Learn - Bank Linking

Connecting your bank so you can pull transactions with Match Transactions.

Bank Linking

You can run Essential Budget without ever connecting a bank. Type each transaction in by hand, or upload a file when you remember. Many people do.

The reason to connect a bank is to avoid typing every transaction by hand. When a bank account is linked, the app can pull your posted bank transactions in batches when you run Match Transactions, match them against your planned events, and let you confirm them as a group. The bookkeeping moves to the side; the planning stays where you want your attention.

Bank linking is part of Premium. The free tier covers manual entry and file upload. See Subscription for what Premium includes.

Two layers, one mental model

Bank linking has two layers. They sit at different scopes:

Linked Accounts (your user account). This is the link to the bank itself, owned by you, not by any one budget. You manage it in Settings, in the Linked Accounts card. You can connect new banks here at any time, and you can disconnect any of them.
Per-budget account linking. This is the binding from a specific Plaid account (say, the Chase Checking that the bank exposed) to a specific account inside a specific budget. The binding is set up once, when the budget is created, and stays for the life of that budget.

Both layers happen the first time you link a bank to a new budget. After that, the user-account layer is something you manage day to day; the per-budget binding is fixed.

Connecting a bank to your account

Open Settings. Find the Linked Accounts card.

If you have not connected any banks yet, the card shows the empty state with a Connect Your First Bank button. If you have connected one or more before, the card lists them, with a small + button at the top right for adding another.

Tap the button. Plaid opens. Pick your bank, sign in to your bank’s site through Plaid’s window, and choose which of the bank’s accounts you want the app to see. When Plaid finishes, the bank appears in the Linked Accounts card with the accounts you authorized listed under it.

A healthy bank shows nothing extra on the right of its row, just the red trash icon. A bank that needs you to sign in again shows a primary Reconnect button next to the trash icon. A bank you revoked at your bank’s site shows a Disabled chip alongside the Reconnect button: the chip explains the state, the button is the path forward.

Linking accounts to a budget

The link from the bank to a specific budget is set up only when the budget is created.

Open the Budgets page and tap Create Budget. Fill in the budget name and basics. With Premium and at least one connected bank, the dialog shows a small two-segment switch with Connect Bank and Upload File. If you have already connected a bank, Connect Bank is selected by default.

Pick which of your connected accounts the new budget should pull from. You can pick up to five. When you save, those accounts are bound to the new budget’s accounts. The app pulls the last six months of transactions through Plaid and uses them to build the budget.

Why is per-budget linking only at budget creation? Bringing a fresh bank into a budget that has been running for months would force decisions about every existing transaction, every starting balance, and every item the user has been maintaining: keep them, replace them, trust the bank, or trust the existing budget. The answers are case by case and easy to get wrong. Starting fresh keeps the picture clean. If you want a budget that uses Plaid and the current one does not, the move is to create a new budget on the Connect Bank path and migrate or recreate items there.

Why can’t a budget with multiple owners use Plaid? Bank-imported data carries account ownership and consent obligations. As long as a budget has more than one owner, the app cannot tell whose bank data is whose, and that is the kind of thing the law cares about. Sharing a budget as edit or view is fine; promoting a teammate to owner is what the restriction is about. If you need a Plaid budget shared, keep yourself as the only owner and grant edit access to everyone else who needs to work in it.

What gets imported, when

When you connect a new bank during budget creation, the app imports the last six months of transactions for the accounts you picked. That is the initial pull, and it happens once.

After that, pulls happen at one moment:

When you tap Match Transactions on the planner toolbar, the app asks Plaid for whatever has changed since the last pull, then opens the Match Transactions dialog with possible matches against your scheduled events.

There is no background sync running on a fixed schedule. The app does not pull at midnight, does not pull when you open the app, does not pull when a webhook from Plaid arrives. The only way new transactions enter the app from your bank is the Match Transactions button.

Pending charges (the ones that show on your bank but have not posted yet) are skipped on purpose. Once your bank posts the charge, the next Match Transactions run picks it up.

Bank balances are not pulled in the background either: the app does not silently update your account balance behind your back. See Accounts for how the app’s running balance and the bank’s number relate.

The full matching flow, including the projected-balance preview and what gets recorded when you confirm, is in Matching and Resolving.

When a connection breaks

Banks rotate sessions, expire tokens, and force re-logins. When that happens, the bank’s row on Linked Accounts shows a primary Reconnect button on the right.

