Connect your bank

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

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.

Consent expiry and renewal

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.

Renewing changes nothing about your data. Existing transactions, matches and categorisations are untouched, and the next sync picks up where the last one left off, fetching whatever arrived at the bank while the connection was expired — as long as your bank still shares transactions that far back.

After a long lapse it may not: some banks share only the last 90 days or so through open banking. Arvello then imports the most recent year, 180 days or 90 days the bank will share, so new transactions keep coming, and names the dates in between that it couldn't fetch. They appear in the step right after you reconnect and stay on the bank account card until they're dealt with, with two options: upload a statement covering them, or confirm nothing is missing from those dates (any transactions the earlier syncs already imported stay as they are). Reconnecting soon after the expiry notice avoids the gap altogether.

How you're told a connection has expired

A connection can also end before the 180 days are up, for example when the access is withdrawn in your internet bank. Either way, as soon as Arvello notices, usually within six hours, it stops trying to sync that account and lets you know:

• a notification under the bell icon (Notifications), linking to Bank Accounts
• an email to the company's primary owner, listing the accounts that stopped syncing, followed by a reminder email once a week until they're reconnected or disconnected
• a banner at the top of Bank Accounts naming each account, with Reconnect and Disconnect buttons next to it

The banner stays until you reconnect or disconnect. The notification clears itself as soon as no account is waiting to be reconnected, whether you reconnected, disconnected or deleted each one. Members who can't manage banking, such as a Viewer, see the banner without the buttons and are asked to have someone who manages banking act on it.

Disconnecting a bank account

If you no longer use an account (it was closed, or you've moved banks), choose Disconnect in the banner or in the card's ⋯ menu. Disconnecting:

• stops syncing the account and stops the reminder emails
• frees the bank connection on your plan, so it no longer counts towards what's included or towards any extra-connection charge
• keeps every transaction, match and booking the account brought in, and its ledger account in the chart of accounts

A disconnected account stays on Bank Accounts, marked Disconnected, and you can still open its transactions and finish reconciling them. Nothing new comes in: it isn't synced, it takes no CSV uploads, and it isn't offered when you record a payment by hand. To use it again, select Reconnect on its card and approve at your bank. Its history continues on the same account. Reconnecting takes up a bank connection on your plan again, so it needs a free one.

Disconnect isn't the same as Delete. Deleting removes the bank account from Bank Accounts altogether. The transactions it imported stay in your books and under All Transactions, but the account can't be reconnected: connecting the bank again creates a new bank account.

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. Balances in other currencies (common with Wise) connect too, each as its own bank account, and the confirmation screen says how many. Each is booked in its own currency, on a ledger account of its own in that currency, with every movement converted to euros at the European Central Bank rate for its day (see Accounts in other currencies). A balance the bank gives no IBAN for (a Wise USD balance has account and routing numbers instead) isn't connected yet, and its history isn't fetched.

Each plan includes a number of bank connections: 1 on Solo, 3 on Growth and 5 on Business. Each currency balance counts as its own connection, so a Wise account with EUR and GBP balances uses two; when you connect, euro accounts take the free places first. On Growth and Business, additional connections cost €5/month each; on Solo, more connections mean moving up a plan. An expired connection still counts until you reconnect or disconnect it. Your current usage and plan details live in Plans and billing.

Your bank balance in the books

Arvello keeps a separate balance for each bank account in your books, so it can tell you when the books and the bank disagree. There's nothing to set up: each account gets its own place in the books when you connect it, and one that somehow has none gets it the next time you sync it or upload a statement.

Each account's card under Bank Accounts shows two figures:

• At the bank: the balance your bank last reported, with its date.
• In your books: what your bookkeeping says the account holds.

When they agree, the card says Matches the bank. When they don't, it says how much is not in your books yet (or how much more your books show than the bank), and links to the account's transactions still waiting to be matched. Matching them usually closes the gap. If you upload statements without balances, the card shows only the books figure, since there's nothing from the bank to compare it with.

Until your starting balance is confirmed (see below), the card doesn't compare the two figures either: the opening money is already in your books, just not tied to an account yet, so matching transactions wouldn't close the gap. The same goes for an account that had matched transactions before it got its own balance in the books, since those earlier transactions aren't counted in its figure. And if your books already hold transactions dated after the bank's latest balance (a payment you recorded before the statement arrived, say), the card asks you to sync or upload a newer statement first, rather than comparing figures from two different dates.

For an account kept in another currency, the card compares the two in that currency: a Wise GBP balance shows pounds at the bank, pounds in your books and any difference in pounds. The dashboard counts its cash at the latest European Central Bank rate.

Your starting balance

You enter your opening balances before connecting a bank, so they say how much the company had in the bank on your opening-balance date, but not which account it was in. Once an account is connected, Bank Accounts asks you to confirm it:

• One bank account: it asks whether all of it was in that account. Confirm with one click, or select Enter a different amount if part of it was in an account you haven't connected yet.
• Several bank accounts: it asks how much was in each, and shows what's left to assign.

Where the bank has reported a balance, Arvello suggests the amount from it. Confirming moves that amount to the account in your books, dated on your opening-balance date (or today, if that financial year is closed). It doesn't change your total cash, your profit or any tax return. Like any journal entry it can be reversed from the general ledger, and the question then comes back. If you later correct your opening balances, the confirmed amounts are cleared and you're asked again.

Common questions

My connection says it has expired

The 180-day consent has run out, or your bank has ended the access early. Select Reconnect in the banner at the top of Bank Accounts or on the bank account card, and approve at your bank again. Nothing already imported is lost — your history and reconciliation work stay exactly as they were, and the next import collects whatever arrived in the meantime, as far back as your bank still shares. If it no longer shares all of it, the card names the missing dates (see Consent expiry and renewal above).

The sync keeps failing

A failed sync is retried automatically, and the card says so. If your bank says the access has ended (for example, it was withdrawn at the bank), retrying won't help: the connection is marked as expired straight away, you're notified as described above, and the card offers Reconnect in place of View Transactions. If the bank refuses access for some other reason, the sync keeps retrying, and the card offers Reconnect too. Reconnecting is the same flow as renewing an expired consent, and nothing already imported is lost. Other failures, such as a temporary outage at the bank, clear on a later sync without reconnecting.

I cancelled at the bank, or the connection didn't finish

Nothing was connected. Choose Try Again to start over, or import a CSV statement instead.

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).
• A long break in syncing. If the connection was expired for months before you reconnected, your bank may no longer share the transactions from that break. The bank account card then shows a warning naming the dates; a CSV statement covering them fills the gap.
• 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.