How to Connect Bank Accounts

Connect your bank accounts to DualEntry to pull in transaction feeds automatically. Each connection links a bank account to a GL cash or liability account so incoming transactions land in the right place for reconciliation. DualEntry supports checking accounts, savings accounts, credit cards, and lines of credit, with no per-organization limit on the number of connections you can add.

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Prerequisites

Before connecting, confirm the following:

• You have admin or bookkeeper-level access in DualEntry (see User Roles and Permissions).
• The GL cash or liability account the bank will map to already exists in your chart of accounts.
• You have online banking credentials for the institution you want to connect.

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Connect via a certified aggregator

DualEntry connects to your bank through a certified third-party aggregator. The aggregator handles authentication with your bank and returns a secure access token to DualEntry - you never paste banking credentials into the DualEntry interface. To connect a bank account:

1. Navigate to Company → Bank Connections in the DualEntry sidebar.
2. Click Add Bank Connection. DualEntry opens the aggregator’s hosted flow in a new window.
3. Search for your bank, then sign in with your online banking credentials.
4. Select the accounts you want to connect. You can connect multiple accounts from the same institution in a single flow.
5. After approval, the aggregator redirects back to DualEntry. Each selected account appears in the Bank Connections list with a status of Connected.

The aggregator’s coverage determines whether your bank is supported. If you cannot find your institution in the search step, your bank is not currently supported by the aggregator and you should use the manual upload path instead. For details on the three connection paths and how DualEntry handles aggregator-side outages, see Banking Connections: Paths, Sync, and Security.

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Upload bank statements manually

If your bank is not supported by the aggregator, or you prefer to upload statements manually, use CSV or BAI import from Bank Match instead. Manual statement uploads rely on you to provide transaction data on a regular cadence. The bank is not polled automatically. To upload a CSV or BAI bank statement:

1. Open Close Workflows → Bank Match from the sidebar.
2. Select the bank account from the account bar at the top of the Bank Match page.
3. Open the To Match tab.
4. On the Bank Statement Lines side of the page, click Upload statement.
5. In the side drawer, download the template if you need to reformat the statement into the accepted format.
6. Drag and drop the CSV or BAI file into the drawer, or click to select the file from your computer.

Manual uploads do not refresh automatically. Upload a new file each time you want to bring in recent activity, at minimum monthly by the 5th business day of the following month if you want reconciliation to stay current. Once uploaded, statement lines appear in Bank Match for the selected bank account, so reconciliation, rules, and bank match use the same downstream workflow regardless of how the data arrived.

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GL mapping and feed frequency

Every bank connection must be mapped to exactly one GL account. This mapping determines where transactions appear in your ledger and which account is reconciled during bank reconciliation. To configure or change the mapping:

1. Open Company → Bank Connections.
2. Select the connection you want to configure.
3. Under GL Account, choose the cash or liability account from the dropdown.
4. Save.

If you change the GL mapping after transactions have already been imported, existing transactions keep their original GL account. Only new transactions use the updated mapping. Aggregator-backed connections refresh automatically. DualEntry pulls new transactions at the cadence supported by the aggregator, typically daily. You can also trigger a manual refresh from the Bank Connections screen by selecting Refresh Now on any connection - DualEntry enforces a one-hour cooldown between manual refreshes per connection to limit aggregator throttling. Feed latency depends on the institution. Most banks make transactions available within one business day, but some post with a two-day delay. Pending transactions (authorizations not yet settled) are excluded from the feed to avoid matching against amounts that may change.

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Manage, disconnect, and reconnect

The Bank Connections list shows the status, last sync time, and GL account for every active connection. To keep things organized, name each connection with the institution and last four digits of the account number (for example, “Chase ••1234”). DualEntry doesn’t enforce a naming convention, but a consistent pattern makes it easier to identify connections at a glance. To disconnect a bank connection:

1. Open Company → Bank Connections.
2. Select the connection and choose Disconnect.
3. Confirm the action.

Disconnecting stops future syncs but does not remove previously imported transactions or reconciliation history. The connection becomes inactive in the list, and any GL accounts it mapped to are unlinked from the disconnected feed but otherwise unchanged. To reconnect the same account, start a new connection through Add Bank Connection - DualEntry creates a fresh connection rather than reactivating the old one. You will need to re-map the new connection’s accounts to the same GL accounts to keep the reconciliation history continuous.

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After connecting

After you connect through an aggregator or upload a statement manually, bank transactions are ready for matching and reconciliation. For an aggregator-backed connection, the first sync begins immediately and typically completes within a few minutes. Transactions then continue to flow on the aggregator’s regular cadence with no further action required. For manual statement uploads, new activity appears only after you upload the next CSV or BAI file. The Bank Connections screen serves as your central dashboard for monitoring sync status, troubleshooting feed issues, and managing GL mappings across all connected accounts. If a connection stops syncing or enters an error state, the dashboard surfaces the issue immediately so you can reconnect before it affects your reconciliation workflow. You can also use the dashboard to verify that each connection’s GL mapping is correct and that sync timestamps are current. As your organization grows, you can add new connections at any time without disrupting existing ones. Each new connection begins syncing independently and populates its own staging area for reconciliation. For the next step in the workflow, see How to Reconcile Bank Accounts to match imported transactions against your ledger. For details on how DualEntry’s AI accelerates the matching process, see Bank Match AI.