Tap Reconnect. Plaid opens with your bank pre-selected; sign in again. The Reconnect button goes away once the bank is healthy, and the next time you tap Match Transactions, pulls resume. Past transactions are not affected; the bank just needed you to confirm it was still you.

Why doesn’t the app fix this on its own? The bank is the one asking you to sign in again, and “the app says it’s fine” is not an answer the bank accepts. Reconnecting is a conversation between you and your bank; the app’s job is to show the prompt clearly and stay out of the way.

While you’re reconnecting, Plaid may show a list of the accounts at your bank with checkboxes for which to share. You can add a checking or savings account that wasn’t shared before, or uncheck one you no longer want shared. The app picks up the change automatically: a freshly shared account appears in Linked Accounts and is available the next time you create a budget on the Connect Bank path; an account you unchecked is removed along with its synced transactions. Budgets that were already linked to a still-shared account keep working without interruption.

If you tap Match Transactions on the planner before noticing the prompt elsewhere, the matching flow shows it for you: instead of opening with your transactions, it tells you the bank connection needs to be updated and names the bank. Tap Match Transactions again after reconnecting and the matching flow continues normally.

When Reconnect can’t fix it

Some bank states cannot be repaired through the Reconnect flow. The most common is when you revoked the app’s access at your bank’s website (rather than letting your session simply expire). In that case the bank no longer recognizes the original connection at all, so signing in again would not restore it.

If you tap Reconnect on one of these banks, the app shows a yellow toast: “This bank can’t be reconnected automatically. Tap the trash icon to disconnect it, then tap the plus icon to add it again.” The two-step path is the right one here: disconnect the bank from your Linked Accounts card, then tap the + at the top right and link it as if for the first time. Your existing budgets and their transaction history are not affected by the disconnect; only future pulls were already paused while the bank was disabled.

Notifications you may see

When Plaid tells the app that a bank’s connection has changed, the app posts a notification to your Notifications hub. Four Plaid notifications can fire:

Bank Reconnection Needed. The bank has asked you to sign in again. The body reads “[your bank] needs to be reconnected to keep your transactions in sync.”
Bank Access Revoked. Permission for the bank was revoked, either at the bank’s website or through Plaid. The body reads “Access to [your bank] was revoked at your bank. Re-grant permission there, then reconnect to resume syncing.” If tapping Reconnect does not work for this bank (see When Reconnect can’t fix it above), the path is to disconnect and re-add.
Bank Connection Expiring. The bank’s consent window is closing soon (some banks require periodic re-authorization even if you have not changed anything). The body reads “Your connection to [your bank] is expiring soon. Reconnect to keep transactions syncing.”
Bank Connection Restored. Plaid recovered the connection on its own (sometimes a hiccup at your bank resolves itself before you have to do anything). The body reads “[your bank] reconnected automatically. No action needed.”

The first three notifications clear themselves the moment a successful Reconnect completes (or, in the revoked case, when you re-add the bank). You do not have to dismiss them by hand.

If you have push notifications turned on, a broken connection also alerts your devices directly: the reconnection and expiry notices arrive as push notifications, so you find out without having the app open. See Push notifications and alerts for setup.

Disconnecting a bank

Open Settings, Linked Accounts, and tap the red trash icon on the right of the bank’s row.

A confirmation dialog opens with the title Disconnect Bank and the prompt Are you sure you want to disconnect [bank name]? Tap Disconnect to confirm.

After disconnecting:

The bank is removed from your Linked Accounts card. New transactions stop pulling.
The app tells Plaid to drop its side of the connection too, so Plaid stops watching the accounts you authorized.
Existing transactions in your budgets stay where they are. Your account balances are correct because the transactions are still recorded; only future pulls stop.
If a budget was using this bank as its only Plaid source, the Match Transactions button keeps working for file uploads, or you can switch to manual entry going forward.

If you disconnected by accident, you can reconnect from the same screen. Tap the + button at the top right of the Linked Accounts card, pick the same institution, and re-authorize the same accounts. Past transactions are unaffected; the connection resumes pulling new ones from now forward.

Unlinking a single account from a single budget

There is a second, narrower control for removing one Plaid account from one budget without disconnecting the whole bank from your user account.

Open Setup, then Accounts. Tap the linked account, then Edit Account. The form has a Bank Connection section with an Unlink button. Tap it. The dialog Unlink Bank Connection confirms what’s about to happen; tap Unlink Account.

