks.

[northernladuk]

Ah, Google is my friend....

Starling Freeagent integration is in testing and scheduled for release H1 of 2019, for anyone that was wondering....



So, manual statements it is for the time being...

No winking in the professional forums please. We can see the mistake you've made so don't need to put it in.

[northernladuk]

Really?

Am curious as to why a 'bank' would ever think DD was not a part of their day to day functionality of a bank.

Who are the 'few of them'?

Thanks.

They appear to be trying to appeal to the millennials that want everything on their phone with wizzy apps and not on the core banking.. and it appears to be working.

[pr1]

They appear to be trying to appeal to the millennials that want everything on their phone with wizzy apps and not on the core banking.. and it appears to be working.

Yep. I recently got a monzo account so I could go on holiday without taking cash and without being charged stupid transaction/exchange fees. Absolutely flawless - notification on phone saying how much I'd just spent (in foreign currency & GBP) within 5 seconds. The next time I made a purchase with it in the UK it even said "Welcome home, you spent a total of £X while you were abroad"

"Traditional" banks need to step up or get left behind

[JRCT]

I have both Tide and Starling accounts and you do indeed have to manually add transactions from Starling into Freeagent at the moment. For me, it's not a major issue as I only have a handful of transactions in the Starling account. Tide does have full integration so that's fine. If I only had Starling, I would be pretty cheesed at them doing Xero integration before Freeagent.

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

I might need to look at Tide again. I looked at it before and there was a reason why I decided it was a non-starter but I can't for the life of me remember what it was.

Edit: looking again I think it was the fact that they aren't yet a proper bank (they use Prepay Solutions) and don't have an IBAN/international transfer support. No switching service support either yet.