Yodlee & Xero bank feed- is it secure?

Starting using Xero

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I am starting to use Xero for my small little fledgling practice so i can become familiar with it before I offer it as a service to prospective clients.

Does anyone have any experience of using Yodlee to feed bank transactions into Xero. The advantage is there is no supposedly no charge whereas Xero charge £3/month per bank account

Thanks

Replies (24)

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Tamsin Mustafa
By Tasnim Mustafa
24th Jan 2017 17:52

Yodlee is typically very unreliable for us. We always try to get direct bank feeds (and pay the £3 fee) as it saves us time in trying to fix Yodlee issues, so ultimately it's worth it for us. Not sure what others think??

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Replying to Tasnim Mustafa:
By petersaxton
24th Jan 2017 18:21

I agree with you.
Who would worry about £3 per month!?

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By practiceperson
24th Jan 2017 18:55

i was always taught to look after the pennies and the pounds look after themselves...being a prudent southerner..
Thanks

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Replying to practiceperson:
By petersaxton
24th Jan 2017 20:41

So don't open a business bank account. It will be even cheaper. To hell with convenience!

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Glenn Martin
By Glenn Martin
24th Jan 2017 20:31

Defo go with the direct feeds if your bank account will allow, they are clearly the future.

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By marks
24th Jan 2017 21:01

But are direct feeds not restrictive. According to Xero the only main players offering direct feeds are; Barclays, HSBC, Natwest, RBS, Santander.

We are based in Scotland and a lot of our clients have accounts with Bank of Scotland, TSB and Clydesdale.

Tried to set up a feed yesterday for a client that uses Bank of Scotland and couldnt get it to work.

I guess the only other option is to use Yodlee or import QIF, OFX or CSV file.

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Replying to marks:
Glenn Martin
By Glenn Martin
24th Jan 2017 21:37

It's worth persevering with Xero tech support, I have a lot of Lloyds customers and they never work first time but once set up work fine.

Be much better if Lloyds would sort a direct feed out

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Replying to Glennzy:
By petersaxton
25th Jan 2017 11:12

I have been impressed by Xero technical support.
Are you talking about Yodlee? Because Lloyds Bank and Xero are only in discussions about feeds.

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Replying to petersaxton:
Glenn Martin
By Glenn Martin
25th Jan 2017 11:52

Yes had 3 clients back to back who started with Xero all with LLoyds bank and could not get yodlee feeds to work.

Took 2 or 3 times with Xero tech support to get it right but working ok now. I think there was something they had to tweak in the software to get it to work.

I would have thought LLoyds would have sorted it out now as they are the biggest bank not doing a direct feed.

I know its a big selling point that Santander push to new customers that they are Xero friendly.

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Replying to marks:
By petersaxton
25th Jan 2017 11:11

Banks and financial institutions that supply direct feeds to Xero:

Barclays Bank
HSBC
Metro Bank
NatWest
Royal Bank of Scotland
RBS International
Santander UK

Not yet supplying:

Bank of Scotland
Co-operative Bank
Coutts & Co.
First Direct
Halifax Bank
Lloyds Bank
Nationwide Building Society

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By chatman
25th Jan 2017 09:14

I recommend direct feeds to all my Xero clients. £3/month is peanuts and it is amazing how many of them refuse to click the "Refresh feed" button for over three months, thus necessitating a manual upload.

The other advantage of the direct feeds is that they are daily, so they make the client aware there are transactions to allocate, whereas if there is nothing there because the client has not refreshed the Yodlee feed, they can get very behind with their bookkeeping.

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By In a Daze
25th Jan 2017 10:30

If they are direct bank feeds these are safe. I would have issues with yodlee as you are giving your bank passwords etc to a third party.however, i don't believe any issues have been reported.

Best thing to do is check with the bank to make sure your client is covered if there are any breaches of security.

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Replying to In a Daze:
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By chatman
25th Jan 2017 10:43

In a Daze wrote:
Best thing to do is check with the bank to make sure your client is covered if there are any breaches of security

The bank will say no, regardless of whether that is true.

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Replying to chatman:
Glenn Martin
By Glenn Martin
25th Jan 2017 10:48

Banks are not a fan of Yodlee and will advise you that you use it at your peril which does scare clients off using them.