After unlinking:

New bank transactions stop being pulled for this budget account. The bank is still connected to your user account, so other budgets that bind to it are unaffected.
The transactions you have already imported into this budget stay where they are. Your balance and history are not changed.
You cannot re-bind a Plaid account to a budget account that is already running. To use Plaid again with this account, the path is to create a new budget on the Connect Bank path.

Disconnect or Unlink? Disconnect removes the bank from your user account; every budget that was using it stops pulling. Unlink removes the binding from one budget account; the bank stays connected and other budgets keep working. Use Unlink when you want one specific budget to stop pulling one specific account. Use Disconnect when you are done with that bank entirely.

What happens when Premium ends

Bank linking is a Premium feature. While your subscription is active, the Linked Accounts card is visible in Settings and pulls run when you tap Match Transactions.

If your Premium subscription ends:

Every connected bank is disconnected. Each bank link is removed from your account, and the app tells Plaid to drop its side of the connection too. The Linked Accounts card is hidden from Settings while you are on the free tier.
Bank-linked accounts in your budgets are unlinked. The accounts themselves stay; their tie to a Plaid account is cleared.
The Match Transactions button no longer pulls from the bank. The button itself stays available for file uploads.
Existing transactions in your budgets stay where they are. Account balances, history, and past matches are unchanged. The records you already have are yours.

When you renew Premium, you re-connect each bank from Settings, Linked Accounts, then tap the + button at the top right. Past data is unaffected; pulls resume the next time you tap Match Transactions once a bank is re-connected.

Privacy and what data leaves your bank

Plaid is the bridge. Your bank credentials never reach the app’s servers; they go from you to Plaid to your bank. The access tokens Plaid hands back are encrypted before they are stored.

The app sees the accounts you authorized through Plaid, the transactions on those accounts (description, amount, date, and the merchant name when Plaid has one), and the basic balance information Plaid exposes. When you disconnect a bank or unlink an account, the app stops pulling new data and tells Plaid to drop its side, but the historical transactions you already imported stay in the budget. They are part of your records; the unlink does not delete them.

A budget that has ever contained Plaid-imported data cannot be made public. The block is permanent: even if you later unlink every Plaid account, the budget stays ineligible for the public gallery. See Public Budgets for what publishing means and why this restriction exists.

Behind the scenes

Skim this section if you are curious; nothing here is required to use the feature.

The first pull is a fixed window of about six months of history. Every subsequent pull is incremental: the app keeps a Plaid-issued cursor for each bank and asks Plaid only for what changed since that cursor (new transactions, modified ones, removed ones). That is how Match Transactions stays fast even on a long-running budget when you run it a week after the last pull.

Plaid sometimes marks a transaction as removed (a posted charge that was reversed before the bank finished posting it, for example). When the next pull receives a removed entry, the app deletes the matching row from its store. If a transaction “disappears” between two Match runs, that is the explanation; nothing was lost on your side.

If your bank corrects a transaction (a typo in the merchant name, a re-categorization, a posted amount that differed from the authorization), Plaid sends the change as a modification. The app updates its row to match; if you had already matched the transaction to a budget event, the existing match stays in place.

Plaid sends webhooks to the app whenever a connection changes status (login required, consent expiring, permission revoked at your bank, or a self-heal). The app turns those into the notifications you see in the Notifications hub. Plaid’s “new transactions available” webhooks, by contrast, are not used to pull on your behalf: the app only pulls when you tap Match Transactions.

Quick reference

If you want to…	Do this
Connect a bank to your user account	Settings, Linked Accounts, tap the + button at the top right
See which banks you have connected	Settings, Linked Accounts
Use a connected bank for a new budget	Budgets, Create Budget, choose Connect Bank, pick accounts
Re-authorize an expired connection	Settings, Linked Accounts, Reconnect on the bank’s row
Disconnect a bank from your user account	Settings, Linked Accounts, trash icon on the bank’s row
Unlink one Plaid account from one budget	Setup, Accounts, Edit Account, Unlink
Pull new bank transactions on demand	Match Transactions button on the planner toolbar
Stop bank pulls without disconnecting	Cancel Premium (every bank is disconnected; re-link after renewing)

Accounts: how account balances behave when an account is linked.
Matching and Resolving: what happens after the Match Transactions button pulls.
File Uploads: the manual alternative to Plaid for getting transactions into a budget.
Notifications: where bank-connection prompts show up alongside other inbox items.
Public Budgets: why a budget that ever had Plaid data cannot be published.
Subscription: what Premium covers and how billing works.