Set up Sage bank feeds

Sage bank feeds is a free secure service that you can use to download your bank transactions to Sage 200, to help you reconcile your bank account.

This reduces the time that you spend reconciling your bank transactions, and ensures your accounts are up to date and accurate.

How it works

Sage bank feeds connects to your bank and downloads details of the transactions from your bank account into Sage 200.

Once downloaded, you can match them to the existing transactions in Sage 200, or create new transactions in Sage 200 if something is missing. This means that transactions in your live bank account are reflected in Sage 200. Sage 200 will remember which transactions you have matched, ready for your next bank reconciliation.

Changes for Open Banking

Open Banking (PSD2) is a new secure way for you to share financial information from your bank with companies like Sage that offer banking and payment apps, and is designed to give you greater control over your financial data.

These changes come into effect on 5 March 2020 and to comply with the new standards, connections between some banks and Sage will change.

To check how this affects your bank, see this article Open Banking - Check the status of your bank feed.

Before you start

It's easy to set up Sage bank feeds, but before you start there are a few things you will need to do.

To complete the registration, you will need to know:

  • Your bank name, type of account, the account number and IBAN number.
  • An email address, in case we need to contact you.

Enable Sage bank feeds

You can't set up Sage bank feeds for a cash book account if:

  • The cash book account already uses Supplier Payments (Sage Salary and Supplier Payments).

  • The cash book account is set up for reconciliation using e-Banking, with E-Banking functions set to either Bank reconciliation only or Both payments and bank reconciliation.

    You can still use e-Banking to generate payments for suppliers, if E-Banking functions is set to Payments.

  1. Choose the cash book account that you want to set up for Sage bank feeds.

    Open Cash Book > Create & Amend Accounts > Amend Bank Account Details, or select the account from the Bank Account List and click Amend Account.

    Note: To enable Sage bank feeds, you must have user access to amend the cash book account. See User access for Sage bank feeds.

  2. Move to the E-Banking tab.

  3. In the Sage Bank Feeds section, select Enable.

    Note: You can't set up Sage bank feeds for a cash book account that already uses Supplier Payments (Sage Salary and Supplier Payments).

  4. Follow the steps in the wizard. This is where you enter the details of your bank account.

  5. When you've finished, you will need to download a form to print and complete. This authorises Sage Bank feeds to connect with your bank account. You can either:

    • Post the form to the address listed in the form, which may be to your bank or Sage.
    • Fax the form to the number provided in the form, which is a secure electronic fax mailbox.

    Tip: If you forget where you saved the form, the PDF file is saved in the Attachments tab for this cash book account.

  6. Wait a few days for your bank to receive and process your request, then come back to check the status of your bank account.

    Once your bank has authorised your application, the status will change from Pending to Active and you can start using Sage bank feeds to download transactions.

User access for Sage bank feeds

You may want to control user access for who can set up a bank account, and who can reconcile transactions.

Note: If the user is an Administrator, they will already have access to all features.

Open: Settings > Organisational and Financial > User Access.

  1. Select the user that you want to give access.

  2. To allow a user to enable Sage bank feeds, ensure that they have access to:

    Cash Book > Advanced > Amend Cash Book Account Details

  3. To allow a user to download and reconcile transactions, ensure that they have access to:

    Cash Book > Advanced > Amend Cash Book Account Details

    Cash Book > Advanced > Bank Feeds Download Transactions

    Cash Book > Advanced > Bank Feeds Reconciliation

Set up bank feeds rules

Bank feeds rules help make data entry and bank reconciliation even easier.

When you reconcile your bank transactions, if the downloaded bank transaction is missing from Sage 200, you have to create these transactions in Sage 200.

You can use bank feeds rules to automatically create transactions in Sage 200 for your bank transactions that you download from Sage bank feeds. This saves you time entering transactions, and helps you reconcile your bank accounts more efficiently and reduce errors.

Bank feeds rules look for certain details in the downloaded bank transaction, and then create the matching transaction in Sage 200. For example, if you make regular payments to a particular supplier, you could set up a rule to that matches that supplier's name as it appears in your bank transactions, and then create a corresponding payment to that supplier account in Sage 200.

When you download bank transactions from Sage bank feeds, your bank feeds rules check all the bank transactions, and then create any corresponding transactions in Sage 200.

Bank feeds rules can be set up to create customer receipts and payments, supplier payments and receipts, and nominal transactions.

See Bank feeds rules.

Troubleshooting

This might be because:

  • You don't have user access to amend the cash book account. See User access for Sage bank feeds.

  • If you are creating a new bank account, you will not see these options until you first Save and Close the account. Once you have closed the account, open it again by amending the account, and you will now see the option to enable Sage bank feeds on the E-Banking tab.

