Bank feeds vs statement conversion: when you need each

Bank feeds and statement conversion get framed as rivals. They aren't — they solve different halves of the same problem, and most working bookkeepers need both in the drawer.

What feeds do brilliantly

A connected feed delivers yesterday's transactions into QuickBooks or Xero every morning, no handling at all. For live, ongoing bookkeeping on a healthy account, the feed is the right default: always on, no files, no imports.

Where feeds stop

• History. Feeds start when connected and backfill 90 days at best. January's data doesn't exist to a feed connected in July — that's a backfill job.
• Coverage. Smaller institutions, some credit cards, foreign banks and certain business accounts simply don't offer feeds.
• Continuity. Feeds break — expired consents, bank-side changes — and the gap they leave is invisible until reconciliation fails.
• Closed accounts and old years. Catch-up work, a predecessor's mess, an audit request: the feed can't reach the past. Statements can, even for closed accounts.
• Proof. A feed is a data stream with no document behind it. A statement is the bank's own signed record — the thing an auditor, a lender or HMRC actually accepts.

What statement conversion does

Statement conversion turns the bank's own PDFs — native or scanned paper — into importable data. It's the tool for history, for coverage gaps, for feed outages, and for any situation where the numbers need a document behind them. With NoRekey the conversion is verified against the statement's declared opening and closing balances, which gives converted data something feeds never have: an arithmetic proof that the period is complete and correct. Feeds occasionally drop or duplicate transactions and nothing tells you; a converted statement that reconciles can't have done either.

The practical rule

Feeds for the present, statements for the past — and statements as the referee whenever the present looks wrong. If a feed-fed account won't reconcile, convert that month's statement and compare: the statement is the record, the feed is the convenience. Practices that internalise this stop treating feed breakage as a crisis; it's just a temporary switch to the other tool.