Bank reconciliation used to mean downloading a CSV at month-end, opening Excel, and matching transactions one by one. Open Banking changed that. Once you authorise the connection (PSD2, FCA-regulated, 90-day refresh), your transactions flow into 4invoices in near-real-time and match automatically to invoices and purchases. You spend reconciliation week reviewing edge cases, not retyping bank statements.
Matching inbound payments to specific invoices
When a customer pays an invoice, the reference on the bank statement is usually our invoice number — but sometimes they put their own PO number, a project code, or just their company name. 4invoices uses a confidence-scored matching algorithm: invoice number match (high confidence), customer name + amount match (medium), amount-only match within reasonable date range (manual review). High-confidence matches reconcile automatically; medium need a one-click confirmation; low surface in the manual review queue.
Outbound payments — supplier invoices vs other expenses
Money going out of your account is either a supplier payment (against a recorded purchase invoice), an internal transfer (between your own accounts), a salary payment (recorded in PAYE), or an ad-hoc expense. The reconciliation engine identifies each — using merchant names, amounts and frequency patterns — and proposes the category. You confirm or override. Over time the engine learns your suppliers and the categorisation becomes near-automatic.
Multiple bank accounts and currencies
Most UK businesses have at least 2 accounts — a current account and a savings/tax-reserve account. Some have separate GBP and USD accounts for export business. 4invoices supports unlimited connected accounts. Transfers between your own accounts are detected and not double-counted (they appear as outbound from one and inbound to another with the same amount and timing).
How Open Banking reconciliation works in practice
We integrate via FCA-regulated Account Information Service Providers (AISPs). The customer-facing flow is: in 4invoices, you click 'Connect bank account', pick your bank from a list (the major UK banks plus Tide, Monzo Business, Starling, Revolut Business, Wise Business and most challengers are supported), authenticate in your bank's app or web portal, confirm what we can read (account name, transactions). The connection lasts 90 days under PSD2 SCA rules — you re-authorise quarterly with one tap.
From that point, transactions flow into 4invoices typically within minutes (some banks batch every few hours). The matching engine runs on each new transaction: invoice number in the reference? Customer name match? Recurring supplier pattern? Each gets a confidence score, and the transaction is categorised automatically if confidence is high. Low-confidence transactions appear in a 'Needs review' queue, sorted by amount (review the big ones first).
At month-end, the unmatched balance — the difference between your bank balance and the sum of reconciled transactions — should be zero. If it isn't, the dashboard tells you where the gap is: an issued invoice with no matching receipt, a bank statement transaction with no matching invoice or purchase. You can drill into either side to find the missing link.
Frequently asked
What if my bank isn't supported?
We cover all major UK banks via the GoCardless and TrueLayer aggregators. If yours isn't supported (rare), we fall back to CSV import — you download a statement file from online banking and upload it to 4invoices. Matching works the same way, just with a manual upload step.
Does Open Banking expose sensitive data?
Open Banking is read-only — we can see your transactions and balances but cannot initiate payments unless you separately authorise PIS (Payment Initiation Service). Account credentials never pass through our system; authentication happens in your bank's own portal. Data is encrypted at rest and in transit.
How quickly do transactions appear?
Most banks deliver near-real-time (within minutes of the transaction posting). A few legacy banks (Barclays Business in particular) batch every 4-6 hours. The 4invoices dashboard shows the last sync time per connected account so you know how fresh the data is.
Connect your bank in under two minutes
Free trial. Authorise once (it's just like logging in to your bank), see your last 90 days of transactions flow in, and watch the auto-matching work.