Link an account once and your transactions arrive on their own. Here’s how connecting works, what we can and can’t see, and what to do when a connection needs attention.
On the Bank & cards page, choose Link business or Link mixed (that choice is explained below). We show you exactly what we’ll access, then a secure window opens where you sign in to your bank and pick which accounts to share. From there, transactions come in on their own: no downloading, no forwarding, no typing things in.
If you’re setting up for the first time, the getting started guide walks through the whole first session, connecting included. How many bank connections you can have depends on your plan, which the billing guide covers.
No. When you sign in during connecting, you’re signing in through our bank connection partner, the service that carries data between your bank and ExpenseGhost. Your password goes to your bank, never to us. We can’t see it and we don’t store it. What we do receive is transactions, balances, and account names, and we store that encrypted. We don’t sell your data.
You can disconnect any account whenever you like. Disconnecting stops new activity from coming in, but everything already in your books stays put. Nothing is deleted.
When you link, the app asks whether the account is business or mixed. Business means the account is used only for the business, so we sort its transactions and post them to your books automatically. Mixed means business and personal spending share the account, so every transaction goes to your review queue and you decide what counts. What the labels in that queue do is covered in the transaction labels guide.
The tag on the connection itself is set when you link and can’t be changed afterward. To switch it, you’d disconnect and re-link. But each individual account under a connection has its own business or mixed setting you can change any time: on the Bank & cards page, click the connection and adjust each account.
Switching an account to mixed is a bigger move than it looks. Transactions we already posted for that account go back to your review queue so you can re-sort them as business or personal. The app shows you how many before you confirm.
When you connect, you pick how much history to bring in, from the current and previous month up to two years back. From that day forward we keep everything that arrives, so the choice only affects the past.
Two things to know. The history choice is fixed once the account is connected, and your bank has the final say: some banks only share 90 days or less, no matter what you pick. If you need transactions older than your bank will hand over, bring them in through a manual account and a CSV import.
Bank connections sometimes drop: you changed your bank password, your bank tightened a security setting, or the link simply expired on the bank’s side. When that happens, a notice appears on your dashboard saying a connection needs to reconnect. Click Reconnect and sign in to your bank again, the same way you did the first time.
While a connection is down, no new transactions come in, but nothing you already have is touched. Once you reconnect, we catch up on what was missed.
Not every account can or should be connected. Maybe your bank isn’t supported, you deal in cash, or you’d rather not link it. A manual account is a stand-in you keep by hand: add one on the Bank & cards page, name it, and say whether it’s a bank account or a credit card. Nothing syncs; you put the transactions in yourself.
There are two ways to do that. Enter transactions one at a time on the Transactions page, or import a CSV, the transaction file your bank lets you download from its website. Upload it and the app figures out which columns are the date, the merchant, and the amount. You check a preview before anything is saved, and rows that look like duplicates of transactions you already have get flagged so nothing counts twice.