Skip to main content

​
Four ways in, and what each one costs you

Every method here brings the same transactions into the same place. They differ in one respect worth understanding before you pick: who else sees the data on the way in. If you want nothing in the middle at all, use CSV upload or a watched folder. Everything else on this page is a convenience trade you are making on purpose.

Open Connectors

All four live on one page inside AI2Fin.

​
Connect a bank you set up yourself

This one is different from how bank connections usually work, and the difference is the point. Normally an app holds a contract with a data provider, is the accredited party your bank discloses to, and pays per connection — so the relationship between you and your bank runs through them. Here, you create the connection at a SimpleFIN bridge and hand AI2Fin a one-time token. What follows from that:
  • AI2Fin never sees your banking credentials. Not encrypted, not in transit, never. It receives a read-only link, and that is all it ever has.
  • You revoke it at your bridge, without asking us. Disconnecting inside AI2Fin stops us reading; ending the bank’s access happens where you set it up.
  • It is read-only by protocol. There is no payment instruction to misuse, because SimpleFIN has no way to express one.

​
Steps

1

Get a setup token

Go to a SimpleFIN bridge, connect your bank there, and copy the one-time setup token it gives you. It works once.
2

Paste it into AI2Fin

Connectors → Connect a bank you set up yourself → paste → Connect. AI2Fin exchanges the token for a read-only link and reads your accounts straight away, so you see them before you leave the page.
3

Check what arrived

Transactions appear on the next sync. Anything ambiguous goes to the review tray rather than being imported twice.
Coverage is strongest in the US and thinner elsewhere. If no bridge serves your bank, a Google Sheet or CSV upload gets you to the same place.
A bridge is still a third party — it is simply yours, chosen by you and revocable by you. If that is one party too many, use CSV upload instead.

​
Connect a Google Sheet

Keep a sheet you already maintain and AI2Fin stays in step as you add rows. The sheet is read in your browser, with your own Google session — AI2Fin’s servers never talk to Google on your behalf. You pick the exact file through Google’s own picker, so AI2Fin is granted that one file and nothing else in your Drive.
1

Pick the sheet

Connectors → Spreadsheet or CSV → Connect a Google Sheet. Google’s picker opens; choose the file and the tab.
2

Confirm the columns

AI2Fin proposes a mapping from your headers — date, description, amount, account. Correct anything it guessed wrong; it remembers.
3

Add rows as you go

New rows are picked up on the next sync. Rows that disappear from the sheet are flagged, never deleted — you may have tidied your own file, and losing financial history to a tidy-up is not acceptable.

​
Upload a CSV or PDF

The path with nothing in the middle. Export a statement from your bank, drop it in, and AI2Fin maps the columns for you — any bank, any country, multi-currency handled. Free on every plan, including the desktop app with no account at all. See CSV and PDF import for formats and column mapping.

​
Watch a folder (desktop only)

Point the desktop app at a folder. Anything you drop in is imported and the folder stays watched. Nothing leaves your machine — the file is read where it sits.

​
What happens to a transaction after it arrives

Identical regardless of how it got in:
  1. Deduplicated on a fingerprint of date, amount, description and account. The account matters: the same coffee on the same day in two accounts is two transactions, and collapsing them would silently lose one.
  2. Categorised, learning from every correction you make.
  3. Given a tax treatment — GST or VAT worked out per transaction, with the reasoning shown so you can disagree.
  4. Flagged for review if it looks like a repeat rather than imported twice.
Nothing is auto-deleted. A row that vanishes from its source is marked missing_in_source and waits for you to decide.

​
Frequently asked

No, and it cannot. The bank connection is one you create at a bridge; AI2Fin only ever holds a read-only link. There is no field anywhere in the product that accepts a banking password.
Yes. A bank connection, two spreadsheets and occasional CSV uploads all coexist. Deduplication is account-scoped, so the same transaction arriving twice from different sources is caught.
Transactions already imported stay yours — they are your records, not a view of someone else’s. Disconnecting stops new ones arriving.
All of them. CSV upload and watched folders need no account at all; bank and spreadsheet connections need a paid plan, the same as in the browser.