Reply to: Freeagent HSBC Feed

[t0bytoo]

No it wasn't. I loaded the saved statements from the HSBC Online banking pages.

Yes. You are correct. Could have done that.

[malvolio]

It was for a two week period in january, so the only way was to add the transactions manually.

No it wasn't. I loaded the saved statements from the HSBC Online banking pages.

[t0bytoo]

Why not simply upload a current or historical statement in QIF format from the HSBC download option? Duplicates are easy to spot, even if Freeagent doesn't do it for itself.

But FWIW I've never seen that behaviour when the auto feed has been buggering about, as it sometimes - actually far too often - does.

It was for a two week period in january, so the only way was to add the transactions manually.

[malvolio]

I just spent way too long trying to figure out why my freeagent bank balance was out of sync with the actual balance in my bank account.

Discovered that when the hsbc feed was off, none of the transactions ever made it into freeagent. I imagine this was due to the feed being 'disabled' then 're-

In case anyone else has a similar issue: The only solution I could see was to enter all the missing transactions manually. Pain the a***. Oh well.

Why not simply upload a current or historical statement in QIF format from the HSBC download option? Duplicates are easy to spot, even if Freeagent doesn't do it for itself.

But FWIW I've never seen that behaviour when the auto feed has been buggering about, as it sometimes - actually far too often - does.

[t0bytoo]

I just spent way too long trying to figure out why my freeagent bank balance was out of sync with the actual balance in my bank account.

Discovered that when the hsbc feed was off, none of the transactions ever made it into freeagent. I imagine this was due to the feed being 'disabled' then 're-

In case anyone else has a similar issue: The only solution I could see was to enter all the missing transactions manually. Pain the a***. Oh well.

[Adlopa]

I ran into the “since last download” bug when downloading my wife’s statement from her personal account. I suspect a bug in how they handle the new year threshold. I reported this issue to them and they were aware of it.

There is a workaround - instead of one of the preset options, choose to enter specific dates and manually enter the dates. Once you’ve downloaded your statement that way once, the since last download option will start working again.

Yep, tried that with no success. The manual date entry also made me twitchy (correctly, or not) about pulling duplicate transactions on end dates, but the direct feed discovery negated all of that.

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

FreeAgent now supports a direct feed from NatWest – no Yodlee scraping required.

Can't remember the details after enabling it a couple of weeks ago, but it's working faultlessly so far. The same can't be said about NW's transaction download, which has been giving a date error with the 'Since last download' option since the New Year (which is how I ended up at the direct feed...).

Edit: Some info here – https://support.freeagent.com/hc/en-...rect-Bank-Feed

I ran into the “since last download” bug when downloading my wife’s statement from her personal account. I suspect a bug in how they handle the new year threshold. I reported this issue to them and they were aware of it.

There is a workaround - instead of one of the preset options, choose to enter specific dates and manually enter the dates. Once you’ve downloaded your statement that way once, the since last download option will start working again.

[radish2008]

I'd be careful with Nat West - I think their terms means that you cold breach your account policy by giving a third party your security details.

If you go for the free FA subs with them then they want access to all your transactions for whatever purposes they see fit.

I've found their manual download to be ok recently ?

Update
ooooh. I haven't seen the new feed set up. Last time I used it there wasn't any integration like that.

[Adlopa]

FreeAgent now supports a direct feed from NatWest – no Yodlee scraping required.

Can't remember the details after enabling it a couple of weeks ago, but it's working faultlessly so far. The same can't be said about NW's transaction download, which has been giving a date error with the 'Since last download' option since the New Year (which is how I ended up at the direct feed...).

Edit: Some info here – https://support.freeagent.com/hc/en-...rect-Bank-Feed

[tarbera]

PSD2 they did not renew their AISP licence on time

[SuperLooper]

It is unreliable, that’s down to Yodlee I guess.

Not really Yodlee's fault that HSBC keep changing things. Inevitably it takes Yodlee a bit of time to tweak things at their end after HSBC change their site layout or summat.

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

It is unreliable, that’s down to Yodlee I guess.

If you want a proper direct connection then as far as I’m aware Barclays is the only option.

Hopefully with open banking we might see some proper integration in future.

[yMyjgT]

Obviously it doesn't help, as you're not going to switch bank account purely for Freeagent, but for information the Barclays feed is faultless.
It doesn't need any login credentials to work, which always seem to be flaky from my experience with MoneyDashboard, which pulls in all your bank accounts into 1 place.

Hopefully, with Open Banking, in the not too distant future all banks will be like this ?

[SuperLooper]

I recently closed my Ltd's accounts with HSBC. The main reason was I couldn't stand the 2FA with that horrible little keypad thing, which made FreeAgent's bank feed a truly painful process.

Happily using Santander now.

[Maslins]

Sod it, suspect you guys are right - I'm goign to start importing. Only thing I worry about there is duplicates - fell for that with the Credit Card (where it's much harder to see a clear balance, to be fair)

For credit card I'd recommend just doing the monthly statement. To my mind it's not as important that's updated frequently (eg knowing whether/when a customer has paid) as the main current account.

For the current account, yeah take a bit of care. Partly when switching from feed to upload, but also which part of HSBC you get it from. They have the "recent transactions" section, and the "statements" section. It seems the narrative that comes with the transaction download is very slightly different for each, sufficiently so that FreeAgent won't spot a duplicate. I'd therefore suggest:
- if you'll be doing it often (eg at least weekly), just use the recent transactions section.
- if you'll be doing it less frequently (eg monthly), just use the statements section.
If you consistently use the same type, FreeAgent should spot duplicates and only upload new transactions.
If you mix and match, do be weary of duplicates requiring manual removal.