Balances

Along with your transactions, Synci fetches your account balances. This article explains which balances you see, how often they update, and how to send them to a budgeting app or spreadsheet.

Available and cleared balances

Banks report balances in several standard open banking types, such as "Closing Booked", "Interim Available" or "Expected". Synci sorts them into two balances you can see on the account's About tab:

• Available balance: the money at your disposal right now. It usually takes pending transactions into account.

• Cleared balance: the balance made up of settled (booked) transactions only.

Not every bank reports both:

• If your bank only reports a cleared balance, the available balance shows the same figure.

• Many European and UK banks only report available balances. The cleared balance then stays empty.

• Some banks only report a balance "for information". Synci uses it as the cleared balance when nothing better is available.

Credit cards

Credit cards from European and UK banks show up as regular bank accounts, because the bank data doesn't always say that an account is a card. Read their balances like this:

• A negative cleared balance is the amount you owe on the card, not an overdraft.

• A positive available balance is usually your remaining credit, not money in an account.

• Some cards, notably UK credit cards, only report an information balance. Synci shows it as the cleared balance.

Brokerage and crypto accounts

For brokerage and crypto exchange accounts, the balance is the total value of the account: your cash plus the market value of your holdings. These accounts sync once a day.

How often balances update

• European and UK banks: balances refresh on the same schedule as the account's transactions, but no more than once an hour. Banks only allow a limited number of balance requests per day, and the hourly floor keeps some of that allowance free for manual syncs and retries.

• Banks with stricter daily limits: if a bank refuses a balance request because of its own daily limit, Synci automatically slows down balance updates for that account, first to every 6 hours and, if the bank still refuses, down to once a day.

• Brokerages and crypto exchanges: once a day.

Need a fresh balance now? Open the account, click Sync, choose Balances as the Type, and start the sync. Manual syncs are rate-limited per account, as described in Accounts.

Turning balance syncing on or off

Sync balances is on by default for new accounts. To change it, open the account under Sources in the sidebar, go to its Settings tab, and use the Sync balances switch in the Sync section.

European and UK bank connections also have their own Sync balances switch, which you set when you connect the bank. If it was turned off for the connection, the account's switch is disabled. Connection settings can't be edited afterwards, but you can change them when you renew the connection's consent. See Financial connections.

Balances are kept for as long as your data retention setting allows, just like transactions.

Sending balances to a destination

Each linked account decides what it sends to its destination:

• Transactions only: individual transactions. The destination calculates the balance from those transactions. This is the default for bank accounts.

• Transactions & balance: transactions plus a daily balance adjustment that keeps the destination balance in sync. This is the default for brokerage and crypto accounts, where it captures changes in market value.

• Balance only: the current account balance once a day, without individual transactions.

You choose this when you link an account. To change it later, open the link on the Linked Accounts page, go to its Settings tab, and pick a different Sync mode.

When a link sends balances, Synci sends a fresh balance once a day, and also after a sync that brings in new transactions. For bank accounts it sends the cleared balance, or the available balance if your bank doesn't report a cleared one. For brokerage and crypto accounts it sends the total account value. For bank accounts, keep Sync balances turned on, otherwise there's no fresh balance to send.

What you'll see in each destination

• YNAB: Synci adds a cleared transaction called "Synci balance adjustment" for the difference between the account's cleared balance in YNAB and the balance Synci has. Nothing is added when they already match.

• Lunch Money: Synci updates the account's balance.

• Google Sheets: Synci keeps one row per account up to date on the Live Balance tab and adds new balance entries to the Balance History tab. When your bank only reports an available balance, the cleared balance cell is left blank. See Google Sheets.

For more on creating and managing links, see Linked accounts: Send data to destinations.