Guides / Bank reconciliation
Live bank feeds vs. statement import: which do you actually need?
A genuinely useful look at the trade-off — not a sales pitch. Most sole traders will finish this and realise import is plenty.
What a live bank feed actually is
A live bank feed connects your accounting software directly to your bank, pulling in new transactions automatically, usually once a day. It sounds convenient — and it is. But that convenience has a cost most users never see directly: live feeds are powered by licensed data providers who charge software companies a monthly fee for every single bank account connected. That fee gets built into the subscription price everyone pays, whether they use the feed or not.
What statement import is, and how long it takes
Statement import is simpler: you export a statement from your online banking (every Australian bank lets you do this as a CSV, OFX or QIF file), and drag it into your bookkeeping software. It reads the transactions and matches them against your invoices and expenses automatically. For most small businesses, doing this once a week — or whenever you sit down to do the books — takes about a minute.
The honest trade
A live feed saves you roughly a minute a week of manual exporting. In exchange, you pay a higher subscription (to cover the per-account feed fee), and your bank connection becomes another dependency — feeds are notorious for silently dropping out and needing to be reconnected every few months, often right when you need them.
Statement import costs a minute of your time instead of a chunk of your monthly bill, and there's no connection to break — your bank login never leaves your bank, and nothing is permanently linked to a third party.
Who genuinely needs a live feed
Live feeds earn their keep for businesses reconciling daily against high transaction volume — think dozens of transactions a day across multiple accounts, where near real-time visibility genuinely changes decisions. If that's you, the fee is a reasonable trade for the time it saves.
Most sole traders and side businesses aren't in that position. If you reconcile weekly or monthly and send a manageable number of invoices, a minute spent dragging in a statement file is a rounding error against the money saved on subscription fees every month.
If import suits you
Billaroo is built around doing statement import well — reading CSV, OFX and QIF files from any Australian bank, remembering your bank's column layout after the first time, and matching lines against your invoices and expenses automatically. It's a deliberate choice that helps keep Billaroo free.
If your business grows into needing a live feed, we plan to offer it later as an optional add-on — it'll never be forced into the base price. See the full reasoning on our pricing page.