If the Enable option is disabled, this might be because Supplier Payments is already enabled for this account. You can only use one of these services with a cash book bank account.

After sending your completed form to your bank, you may need to wait a few days for the bank to process your request.

Once your bank has authorised your request, the status will change from Pending to Active and you can start using Sage bank feeds to download transactions.

You might want to refresh your Sage bank feeds signature key when:

  • You have restored a backup of your Sage 200 company database, and Sage bank feeds is no longer working.
  • Our support team have asked you to refresh your Sage bank feeds signature key.

Refreshing your signature key will temporarily stop Sage bank feeds from working until you have entered the new key.

The new key will be sent to the email address used when you set up Sage bank feeds, so ensure that you have access to this email address.

Open: Settings > Cash Book / Nominal Ledger > Cash Book Settings.

  1. Click Edit to change the settings.

  2. On the Settings tab, click Refresh Signature key.

    The renew key will be sent to the email address that you used to enable Sage bank feeds for this account.

  3. Enter the Renew key that was emailed to you.

You can continue to use Sage bank feeds once you have entered the renew key.

Note: If you need to change the contact email address used for Sage bank feeds, please contact our support team.

If you want to change the email address that you used to enable Sage bank feeds for this account, please contact our support team.

This email address is used if you need to refresh your signature key for Sage bank feeds.

You may experience problems setting up Bank Feeds if your firewall is blocking access our servers.

When you try to enable Bank Feeds, you may see this message:

  • "An unexpected error occurred setting up your account in Sage Bank Feeds. Please try again later."

To resolve this, we recommend that you set up your firewall to allow access to these sites:

  • www.sagetokenservice.com
  • eu.sagebankdrive.com

When you set up bank feeds for particular banks, you will be asked to provide the sign in details for your bank account. These details will expire after a period of time, and you will be asked to Authenticate your account by entering your sign in details again.

To authenticate your bank account:

  1. Choose the bank account which is enabled for Sage bank feeds.

    Open Cash Book > Create & Amend Accounts > Amend Bank Account Details, or select the account from the Bank Account List.

  2. Move to the E-Banking tab.

  3. Select Authenticate.

    Note: This is only available if your bank account requires authentication.

  4. Enter the details required for your bank account.

After you authenticate your bank account, you may have to wait several hours before you download new transactions for this account.

Only disable bank feeds if you definitely want to stop using it with this cash book account. When you disable bank feeds, this will permanently cancel your bank feeds account linked to this cash book account. If you decide to use bank feeds again later, you will have to repeat the setup process.

  1. Choose the bank account which is enabled for Sage bank feeds.

    Open Cash Book > Create & Amend Accounts > Amend Bank Account Details, or select the account from the Bank Account List.

  2. Move to the E-Banking tab.

  3. Select Disable.

    The bank account status will change to Disabled.

When you set up Sage bank feeds, you contacted your bank and gave your consent to transfer your banking data to Sage. If you definitely want to stop using Sage bank feeds with this bank account, you should contact your bank and instruct them that you no longer want to use this service.

Your bank feeds account will be cancelled automatically if it is inactive, and the bank or aggregator will be informed to stop sending data to Sage.

  • Bank feeds accounts which have been in a Pending state for 6 months will be automatically cancelled.

    Your account would be Pending if transactions have not yet been received from the bank. This may happen if you do not complete the authorisation process with the bank, or your application was rejected by the bank.

  • Active bank feeds accounts with no new transactions for 12 months will be automatically cancelled.

    This may happen if you:

    • Do not download transactions for 12 months.
    • Have cancelled your bank feed directly with the bank (without informing Sage).
    • Have cancelled your Sage subscription.

Note: You will not receive any notification if your account is cancelled due to inactivity, but it will be possible to reconnect your account again if required.

Migrate Sage bank feeds from Sage 50cloud Accounts

If you have previously used Sage bank feeds in Sage 50cloud Accounts, you can migrate your account to Sage 200.

Note: If you have already set up bank feeds Sage 200, this will be replaced with the account details that you used for Sage 50cloud Accounts.

  1. When you migrate bank feeds from Sage 50cloud Accounts:

    • You will download and save a migration key file (*.json).
    • You will choose a password for the migration key.

    • You will receive an email (sent to the account used to set up Bank Feeds), which will ask you to authorise the migration.

      You must follow the instructions in the email to authorise the migration, before you can continue.

  2. In Sage 200:

    Open: Settings > Cash Book / Nominal Ledger > Cash Book Settings.

    1. In the Migrate Sage Bank Feeds section, enter your migration key Password.

    2. Select Migrate, and browse to the migration key file (*.json) that you created from Sage 50cloud Accounts.

See also

Related information

Sage bank feeds

Bank feeds rules

Reconcile using bank feeds