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By D Hassall
26th Jan 2017 10:10

Definitely use the direct feeds. Much more reliable and secure... worth very £!

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By PMST
26th Jan 2017 10:39

One thing to remember if you advising clients to use the direct or yodlee bank feeds is that providing third parties in this case Xero with bank password information could invalidate your ability to claim back from the bank if there was any hack into your account even if it was the banks fault as you are not supposed to share login details with third parties

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Replying to PMST:
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By raybackler
26th Jan 2017 11:10

I have to agree with PMST. Direct feeds are great, but are they secure and what would a bank's reaction be to passing login data to a third party?

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Replying to raybackler:
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By chatman
26th Jan 2017 11:53

raybackler wrote:

I have to agree with PMST. Direct feeds are great, but are they secure and what would a bank's reaction be to passing login data to a third party?

With direct feeds there is no third party.

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Replying to PMST:
By petersaxton
26th Jan 2017 11:39

You don't supply passwords with direct feeds. At least you don't have to if you complete a form.

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By PMST
26th Jan 2017 10:39

One thing to remember if you advising clients to use the direct or yodlee bank feeds is that providing third parties in this case Xero with bank password information could invalidate your ability to claim back from the bank if there was any hack into your account even if it was the banks fault as you are not supposed to share login details with third parties

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online accountant
By paulcolman
26th Jan 2017 10:40

I've been using Yodlee with Xero for years and it works great with most bank accounts. I occasionally have to re-enter the login details but usually just a refresh will get the account right up to date.

£3 per month per bank per client soon adds up.

I highly recommend Xero - see https://www.cloud-book.co.uk/accounting/online/xero-review/

Even a VAT inspector commented yesterday on how impressed he was with Xero.

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By User deleted
26th Jan 2017 12:16

Direct bank feeds are definitely better. Yodlee is OK but can be unreliable and 3-4 days late.

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By Cloudcounter
26th Jan 2017 13:31

Just to clarify, it isn't £3 per month per bank account. Some banks don't charge at all. Others charge a flat fee per month for any number of accounts.

HSBC was the original feed and they do charge per account but other banks are different.

Xero merely passes on what the banks charge

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By Charlie Carne
27th Jan 2017 00:09

I think that "practiceperson" may be confused about the different technologies. A number of the posts here have pointed out that direct feeds are better than Yodlee because they are more secure. To be clear, these are entirely different processes.

[NB I have used Xero as the example of accounting software, as that is the product used by practiceperson. However, exactly the same principles apply if you use any of the other major accounting software packages.]

With Yodlee, you supply Xero with your (or your client's) bank internet login ID and password. Yodlee then uses clever technology to mimic a web login, so that it can extract transaction data and feed it into Xero (it "pulls" the data from the bank). I have no problem trusting this system and the banks are well aware of it and have done nothing to persuade people not to use it. Technically, however, the account holder may be in breach of their conditions but, as no one has ever hacked Yodlee (as far as I know), no account has been compromised by this method and so the banks have no need to block its use. The main problem with Yodlee is that it is not 100% accurate in capturing all data. Occasionally some transactions may be missed or duplicated, which is why it is critical to regularly check the bank statement (whether on paper or by logging directly into the bank's own website) and reconcile to that.

Direct feeds are entirely different. Unlike Yodlee's "pull" method, direct feeds requires the customer to complete a form which is sent to the bank instructing them to "push" the data to Xero. Because the bank is complicit in sending the data to Xero (rather than Xero pulling it from the bank via a mimic of the web login process), it is much more secure. No password is required as Xero is not logging into the bank. Also, the data is much more accurate and there is much less risk of missing or duplicated data. Finally, because the bank is agreeing to send the data to Xero, you cannot possibly be in breach of any of their conditions.

There are only two reasons not to use direct feeds:
(i) if your bank does not yet offer them; or
(ii) if you are too cheap to spend £3 for secure and accurate data.

In summary, if direct feeds are offered, I would take them every time. If they are not yet offered, I would not be concerned about using Yodlee. If, however, you can't (or won't) use direct feeds and are concerned about Yodlee, you always have the third option, which is to log into the bank's web site, download the data and then upload the file to Xero. This is very much slower and won't allow auto-updating of bank data in Xero, but it will get the data into Xero. Whichever of the three methods you use, the data is treated the same once it is in Xero.

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