Bank Connections

Bank connections let Tally Up automatically fetch transactions from your bank accounts and investment platforms. Rather than importing files manually, you connect a provider once and Tally Up keeps your assets up to date in the background.

Supported providers

Provider	Best for
Interactive Brokers	Investment and brokerage accounts at IBKR
Lunch Flow	Worldwide bank accounts via Lunch Flow’s open banking aggregator

Each provider requires a short one-off setup in the provider’s own website, after which Tally Up handles syncing automatically.

How it works

Bank connections have three layers:

A saved connection — stores the provider type, an optional name, and the last-known status. This record syncs across your devices via iCloud so that all your devices know a connection exists.
Credentials — your API key or access token, stored in the secure Keychain on each device. Credentials are never uploaded to any server and do not sync to other devices. If you sign in on a second device, you enter the credentials there too.
Linked assets — each bank account is linked to a Tally Up asset. One saved connection can serve multiple accounts (and therefore multiple assets) at the same provider.

Setting up a connection

1. Add a saved connection

Open Settings → Bank Connections and tap Add Connection.

Select a provider, give the connection an optional name, then enter the credentials for that provider. Tap Test Connection to verify the credentials work, then tap Save Connection.

See the provider-specific guides for what credentials you need and how to obtain them:

2. Link the connection to an asset

Once you have a saved connection, open the asset you want to link and go to its editor. In the Banking section, select the saved connection and then choose which account at that provider maps to this asset.

Each asset links to exactly one account. If you have multiple accounts at the same provider — for example, a cash account and an investment account — set up one asset per account and point each asset at the right account within the same saved connection.

Automatic refresh

Settings → Bank Connections includes an Enable Background Refresh toggle. When this is on, Tally Up fetches new transactions automatically:

On launch — when you open the app, linked assets are refreshed.
Periodically — Tally Up schedules background refreshes while the app is not in use.

Turning this off stops all automatic syncing. You can still trigger a manual refresh at any time by opening an asset’s transactions screen and tapping the ↺ button in the toolbar.

You can see the last sync time and health of each provider in Settings → Bank Connections under Provider Status.

Managing connections

Testing a connection

In Settings → Bank Connections, tap a saved connection and then Test Connection. Tally Up authenticates with the provider and shows success or an error message.

Revoking credentials

If you want to remove your credentials from this device without deleting the connection record, tap Revoke Connection. The connection metadata remains (and continues syncing via iCloud) but no further syncing happens on this device until credentials are entered again.

Deleting a connection

Tap Delete Connection to remove the saved connection entirely. Assets that were linked to it will show as disconnected — their existing transactions are not affected, but automatic syncing stops.

Credentials and privacy

By connecting a provider, you authorise Tally Up to retrieve the account, balance, and transaction data made available through that provider. Your use of the provider, including any connection it maintains with your bank or brokerage, remains governed by the provider’s terms and privacy policy.
Credentials (API keys, access tokens, and query identifiers) are stored in the device Keychain only. They are sent directly to the selected provider when required to authenticate a request, but are never sent to Tally Up’s servers or shared with unrelated third parties.
Retrieved financial data is stored in Tally Up to support transaction history, balances, reports, and forecasts. Imported transactions and related metadata may sync across your devices through your private iCloud account.
The saved connection record (provider name, status, timestamps) syncs via iCloud, but contains no credentials.
On a second device, you will see the saved connection listed but marked Credentials required on this device. Enter your credentials there to enable syncing on that device.

Tally Up does not initiate bank connections, payments, transfers, withdrawals, or trades through these integrations. You can stop future access by revoking the connection in Tally Up or by deleting, rotating, or regenerating the relevant credential in the provider’s service. Revoking access does not delete data already imported into Tally Up.

See Privacy and your data for more information about local processing and iCloud sync.

Balance reconciliation

After each sync, Tally Up checks that the imported transactions are consistent with the balance reported by the bank:

Previous balance + net of imported transactions = expected balance

The expected balance is compared against the balance the bank reports for that account. If the two match (within a small rounding tolerance), the sync is considered clean.

If there is a discrepancy — for example, because the bank holds transactions that fall outside the sync window, or because a pending transaction settled differently from how it was first reported — Tally Up records the difference and surfaces it as a Pending Transactions entry at the top of the asset’s transaction list. This entry shows the amount of the discrepancy and a note with the full calculation, for example:

Previous £1,200.00 + inserted £−85.50 = £1,114.50, feed returned £1,118.00.

This entry is not a real transaction — it is a balance adjustment placeholder that keeps the running balance in the transaction list accurate while the discrepancy exists. It is cleared automatically on the next successful sync if the balance reconciles.

Common causes of a persistent discrepancy include transactions that are not covered by your Flex Query sections (IBKR), accounts in Lunch Flow that have pending items affecting the reported balance, a sync window that does not reach far enough back to capture all activity, or banks whose balance as reported by the aggregator includes accrued interest or earnings before those amounts have been paid out as discrete transactions.

Duplicate prevention

Tally Up tracks every imported transaction using a unique identifier provided by the bank or a deterministic fingerprint derived from the transaction details. Re-syncing the same date range will not create duplicate transactions — existing ones are matched and updated instead.

This deduplication works across devices: if two devices both sync the same account, the same transaction will not be inserted twice.