Business Banking that sends statements by e-mail?

[7specialgems]

Out of interest, what is the automation you are hoping for as mentioned in the OP?

Homebrew parsing of statements into a ledger. I'm a tightarse and I'm a software engineer, so it wrangles with me that I would pay £100 or so a month to someone to use a tool that I should be able to build myself (and besides, a good excuse to practice with new technology).

With HSBC and their vasco token, I can't eliminate myself from the process, hence the question as to how I might get statement data without having to log in or do any downloading myself.

As others have said with Yodlee et all, there's screen scraping going on there, and another license fee too.

Thanks to all for their responses.

[kaiser78]

Santander send mine through the post - tried and tested method.

[d000hg]

My accountant is able to access - with some view-only perissions - my HSBC accounts. Is that the same system already mentioned?

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

Remember any system that uses Yodlee means essentially hands over your login credentials as they don't have direct feeds, they use scraping.

[Alan @ BroomeAffinity]

I use Crunch accounting and I bank with Cater Allen.

They have a 'bank bolt' service which means my bank statements are automatically loaded into the accounting software each month. I think this also works with RBS too and I'm sure Crunch can't be the only accountants that do this.

I still get my statements posted to me, but they just go straight for filing. I don't have to do anything with them.

This is true. There are two (that I'm aware of) third party providers who can provide bank feeds directly into your accounting system. Yodlee and Bankstream, I believe. There is a cost associated with this. We are in the process of developing an online solution and the company we are using tell me we can either use the third party process or, with the relevant permissions from the account user, we can download a csv direct from the bank on a bulk basis for all accounts we have permissions for. I've not gone into how this is possible yet as we are very early stage but I expect this can be automated. I don't imagine it'd be cost effective for an individual company though.

[tractor]

.....

I use Crunch accounting and I bank with Cater Allen.

They have a 'bank bolt' service which means my bank statements are automatically loaded into the accounting software each month. I think this also works with RBS too and I'm sure Crunch can't be the only accountants that do this.

I still get my statements posted to me, but they just go straight for filing. I don't have to do anything with them.

You can do the same with XERO too, then you just reconcile the account with the transactions you have entered. I don't bother to automatically reconcile mainly because my txns are so few so I don't know whether it is an improvement.

[JRCT]

I use Crunch accounting and I bank with Cater Allen.

They have a 'bank bolt' service which means my bank statements are automatically loaded into the accounting software each month. I think this also works with RBS too and I'm sure Crunch can't be the only accountants that do this.

I still get my statements posted to me, but they just go straight for filing. I don't have to do anything with them.

[Alan @ BroomeAffinity]

Out of interest, what is the automation you are hoping for as mentioned in the OP?

[jmo21]

I don't think any bank will email statements as it isn't considered secure enough.

None of my banks offer this facility.

[TheFaQQer]

I don't think any bank will email statements as it isn't considered secure enough.

This.

Unless the bank is going to encrypt the file as well, then they won't touch it because the fine when they have a data breach would be high.

You'll just have to go on downloading them each month and then sticking them in Dropbox for the NSA to read the old-fashioned way, rather than have them hack your email and the encryption.

[robpow]

CitiBank send our personal account statements as encrypted PDFs each month but I don't know if they do business banking or not.

Matt

[Alan @ BroomeAffinity]

I don't think any bank will email statements as it isn't considered secure enough.

[7specialgems]

I do my company banking with HSBC at the moment, but am frustrated with not being able to have my statements emailed to me (I have to log in with my vasco token and pull them down myself - not helpful for automation!).

I'm past the point where I get free banking from them and would be willing to pay broadly the same fees to a competitor so long as they have a facility that e-mails my statement to me rather than be having to log in and get it.

So - if this is a feature you get with your bank, who do you bank with? :-D