Check whether your bank feed is working

Flowtly Editorial Team4 min

A bank connection can stop working without anyone doing anything wrong. A PSD2 consent expires, a bank withdraws access, or a reconnection does not complete the way it looked like it did. When that happens the transactions simply stop arriving, and a quiet transaction list looks much the same as a quiet month at the bank.

Flowtly tells the two apart. It reports one of three states for every connected bank, and each one asks something different of you.

The three states

Working. Flowtly reached your bank recently and your accounts came back. Transactions are arriving. Nothing to do.

Cannot tell. The connection has not proved itself recently. This is not the same as broken — a bank can be briefly unreachable, a connection can be newly made and not yet used, and Flowtly deliberately waits before requesting data again after your bank asks it to slow down. Your data is probably fine. Flowtly says so rather than claiming everything is healthy, because a connection that quietly stopped working looks identical from the outside until you check.

Not working. Flowtly knows the connection is broken. Your bank has refused it — usually because the consent you gave has expired, which by law it does periodically, or because it was withdrawn. No new transactions are arriving, and none will until you reconnect.

What to do about each

If a bank shows as not working, reconnect it from Connect to Kontomatik. You will be asked to log in to your bank again and confirm access, exactly as you did the first time. Reconnecting does not create duplicates: Flowtly recognizes transactions it already has.

If a bank shows as cannot tell, you can usually wait. The state clears by itself the next time Flowtly successfully reads your accounts, which normally happens within a day. It is worth reconnecting only if it persists, or if you can see that transactions you expect are missing.

Why "cannot tell" exists at all

It would be simpler to show only connected or disconnected. Flowtly does not, and the reason is worth knowing, because it explains why the product is occasionally cautious about a connection that turns out to be fine.

The two mistakes do not cost the same. Telling you a working feed is broken costs you a reconnection you did not strictly need — a few minutes. Telling you a broken feed is working costs you transactions that never arrive, and those gaps are not recoverable later: once Flowtly has moved past a period, it does not go back and re-ask for it. By the time the absence is noticeable, the data is gone.

So Flowtly never reports a connection as working on the strength of it having been set up. It reports it as working only when your bank has actually answered and returned your accounts. Anything less honest than that produces silent gaps in your financial records, which is the one outcome an accounting system must not produce.

Checking a suspicion

If you think transactions are missing, compare Flowtly against your bank statement for the same period rather than relying on the transaction list alone. A genuine gap and a genuinely quiet month look identical in a list, and the connection state is what distinguishes them.

An account that is simply dormant stays working. Flowtly asks your bank about the account itself, not only about new transactions, so an account with no activity still proves the connection is alive.

Connection map

Refers toUses upDerived fromPart of
Documented hereDocumented elsewhere
invoice billed to counterparty. invoice taxed by tax-group. cost spends against budget. cost owed to counterparty. bank-transaction reconciled to invoice. bank-connection imports bank-transaction. contract schedules payment-schedule-line. contract agreed with counterparty. contract attached to budget. budget covers project. invoice billed from project. project linked to budget. lead becomes counterparty. deal sold to counterparty.billed totaxed byspends againstowed toreconciled toimportsschedulesagreed withattached tocoversbilled fromlinked tobecomessold toIInvoice — A sales document issued to a client: line items, dates, tax. It is created, reviewed, previewed and then sent.InvoiceCCounterparty — The other side of a financial document — a client billed, or a supplier owed.CounterpartyTTax group — The tax treatment applied to a line, so rates are set once rather than per document.Tax groupCCost — Money the organisation owes or has spent, tracked against a budget.CostBBudget — The financial envelope an engagement is measured against — what was planned, versus what has actually been spent.BudgetBBank transaction — A movement on a connected bank account. Matching it to an invoice or a cost is what makes the books agree with the bank.Bank transactionBBank connection — The consented link to one bank that transactions arrive through. It can stop working on its own — a consent expires or is withdrawn — so it reports whether it is still working.Bank connectionCContract — The financial terms of an engagement: a structured set of payment schedule lines, in one direction or the other.ContractPPayment schedule line — One dated amount on a contract, in a direction — money owed to a supplier, or due from a client.Payment schedule linePProject — The core organizational unit for a business initiative, client engagement or internal work. Everything tracked — time, cost, invoicing, profitability — hangs off one.ProjectPProspect — A company you are working but that is not a customer yet. It sits at New, Contacted or Qualified, and everything done to it is logged against it.ProspectDDeal — A sale in progress: a customer, an amount, and the stage it has reached. It cannot exist without a customer, and its stage is never blank.Deal