How to set up and manage a bank feed integration with Starling Bank

This article explains how to set up a bank feed integration for a Starling Bank account. It also explains how to refresh the integration if a previous connection has expired or has stopped importing transactions.

Please note that we are unable to provide detailed support on third-party bank feed integrations as they are developed and supported outside of FreeAgent.

Before you start

Before setting up a third-party bank feed integration, make sure that you have created a bank account in FreeAgent.

When setting up your bank account, you can choose to enable Guess, a FreeAgent feature that attempts to explain your transactions automatically, based on existing information in your FreeAgent account.

Setting up the integration

You can integrate FreeAgent with your Starling business bank account by following these steps:

1. Log in to your Starling Bank account.
2. Navigate to the ‘Account’ menu and select the ‘Marketplace and Connects Apps'. 
3. Find FreeAgent and select ‘Add’.
4. Follow the instructions to authorise access and set up the account on FreeAgent.

When setting up the integration, you'll be asked to select an account to link to, including multi-currency accounts. Please only select the option to create a new FreeAgent bank account if you haven’t already added a bank account to FreeAgent for Starling.

You'll also be prompted to choose a ‘Sync from’ date. This is the date from which you would like the transactions to be pulled into your FreeAgent account. This can be backdated to a maximum of one year from the enablement date, but cannot be earlier than your FreeAgent start date. If you need to backdate transactions that are older than one year, you will need to upload these bank transactions manually.

Your Starling Business Account transactions will begin to sync with FreeAgent within 24 hours. 

If you encounter any issues when setting up the integration, please visit Starling’s Bank’s help centre or contact them directly.

After you’ve set up the integration

The ‘Enable bank feed’ button

After you’ve successfully set up a third-party bank feed integration, you may notice that you can still see an ‘Enable bank feed’ button in the ‘Banking’ area of your FreeAgent account. Please note that this refers only to Open Banking bank feeds and will not affect your third-party bank feed integration.

Checking that your integration is enabled

Check that you’ve enabled your integration successfully by selecting your company name at the top-right of the screen in your FreeAgent account and selecting ‘Connections’ from the drop-down menu. Then, select ‘Manage approved applications’ and you’ll see all your approved applications, including any third-party bank feed integrations.

Refreshing an integration

If you have set up a Starling integration previously that has expired or has stopped importing bank transactions which are now missing from your FreeAgent account, you can refresh the connection. Please note that you’ll need to ensure that the previous integration has been removed first.

To do this, select your company name at the top-right of the screen and select ‘Connections & Add-ons’ from the drop-down menu.

Select ‘Manage' in the 'Approved applications’ section.

Next, select ‘Revoke access’ from the ‘Starling Bank Feed’ panel.

Then, navigate to the Marketplace section of the Starling app and you should see a FreeAgent tile visible on this page. Select ‘Remove’ to delete FreeAgent from your Starling account.

Once the connection has been disconnected, follow the steps above to set up a new integration via the Starling Marketplace. When setting up a new integration, make sure to select your previously linked FreeAgent account and choose the correct date from the ‘Sync from’ drop-down calendar to ensure that historical transactions are imported. Please also ensure that you select the existing Starling bank account from your FreeAgent account on this page.

If you find that transactions are still not imported after completing this process, please contact Starling directly using the ‘Help’ button under the menu icon in the Starling app.

Multi-currency accounts

You can link any USD and Euro accounts you have with Starling to FreeAgent.

When setting up the integration, you'll be prompted to select multiple accounts (including your multi-currency accounts) on the Starling consent screen. You'll then be prompted to select a FreeAgent account to link the Starling account with.

Please only select the option to create a new FreeAgent bank account if you haven’t already added a bank account to FreeAgent for the multi-currency Starling account.