Instead of downloading and uploading CSV files every week, you can connect your bank account directly to UrTravelPro Books. New transactions flow in automatically and balances update on every login.
Connecting Your Bank
Go to Banking and click Add Bank Feed.
A secure popup appears, powered by Plaid — the same provider used by Venmo, Robinhood, and most major fintech apps. Search for your bank.
Sign in with your normal online banking credentials. Your password goes directly to Plaid — UrTravelPro Books never sees or stores your bank password.
Choose which accounts to share (checking, savings, credit cards). You can pick one or all.
Back in Books, the mapping wizard walks you through linking each bank account to a book account — either an existing one or a new one created automatically.
Choose how much history to import: only new transactions going forward, from a specific date, or up to 24 months of history.
Books pulls in your transactions immediately. For accounts with lots of history this can take up to a minute.
Finally, the opening balance step asks you to confirm the balance on the day before your earliest imported transaction. We pre-fill this with your current bank balance minus the imported activity, so most people just click Save & View Account.
How Often Transactions Sync
Bank feeds use a "push" model: your bank tells us when there's something new, and we pull it in within seconds. There is no fixed schedule.
However, the bank itself only refreshes its own data 1–4 times per day — that's your bank's schedule, not ours. So a transaction you make at 2pm might not appear in Books until that night or the next morning, depending on when your bank publishes it. Same delay you'd see in Mint, Wave, or any other tool that uses bank feeds.
How Balances Refresh
The "At Bank" balance you see on the Banking page is refreshed in two ways:
Automatically on login — the first time you log in each day, we refresh balances in the background. Subsequent logins the same day don't trigger a refresh, so you don't burn through API calls.
Manually via the refresh button — click the circular refresh icon on a bank account card any time you want a live balance. Manual refresh is limited to 1 click per account per day.
Books does not auto-refresh balances overnight — that would be wasteful for accounts that aren't actively used. Your transactions still flow in via the push mechanism above; only the live balance check is tied to your activity.
"In Books" vs. "At Bank" Balance
For accounts with a connected feed, you'll see two balances side by side:
In Books — what your books say the balance should be, based on transactions you've reviewed and approved.
At Bank — what your bank actually shows right now, fetched live the last time we refreshed.
If these match, your books are up to date. If they don't match, it usually means there are pending or unreviewed transactions in Books, or your bank has activity from today that hasn't fully posted yet.
Reconnecting a Bank Feed
Banks occasionally invalidate the connection — usually because you changed your password, the bank requires a new MFA challenge, or your consent expired (some banks require re-consenting every 90 days for legal reasons).
When this happens, Books shows an amber banner at the top of the Banking page: "X bank feeds need attention." Click Reconnect next to the affected bank, sign back in through Plaid, and the connection resumes immediately. No transactions are lost — the next sync picks up everything that happened during the outage.
Disconnecting a Bank Feed
To stop syncing a bank feed, click the kebab menu (3 dots) on a bank account card and choose Disconnect Bank Feed. Books will:
Stop syncing new transactions immediately
Revoke our access token at Plaid
Keep all existing transactions in your books (they don't disappear)
Keep the connection history (so you have an audit trail)
Privacy & Security
UrTravelPro Books never sees, stores, or has access to your online banking username or password. You enter those directly into Plaid's secure popup.
All bank credentials are encrypted in Plaid's vault, not in Books.
Bank feeds are read-only — Books cannot move money, transfer funds, or modify anything at your bank. We only pull transaction history and balances.
You can revoke our access at any time from your bank's website or by clicking Disconnect inside Books.
Bank Feeds vs. CSV Imports
Bank Feeds — automatic, near-real-time, set up once, requires bank login via Plaid, Growth plan or above.
CSV Imports — manual, on-demand, available on all plans, no bank login required, works with any bank that exports CSV/QBO/OFX.
You can also mix both methods: connect a feed for your active checking account but keep CSV-importing a credit card that isn't supported. Books de-duplicates across both sources.