Bank sync setup with SimpleFIN
TallyMint can pull new transactions from your banks automatically so you are not typing everything in by hand. It does this through SimpleFIN Bridge, a privacy-respecting aggregator. You link your banks at SimpleFIN, and TallyMint never sees your bank credentials. This guide walks through connecting, mapping accounts, and keeping the connection healthy.
How SimpleFIN works
SimpleFIN Bridge is an independent service that holds the bank connection on your behalf. You create an account at beta-bridge.simplefin.org, log into your banks through SimpleFIN's own portal, and then hand TallyMint a token that lets it pull transactions. Your bank username and password go to SimpleFIN, not to TallyMint, so the app only ever sees an opaque access URL and the transaction data itself. SimpleFIN charges a small subscription fee for the service; see their site for current pricing.
Step 1: Link your banks at SimpleFIN
Sign up (or log in) at beta-bridge.simplefin.org and link the banks you want to sync. This is where you enter your bank logins, on SimpleFIN's hosted page, never in TallyMint.
Step 2: Create a setup token
In SimpleFIN, create an app connection to get a setup token. It is a long string of characters. Copy it. Setup tokens are single-use: once TallyMint claims it, it cannot be reused, so grab a fresh one if you need to connect again later.
Step 3: Connect in TallyMint
Before you connect, make sure you have created the local accounts you want to sync into. Each connection maps to one local account per bank account, so create them first if needed, including Investment-type accounts for brokerages and IRAs.
- Go to Accounts → Bank Connections.
- Click Connect Bank.
- Choose SimpleFIN and paste your setup token.
Step 4: Map your accounts
After the token is claimed, TallyMint shows a mapping table listing every account SimpleFIN returned, with its balance. For each one, choose the local TallyMint account it should sync into, or choose Skip to leave it out. Each local account can be mapped to only one bank account, so if you have similarly named siblings at one bank, double-check the pairing. When the table looks right, click Save connections.
Step 5: Sync
With the connection saved, run a Sync. Here is what sync does and, just as importantly, what it does not do:
- New bank transactions arrive as pending imports that surface in the match-review pane below the ledger.
- TallyMint suggests matches against what you have already entered. Exact-amount matches at high confidence are accepted automatically; the rest wait for you to review.
- Nothing you entered is overwritten without a match you accept, so your own records stay intact.
- Duplicates are impossible: each bank transaction carries a stable ID, so the same transaction never imports twice.
Auto-sync is on by default, so active connections sync when the app opens; you can turn it off in Bank Connections. Each connection is throttled to at most one sync every 10 minutes.
Keeping the connection healthy
Bank links occasionally need attention, usually because a bank rotated its authentication. TallyMint tells you when a connection is degrading, and there are two fixes depending on what happened:
- A bank link goes stale. Re-authenticate that bank at SimpleFIN. No new token is needed; once the link is healthy again, TallyMint's next sync just works.
- The whole connection is revoked. Use Re-link with a fresh setup token from SimpleFIN to reconnect.
Investment accounts
Investment accounts sync too. Along with transactions, SimpleFIN returns your holdings and their market values, and TallyMint values the account from those positions rather than from a running balance. It also adds a Cash row that makes the account total match the bank's reported balance exactly, so an investment account foots correctly even when some of it is uninvested cash. For everything you can do with an investment account after it is connected, see the investments guide.