Three weeks of nothing
Month end comes round and a bookkeeper opens a client's Xero file to reconcile. The last bank line is from the ninth of the previous month. The feed stopped and nobody noticed, because an empty reconciliation screen looks just like a quiet month.
Now the bookkeeper has to email the client, explain what a bank feed consent is, wait for them to log in and reauthorise, and hope the bank backfills the missing weeks. If it does not, someone downloads statements and imports them by hand. Across a firm with dozens of clients, this happens to someone almost every month.
Why feeds go quiet without warning
Open banking consents expire and have to be renewed by the account holder, which is the client, not you. Banks replace accounts, merge products and change their connections. Clients change their online banking password or phone and the connection drops. A new credit card arrives with a new number and the old feed just stops.
The ledger may show a small warning somewhere, but only inside that one client file. Nobody is looking at every file every day, so a broken feed stays invisible until someone has a reason to open that client.
| Cause | Who has to act |
|---|---|
| Consent reached its expiry | Client reauthorises with the bank |
| Account replaced or renumbered | Bookkeeper sets up the new feed |
| Client changed login details | Client reconnects |
| Bank changed its connection | Usually the ledger provider or bank |
| Card replaced after fraud or expiry | Bookkeeper and client together |
What late discovery costs
A feed found broken at month end turns a routine reconciliation into a scramble. Management figures go out late. Manual statement imports eat time and bring their own mistakes, such as duplicates when the feed later catches up. Clients get a technical request at the worst moment, often more than once a year, and start to wonder why you did not spot it sooner.
How we build feed monitoring across every client
- We connect to each client file through the Xero or QuickBooks API and read, each night, the date of the latest statement line per bank and card account.
- Each account gets an expected rhythm based on its history. A business current account that normally shows daily activity is flagged after a few quiet days, a savings account after much longer.
- Where the ledger exposes connection status or consent expiry dates, we read those too, so an approaching expiry is caught before it lapses.
- An alert goes to the bookkeeper assigned to that client in your practice tool, not to a general inbox, with the account name and the last date seen.
- If the fix needs the client, a pre-written message goes out with plain instructions for their bank and a link to reconnect. You choose whether it sends automatically or after the bookkeeper clicks approve.
- A firm-wide screen lists every account that is late, expiring soon or reconnected, so a manager can see the whole picture at once.
The check reads data only. It never changes a feed, touches bank credentials or logs in on anyone's behalf.
We also keep a history per account. A client whose feed has broken four times in a year is worth a different conversation, perhaps about changing how that account comes in, and the history makes that visible.
Month end without the surprise
Feeds get fixed within days of breaking, while the gap is short and the bank can still backfill. Bookkeepers stop opening files to find weeks of nothing. Clients receive one clear request at a sensible time instead of an urgent one at month end. And managers can see at a glance that the firm's feeds are healthy, which is a surprisingly calming thing to know.
Signs this is costing you
- You regularly find a feed stopped only when you sit down to reconcile.
- Staff import bank statements by hand more often than they should.
- Clients get repeated requests to 'reconnect the bank'.
- Duplicate transactions appear after a feed catches up.
- Nobody could tell you today how many feeds are broken.