Fetch Your Transactions Through a Service - Stay Steady

Stay Steady does not connect to your bank, and that has not changed. What is new: if you have an account at a service that reads your bank for you, Stay Steady can ask that service for your transactions. You sign in to your bank at the service, never in Stay Steady, and the app never sees your bank login.

It is optional. Importing a file from your bank works as it always did.

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What you need

• Stay Steady 2.3 or later on an iPhone, iPad, Mac or Android phone.
• An account at a service that speaks the SimpleFIN protocol, with your bank connected there. In Europe that is Lunch Flow, which reaches the Belgian banks among many others. In the United States and Canada there is also SimpleFIN Bridge.

These services belong to other companies and ask a price of their own. Stay Steady stays free and receives nothing from them.

1. At the service: make a token

These are the steps at Lunch Flow.

1. Connect your bank in Lunch Flow, as its own guide tells.
2. Open Destinations and choose Add Destination.
3. Choose SimpleFIN Bridge.
4. Switch on the accounts you want Stay Steady to see.
5. Generate the token and copy it.

A token works once, and at Lunch Flow it is valid for seven days. If you need it again, make a new one.

2. In Stay Steady: connect

On iPhone and iPad: open Settings, tap Connection to a service, paste the token and tap Connect.

On the Mac: open Data in the sidebar, click Set up… under Connection to a service, paste the token and click Connect.

On Android: open Settings, tap Connection to a service, paste the token and tap Connect.

Stay Steady exchanges the token once for an address and keeps that in your Keychain (on Android: encrypted on the phone). The token itself is then spent.

3. Say where each account’s transactions go

Under Accounts at the service you see the accounts you switched on. Each has a menu, Import into.

• An account whose IBAN is the number of one account in Stay Steady is tied to that account by itself. Check that it is the one you mean.
• Choose another account if you prefer. With more than one environment, each account is named with its environment.
• New account makes one, in the environment the menu names.
• Don’t import leaves that account out.

4. Fetch

Tap Fetch now. The first time, Stay Steady asks for everything the service has, which at Lunch Flow is about three months. Afterwards it asks for what came since the last time.

You can also fetch from the Journal: +, then Fetch transactions. On the Mac the same command is in the File menu.

Stay Steady fetches when you ask, and only then.

Rows you already have from a bank file

A service and a bank’s own file describe the same payment in different words, and sometimes a day or two apart. So Stay Steady does not guess. A fetched row with the amount of a row you already have, on the same day or up to four days from it, is left out and listed under They look like rows you have. Under each one, Looks like names the row you already have, with its day and amount. You answer once, at the top of that list:

• They are the same: leave out, when they are payments your files already brought. This is the usual answer the first time, when the service reaches back over months you imported.
• Import them too, when they are other payments of the same amount.

If only some of them are other payments, tick those in the list and choose Import …, leave out the rest. Either way they do not wait again.

Your other Apple devices

With iCloud Keychain on, the connection reaches your other Apple devices by itself: open Connection to a service there and it is set up, without a token. An answer you give about the rows that wait holds on your other devices too, and no payment is written twice. On Android the connection stays on that phone.

Every ninety days

In Europe a bank connection at Lunch Flow lasts ninety days. Then you confirm it there, with your bank’s own sign-in; Lunch Flow sends a reminder beforehand. Until you have, a fetch brings nothing new and shows what the service says about it.

Removing the connection

Remove connection takes the address out of your Keychain, on every device it reached (on Android: off the phone). Your transactions stay. To end the access itself, switch it off at the service.

Good to know

• Payments your bank has not booked yet are left out, and come with a later fetch.
• Importing a bank file for days you already fetched brings nothing in twice. A row of the file with the amount of a fetched row, on the same day or up to four days from it, counts as a possible duplicate and is left out. The import’s preview says how many; switch on Import potential duplicates too if they are other payments.
• Nothing is sent to us. Stay Steady talks to the service from your device. We run no server in between and see none of it.

When it does not work

• “This is not a SimpleFIN token.” Copy the whole token, with nothing before or after it.
• “The service refused this token.” A token works once: make a new one at the service.
• “The service no longer accepts this connection.” Confirm the access at the service, or remove the connection and connect again with a new token.
• “The service asks for payment.” Check your subscription there.
• An account reads “Don’t import” although you chose one before. That account was archived in Stay Steady. An archived account receives nothing; choose another, or bring it back.

Still stuck? Write to apps@dataconsultingservices.net.