Bank reconciliation is the single largest consumer of bookkeeping time in a small business, and a working feed is the difference between a morning a month and a week. It is also the area where vendors are least precise about what they offer.
Three things that get called a feed
A direct feed
The bank sends transactions to the software on a schedule, through an agreed connection. Nobody logs in, nothing is downloaded, and reconnection is rare. This is what you want.
An aggregator connection
A third party service logs into your bank on your behalf using stored credentials and scrapes the transactions. It works, and it breaks more often, usually when the bank changes its login flow or enforces a new authentication step. Reconnection is a regular chore.
A statement import
You download an OFX or CSV file from your bank and upload it. This is not a feed. It is fine, and it is manual, and it should be priced as such when comparing products.
Coverage as we assess it
Sage Accounting has the broadest direct coverage: Absa, FNB, Standard Bank, Nedbank, Capitec, Investec and TymeBank. That Capitec inclusion matters, because Capitec has grown enormously among small businesses and is the most common gap elsewhere.
Xero covers Absa, FNB, Standard Bank, Nedbank and Investec. QuickBooks Online covers the big four, and draws the most complaints in our review set about connections dropping and needing reauthorisation. Zoho Books covers the big four through a mix of direct and aggregator connections.
Desktop products, Sage 50cloud Pastel and Sage 200 Evolution, work on statement import for all major banks.
Test this properly in the trial
Connect your actual bank account, not a demo. Then leave it for two weeks and see whether it is still connected. A feed that works on day one and needs reauthorising on day nine is not going to save you time.
Check how far back the initial import goes. Some feeds only bring ninety days, which matters if you are migrating mid year and need the full period.
Check what happens with a multi currency account, if you have one. Feed support for foreign currency accounts is thinner than for rand accounts across every product here.
Getting the most from a feed
Build reconciliation rules early and specifically. A rule that matches on a supplier reference and a fixed amount is reliable. A rule that matches on a partial description and a range is going to miscode something eventually, and finding that at year end is expensive.
Review rules quarterly. Suppliers change their payment references, and a rule that silently stops matching is the same as no rule at all, except that you think you have one.