Instructions
To help you save time while bookkeeping, Ambrook allows you to connect your bank accounts, credit cards, and other accounts and automatically bring transactions into Ambrook. We recommend connecting banks and credit cards connected to your business accounts. This will help you get a detailed picture of the income and expenses related to your business.
Access bank connections from Settings > Connections
Ambrook offers several methods (Plaid, MoneyKit, and manual statement upload) for connecting your bank accounts, credit cards and other accounts, and we’ll try each of these methods to see what works best for your bank. Many rural banks may not have great connectivity, so it’s important to explore a few options up front to find the best solution for you.
If your bank, credit card, or other accounts do not connect to either of these providers, we recommend using Ambrook’s transaction import feature to upload bank transactions from a CSV file that you’ve downloaded from your bank’s website.
You may run into connection issues while setting up your accounts. If you do, follow the “Troubleshooting” steps below, or contact Ambrook support. While we’ve seen that major financial institutions tend to have more reliable connections, even some major banks and apps, like PayPal, have frequently unreliable connections.
Connecting with Plaid
Plaid is our primary connection provider because they work with most financial institutions. To get your account connected with Plaid, follow these steps:
Sign in to Ambrook.
Navigate to Ambrook Settings > Connections.
Click New to summon the Plaid interface.
Follow the steps as instructed by Plaid. For most connections, this means:
Search to find your bank or institution
Enter your credentials
If needed, enter security questions or second-factor code
After connecting, you’ll be asked to select which entity owns the accounts, and to select a sync start date.
Connecting with MoneyKit
Plaid does not support connecting to all banks or credit unions. If your bank is not supported, we recommend trying to connect with MoneyKit. Connecting with MoneyKit is a similar process:
Sign in to Ambrook.
Navigate to Ambrook Settings > Connections.
Click Three Dots > Connect with MoneyKit (Beta) next to the “New” button to summon the MoneyKit interface.
Follow the steps as instructed by MoneyKit. For most connections, this means:
Search to find your bank or institution
Enter your credentials
If needed, enter security questions or second-factor code
After connecting, you’ll be asked to select which entity owns the accounts, and to select a sync start date.
Note - With both Plaid and MoneyKit you may see liability accounts, such as operating notes or mortgages, appear as options to select for syncing transactions. We recommend you do not select these accounts to connect but instead manage them as manual accounts on your balance sheet. |
Uploading manual transactions
We recommend users try to get started with Plaid or MoneyKit, but there are instances where our transaction import tool can be useful to bring transactions from credit cards that are not connected or to fill in missing data. There are several situations where this might be useful:
If you’ve made a few business transactions on a personal account, but don’t want to bring those personal transactions onto your Ledger.
If you don’t use online banking for your bank account or credit card.
If your bank isn’t supported by Plaid, our third party bank connection provider.
If your bank only brings in a shorter period of history than you’d like to get started with in Ambrook (it may bring in as little as a month of data or as much as a year depending on your bank).
You notice discrepancies through reconciliation.
Importing transactions for unconnected accounts
To be able to import transactions for an account that you have not connected, you will first need to create a balance sheet account. You can do this by going to Balances and clicking “New Manual Account”. This can either be a credit card or a bank account.
Next, head back to the Ledger and select New → Import Transactions. Full instructions are here. A few things to keep in mind:
This process requires a CSV (“comma separated values”), which is a file format that you can open in an excel file and your bank will typically have available. If you only have PDFs available from your bank portal, please contact support for assistance.
Sometimes, the export from your bank will include a header, or titles, for each column in the file. This will help you map the headers to the data in Ambrook. If there is no header, you can add a header yourself by opening the CSV in an excel document or google sheets, adding a row at the top, and re-downloading the file as a CSV.
There may also be extra rows at the top of the document (that include things like the starting and ending balance, for example). You’ll want to delete these rows from the top.
Bank statements come in many different formats - if you are having trouble uploading your statement, please reach out to Ambrook Support and we can help you with the right formatting.
Reconciliation
A best practice for any of the accounts you have connected to Ambrook is to reconcile your accounts by comparing your statement to what is in Ambrook to make sure that all transactions are in your account. There are a few reasons to go through reconciliation:
Capture any errors: if certain bank transactions appear on your bank statement but not in Ambrook due to connection issues with Plaid or MoneyKit, this is a good way to identify those proactively.
Regularly review your account: doing monthly reconciliation gets you into a regular habit of reviewing your books. We recommend using your monthly statements as a reminder to log into your account, review and tag transactions, and make sure your data is complete.
Minimize your tax burden: Accurate books allow you to take advantage of any deductions available to you. If your Ledger is missing an expense, for example, you’ll miss out on that when filing for the year.
Our reconciliation workflow makes it easy to check through your bank statement and ensure all your data is in Ambrook. If you work with a bookkeeper, they can also go through reconciliation to review for any errors.
Troubleshooting
What if my bank password isn’t working? If you’ve double-checked your bank password and it still isn’t working, you can try using another provider (MoneyKit or Plaid), or contact Ambrook Support. The Ambrook team can investigate connection issues and suggest workarounds or reach out to the Plaid or MoneyKit teams.
What if I see a loading screen for a long time? If during the process of connecting your account you see a loading spinner for more than 1-2 minutes, it’s possible that your bank is taking longer than normal to respond to MoneyKit or Plaid. In these cases, we recommend closing out of the connection process and trying again. MoneyKit especially, which itself has multiple connections to each bank it works with, may be more successful on a second or third attempt.
What if I’m missing transactions? If you suspect that some transactions may be missing from your connection, contact Ambrook Support. They can work with the MoneyKit team, Plaid team, and/or your bank to find missing transactions. If the problem persists, you can import transactions to your bank account manually using a CSV import. To do this, navigate the Ledger > + New (in the top of the screen) > Import Transactions and follow the instructions.
What if my connection stops syncing? Navigate to Ambrook Settings > Connections and find your institution. If you see “Fix Connection”, you can click the Three Dots > Fix Login and enter your connection information. If this option isn’t available, or doesn’t work, contact Ambrook Support and we will work with the MoneyKit team, Plaid team, and/or your bank to repair the connection.