Open Banking API - BACS reconciliation

[dazmanultra]

Just wondering if anyone has any experience of using any Open Banking API providers to automatically reconcile BACS payments to invoices? We have approached a scale where manually reconciling BACS payments is becoming unfeasible, so automating this looks to be the way forward. The coding side of things we can handle in house, we just need a trustworthy provider we can build upon that doesn't require a massive amount of onboarding/sales set up ("Please call for pricing....").

[48k]

Depending on who the bank is you may be able to go direct rather than use a third party - I'm doing exactly that with NatWest at the moment for very similar reasons. Building a web based pull of account transactions from the NatWest API in to my software..

[wheelerc]

Does your accounting software not pull your bank statement lines from your bank?

If so it could be better to use your accounting software's API to do the reconciliation...

[Tebbers]

Your accountancy software should definitely do this already, if not then you should switch to one that does like Xero.

We actually make niche software that has accountancy functionality and have recently spoken to Yapily and Plaid who provide this bank feed data if it helps. Cost is circa £1500 per month with Yapily and requires FCA approval.

[LooneyTunes]

dazmanultra said:

Just wondering if anyone has any experience of using any Open Banking API providers to automatically reconcile BACS payments to invoices? We have approached a scale where manually reconciling BACS payments is becoming unfeasible, so automating this looks to be the way forward. The coding side of things we can handle in house, we just need a trustworthy provider we can build upon that doesn't require a massive amount of onboarding/sales set up ("Please call for pricing....").

What sort of scale are you looking at?
What size customer base?
What level of repeat business with customers?
What level of invoice uniqueness?
What level of accuracy of payments and compliance with referencing from customers?

Unless things are very very simple indeed, you will end up going down a rabbit hole if you decide to do it yourself. There may be ways to simplify and make it work if you think it through fully from the outset and your other business processes can work with the compromises/rules that would be required.

The coding is the easiest part. Well worth getting someone to undertake some proper evaluation, looking at the factors that impede reconciliation, before you commit.

Codat would be who I’d speak to if looking for an API but you’d be better looking within your accounting software unless you’re prepared to devote quite serious money and need to/are intent on doing it yourself.