Financial connections

A financial connection represents the consent you have given Synci to access your financial data at a particular institution. Depending on the institution, a connection gives Synci access to one or more bank accounts, brokerage accounts, or crypto-exchange accounts. Each authentication with an institution counts as one financial connection.

Formerly "bank connections": Synci now supports more than just banks, so bank connections have been renamed to financial connections. Everything you knew about bank connections still applies; this article covers the additional connection types too.

To create a financial connection, open Banks, Brokerages or Crypto under Sources in the sidebar and click New connection. Step by step: Adding accounts

Anatomy

A financial connection is the "parent" of all its accounts. In order to add accounts to Synci, you first create a financial connection to the institution that holds them.

The structure of our financial entities looks like this:

Financial Connection → Financial Accounts → Transactions → Transfer Logs & Rule Logs

Right after you connect, a short setup runs in four steps: Accounts (choose which accounts to include), Preferences (account name, how far back to Import from, and enrichment), Transaction preview (check how your transactions will look and adjust the field mapping) and Destinations. If you leave the setup unfinished, Synci finishes it for you after 30 minutes so your data starts flowing.

If you delete a financial connection, every account belonging to it is also deleted, along with those accounts' transactions, balances, and logs. This cannot be undone.

Connection types

Synci supports three kinds of financial connections, plus free demo banks:

• Banks (EU & UK): Your everyday bank accounts. These connections are governed by open-banking (PSD2) rules, which means the consent you give is time-limited and must be renewed periodically (see Consent below).

• Banks (New Zealand): NZ bank connections use enduring consent, so they do not expire on a fixed schedule. You can add or remove banks, and revoke access, at any time with the Akahu Dashboard button on the connection's page. If you revoke Synci's access, the connection's data is deleted after 48 hours unless you reconnect before then.

• Brokerages & crypto exchanges: Investment and crypto connections give Synci access to your holdings, balances, and account activity (trades, dividends, transfers, and so on). These connections do not use a time-limited consent. Note that most brokerages make activity data available with roughly a one-day delay, so these connections sync once per day.

• Demo banks: Free connections filled with generated data, so you can try Synci without connecting a real bank. Choose Demo banks in the country list when you add a bank. Demo connections are marked Demo and never count toward your plan.

Status

Every financial connection has a lifecycle status:

• Awaiting authorization: The connection has been created, but you haven't completed authentication with the institution yet.

• Connected: The connection is active and syncing.

• Disabled: The connection is turned off. It stops syncing but keeps its data. This happens when you disable it yourself (which also revokes your consent), when the bank reports that your consent has run out, or when a plan downgrade or a lapsed subscription leaves you with more connections than your plan covers. In that last case Synci disables your newest connections first and lets you know. Click Enable and log in at your institution again to turn it back on.

• Revoked: Access was withdrawn, either by you or by the institution.

• Expired: The consent period has ended (EU/UK banks only). The connection page shows Consent expired. Renew the consent to resume syncing.

• Connection error: Something went wrong at the institution's end. The connection page shows the details we received, and a Reconnect button to fix it.

Health

Separately from its status, Synci tracks the health of every active financial connection. Health reflects one thing: our ability to retrieve the connection's accounts from the institution.

• Healthy: The last attempt succeeded. Everything is syncing normally.

• Failing: An attempt failed. While a connection is failing, its accounts are left out of the regular sync schedule and Synci retries the connection once a day. After 3 consecutive failures we'll email you a heads-up. As soon as an attempt succeeds again, the connection is automatically restored to healthy. No action is needed on your part.

• Dead: 10 consecutive attempts have failed, or an EU/UK bank reported that your consent has been revoked or has expired (that goes straight to Dead, since retrying can't fix it). The connection stops syncing, and you'll receive an email letting you know. To get it working again, renew its consent (or reconnect it), or create a new connection.

Some problems don't count as failures. When a bank refuses requests because it caps how many it accepts per day, Synci pauses and tries again later. Temporary outages at the bank or at our data partner are retried patiently too: they only count as one failure for every 12 attempts the outage blocks, so a long maintenance window won't kill your connection.

When a connection fails, the error message we received from the data provider is shown on the connection page. It often explains exactly what went wrong (for example, expired consent or a temporary outage at the bank).

Consent

For EU and UK banks, a financial connection represents a consent that is valid for a set period of time. When creating the connection, you can choose how many days the consent should remain valid: anything between 1 and 180 days (though some banks cap this at 90 days). After the consent expires, the connection stops syncing data until you renew it. Your accounts and data are kept.

You can also revoke consent manually at any time by disabling or deleting the connection.

Synci emails you before a consent expires: one week before, again the day before, and once more when it has expired. An expiry should never take you by surprise. You can turn these reminders off under Connection expiry in your notification settings, but we recommend keeping them on.

New Zealand banks and brokerage/crypto connections don't have a consent expiry, so this section doesn't apply to them.

Renewing consent

You might want to renew a connection's consent if:

1. The consent is about to expire or has expired (you'll receive email alerts about this).

2. Its accounts are not working properly.

3. You have opened new accounts at the institution that require a new consent.

4. You want to change the permissions or settings you originally agreed to.

When renewing, you're given the option to change the connection's settings (detailed below). Once you've logged in at your bank, Synci asks which accounts to keep syncing, including any new accounts the bank now lists.

Renewing, reconnecting and managing

Depending on the connection and its state, you'll see one of these buttons on the connection:

• Renew consent: EU and UK banks. Takes you back through your bank's login to give a new consent, without losing any data. In your list of banks, it appears when the consent is due to expire within 7 days.

• Reconnect: Shown when a connection has a connection error, was revoked, or its consent has expired. Takes you back through the institution's login to restore the connection without losing any data. Brokerage and crypto connections don't expire, so they only need this when something has gone wrong.

• Enable: Shown on a disabled connection. Enabling it takes you through the institution's login again.

• Akahu Dashboard: New Zealand bank connections. Opens Akahu, where you can add banks, remove banks, or revoke access entirely.

Settings

When you create a new connection to an EU/UK bank, you can open Connection settings in the connect dialog to customize the following (the section is collapsed by default):

• Sync balances: Control whether Synci retrieves account balances from this connection. This applies to all accounts belonging to the connection. On by default.

• Max history: Decide how far back in time Synci can fetch transaction data. It starts at 90 days, or at your bank's maximum if that is lower. The maximum available period is determined by your bank.

• Access valid for: Set how many days Synci has access to your data before you must reconfirm your consent. It starts at the longest period your bank allows. The maximum is usually 180 days, but some banks only allow shorter periods (for example, 90 days). If your bank has a lower limit, you cannot set a longer duration.

Connection settings cannot be changed after creation, because they are part of the agreement you consent to when authenticating with your bank. If you need to change any of these settings later, renew the connection's consent and adjust them during the renewal.

Raising Max history during a renewal does not fetch the older transactions by itself. To get them, open the account, click Sync, and choose an earlier From date.

Limits

Synci bills per connection. Each login at a bank, brokerage or crypto exchange counts as one connection until its consent expires or you delete it. There is no limit to the number of accounts within a connection, and demo connections are free.

If a plan downgrade, or a subscription that lapses, leaves you with more connections than your plan covers, Synci disables the newest connections first. See your plan details on the pricing page.