Bring Your Own Data: Bank Sync with Lunch Flow, and Every Other Way In
Tallyroot now syncs your bank accounts through your own Lunch Flow account. Here is how that works, why Tallyroot asks you to bring the connection, and how it fits with IBKR sync, file imports, the API, and receipts.
Your money probably lives in more places than one app can see. A current account, a savings pocket in another currency, a broker, maybe a card you only use abroad. Getting all of it into one budget has always been the tedious part.
As of this week, Tallyroot can sync your bank accounts. It does it a little differently from most budgeting apps, so this post explains how, and then walks through every other way your data can get into Tallyroot.
Why “bring your own”
Budgeting apps that sync banks usually pay an aggregator for every connected account and pass that cost on to you, inside their subscription. That model has two problems. The app decides which banks you get, and if the app and the aggregator part ways, your sync goes with them.
Tallyroot does it the other way around. You bring your own connection. You sign up with Lunch Flow, link your banks there, and give Tallyroot permission to read from it. You choose the connection, you pay for it directly, and it keeps working with other apps too. Tallyroot just reads what you allow it to.
The same idea runs through everything below: Tallyroot works with the data you already have, from wherever you already keep it.
1. Bank sync through Lunch Flow (new, Premium)
Setting it up takes a few minutes:
- In Lunch Flow, link your banks, and set its date option to Booking Date, so a card payment is dated the day you paid, not the day it settled.
- In Tallyroot, go to Settings > Connections and choose Connect Lunch Flow. You sign in to Lunch Flow and approve access.
- Map each bank account. Link it to an account you already have in Tallyroot, create a new one, or skip it.
- Pick where the sync starts. If you have been typing transactions by hand, Tallyroot suggests a start date after your last one, and shows your balance next to the bank’s on the day before, so you can see whether they agree before anything is booked.
From then on, Tallyroot syncs four times a day, and you can press Sync now whenever you like.
A few details make the switch from manual entry painless:
- What you typed is matched, not duplicated. When a synced transaction matches exactly one you entered by hand on that account (same amount and currency, within three days), Tallyroot merges the two and keeps your category, payee and notes. You get a notice for each one, and you can undo it.
- Transfers you already recorded stay transfers. If a move between your own accounts is already in Tallyroot, the synced copy of it is recognized instead of being booked a second time.
- Only booked transactions come in. Pending card payments wait until the bank books them, so nothing appears and then quietly changes.
The trade-off is honest: it is one more subscription. If you only have one or two accounts and you don’t mind a monthly file, the import below is free and may be all you need.
2. Interactive Brokers sync
If you invest through IBKR, Tallyroot reads your trades, dividends and cash through IBKR’s Flex Web Service, with a read-only token you create once. On Premium it syncs every day. On the Free plan you can upload a Flex statement yourself whenever you want to catch up. The IBKR guide walks through the setup.
3. CSV and OFX import, from any bank
Every bank can export a file, so this works everywhere, on every plan. You map the columns once, Tallyroot remembers the layout for next time, and duplicates are caught when you import an overlapping period. It is also the easiest way to bring your history over from another app. More in the import guide.
4. The API and SDK, for everything else
Some sources have no file and no aggregator. For those, Tallyroot has a public API and a TypeScript SDK, both on the Free plan. You can push transactions, currency exchanges, transfers and balance snapshots from a script or a small service.
I use it myself: my Swiss multi-currency account has an API of its own, so a small connector I wrote reads it and pushes everything into Tallyroot, including the exchanges between its currency pockets. The API post shows how to start.
5. Receipts
For the spending no bank describes well, snap the receipt. Tallyroot reads the line items, suggests categories, and matches the receipt to the transaction once it arrives from your bank, so you get the detail without typing it.
Which one should you use?
| Your situation | Use |
|---|---|
| Accounts at banks Lunch Flow supports, and you want them current without effort | Bank sync (Premium + your Lunch Flow subscription) |
| An IBKR account | IBKR sync (daily on Premium, uploads on Free) |
| A bank Lunch Flow does not cover, or a one-off history import | CSV or OFX import |
| A source with an API of its own, or something you want to script | The Tallyroot API and SDK |
| Cash and receipts | Receipt scanning, or a quick manual entry |
You can mix them freely. My Revolut and Wise accounts sync through Lunch Flow, my broker through IBKR, and my Swiss account through the connector I wrote. They all end up in the same budget.