Connect your bank

Connect LHV, SEB, Swedbank, Luminor or Wise to Arvello through open banking (PSD2) — Estonian business transactions import automatically every six hours.

Arvello connects to your business bank account through open banking (PSD2), carried by Enable Banking, a regulated European account information provider. You authorise the connection at your bank using your normal login — your internet bank credentials are never shared with Arvello — and from then on transactions flow in by themselves.

Once connected, Arvello checks for new transactions automatically every six hours, and each bank account card has a Sync Now button for the moments when you have just been paid and want to see it.

Setting up the connection

Choose your bank

Go to Banking → Bank Accounts and select Connect Bank. Arvello shows the current list of banks available for Estonian business accounts, with a search box if yours is hiding. Pick your bank to begin.

Authorise at your bank

You are redirected to your bank's own authentication — typically Smart-ID, Mobile-ID or the bank's app. This is also where you choose which of your accounts to share. The consent screen mentions Enable Banking, the regulated provider that carries the connection on Arvello's behalf.

Let the first import run

Back in Arvello, each account you shared becomes its own bank account, and the first transaction import starts immediately. When it finishes you'll see which bank was connected, how many accounts came with it and how many transactions were imported. Each account then appears as a card under Bank Accounts showing its balance, transaction count and anything still unreconciled.

The first import reaches back up to a year (or to your opening balance date if that is more recent — anything earlier is already summarised in your opening balances). Some banks only release 90 days of history through open banking; when that happens Arvello fetches as far back as the bank allows, then compares the result with the date your books actually need transactions from. If the bank came up short, Arvello says so on the spot rather than leaving a silent hole — see the next section.

When the bank's history falls short

Arvello knows from your company setup which date your books need transactions from — the start of the first financial year Arvello files an annual report for, or the day Arvello went live, depending on your answer to the annual-report question (see Import your financial history). After the first import, that date is compared with how far back the bank's history actually reached.

If there is a shortfall, a missing history step appears right after the connection finishes, naming the exact period the bank didn't provide. The same warning stays on the bank account card until the period is dealt with, so nothing is lost by closing the page and coming back later. There are two ways to clear it:

Upload a statement covering the missing period. Internet-bank statement exports reach further back than the open banking interface does. The CSV import opens with the missing range named at the top, and reports afterwards whether the uploaded rows actually covered it.
Confirm the account had no transactions then. A recently opened account genuinely has no earlier history. Confirming this clears the warning and records the confirmation — and if a statement later proves otherwise, uploading it still works as normal.

A hole in the transaction history means wrong VAT returns and a wrong annual report for that period, which is why the shortfall is surfaced as a step of its own rather than a footnote.

Supported banks

The banks Estonian companies actually use are covered: LHV, Swedbank, SEB, Luminor, Coop and Wise among them, with more available through Enable Banking. The picker always shows the live list for Estonian business accounts, so it is the definitive answer on any given day. If your bank or payment provider isn't there, CSV import covers the gap.

Open banking access is time-limited by design: each authorisation is valid for 180 days, after which it has to be renewed at the bank.

⚠️Connections expire every 180 days

This is a PSD2 rule rather than an Arvello quirk. From two weeks before expiry, the bank account card shows "Bank connection expires soon — please reconnect" along with a Reconnect button; once the consent has lapsed, imports stop until you renew. Renewal is the same authorisation flow as the first connection and takes about a minute.

Renewing changes nothing about your data. Existing transactions, matches and categorisations are untouched, and because each import picks up where the last one left off, anything that arrived at the bank while the connection was expired is fetched on the next sync.

Multiple accounts and plan limits

Every account you share becomes a separate bank account in Arvello with its own card, transactions and reconciliation queue — useful if your company keeps, say, an LHV account for daily banking and a Wise account for international payments. One caveat: Arvello's books are kept in euros, so only euro accounts connect. If a consent includes balances in other currencies — common with Wise — those are skipped with a note on the confirmation screen, and the EUR balance connects as normal.

Each plan includes a number of bank connections: 1 on Solo, 3 on Growth and 5 on Business. On Growth and Business, additional connections cost €5/month each; on Solo, more connections mean moving up a plan. Your current usage and plan details live in Plans and billing.

Book balance vs bank balance

Each bank account in Arvello gets its own ledger account in the chart of accounts — a sub-account of the shared bank account, created automatically when the connection is made. From then on everything you reconcile on that account is booked against it, and its card under Bank Accounts shows two figures side by side: the book balance (what your accounting says the account holds) and the bank balance the bank last reported. When they agree, the card says so; a difference usually means transactions are still waiting in the reconciliation queue.

If your opening balances were set before the bank was connected, the whole opening bank figure starts out on the shared bank account. The Banking overview then offers to move each connected account's share onto its own ledger account — the suggested amount comes from the bank-reported balance, and you can adjust it before confirming. The move is an ordinary journal transfer, dated at your opening-balance cutover, and like any journal entry it can be reversed.

ℹ️Accounts connected earlier

Bank accounts connected before ledger accounts existed show an Enable account ledger button on their card instead. One click creates and links the ledger account; bookings route to it from then on, while older history stays on the shared bank account.

For accounts kept in another currency, the books stay in euros, so the card shows the euro book balance next to the bank's native-currency figure without computing a difference between the two.

Common questions

My connection says it has expired

The 180-day consent has run out. Select Reconnect on the bank account card and approve at your bank again. Nothing is lost — your history and reconciliation work stay exactly as they were, and the next import collects whatever arrived in the meantime.

Some transactions seem to be missing

The usual suspects, in order of likelihood:

Timing. Automatic syncs run every six hours, so a payment made an hour ago may simply not be in yet. Sync Now on the account card fetches it immediately.
Age. The first import reaches back up to a year. Some banks only release 90 days of history through open banking — when that happens, Arvello fetches as far back as the bank allows, and you can add the rest from a CSV statement on the same account. The card shows History from the earliest date it managed to pull, and if the shortfall reaches into a period your books need, a missing-history warning on the card names the exact range (see When the bank's history falls short above).
Your cutover date. Transactions dated on or before your opening balance cutover are deliberately skipped — that period is already represented in your opening balances, and importing it again would double-count. See Import your financial history.
Set-aside rows. Very rarely, a single transaction keeps failing to import while everything around it succeeds. After three failed attempts Arvello sets that row aside so the rest of your transactions keep syncing, and the bank account card shows a notice with a Review button — you can inspect the affected rows there and retry them with one click. Nothing is deleted; the row waits until it imports successfully.

Can I combine a CSV import with open banking?

Yes — a bank account in Arvello can hold both. If you started with a CSV import and later connect open banking for the same IBAN, Arvello links them into the one account instead of creating a duplicate. You can also upload a CSV to an account that already syncs through open banking, which is the usual way to backfill history older than the bank's API will return. When a CSV row matches a transaction the bank already provided (same date and amount), Arvello flags it as a likely duplicate in the import preview and leaves it unticked, so nothing is imported twice.