Bank sync setup with SimpleFIN

The Windows app 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 subscribe to separately. 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.

On TallyMint Web, none of this setup applies. Bank connections are included in the subscription and run through Plaid, so there is no separate service to sign up for and no token to paste: you link an institution from inside the app and pick which accounts to share. See setting up TallyMint Web. This page is for the downloadable Windows app.

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.

Prefer not to use an aggregator? TallyMint also supports OFX Direct Connect, the legacy protocol many large banks offer directly, and you can always import downloaded OFX or CSV files. SimpleFIN is the easiest option for most people because one connection covers any number of banks.

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.

Create local accounts first. You can only map a bank account to a local account that already exists. If a bank account has nowhere to go, add the matching account in the Accounts tab (an Investment-type account for a brokerage or IRA), then connect.

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, scoring payee, amount, and date together. High-confidence ones show an Accept button (or take them all at once with Accept all matches); weaker ones are held for you to review. Nothing is matched without your click.
Bank rows with no match at all are yours to add, and adding them is always a separate click: Accept all matches takes the matches and nothing else. Each unmatched row has its own Add as new button, and a second bulk button next to the first one (labeled with the count, for example Add 12 as new) adds the whole remainder in one go. Fix the payee on the ones you recognize before you do that: renaming a payee teaches the rule and renames the matching rows below it too.
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 each time you unlock the app; 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.

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