This article will explain how to add a bank account to Ember and also outline the differences between the two types of bank accounts you can add - Business and Personal.
It will also detail when we bring your transaction in from.
And finally we will take you through the data we require access to for your bank connections.
When you complete the initial onboarding flow you will be met with the following screen, asking you to add a bank account:
If you hit the cross accidentally or want to add one later, you can also navigate to Manage and select + add a connection. Or get your first bank account hooked up via the dashboard.
From the Manage section...
From the Dashboard...
Next you can use the search bar to find your current bank provider (feel free to also check out our partnerships with Revolut and Tide for benefits that might be relevant to you).
We currently support the following connections for sole traders and are always adding more providers:
Monzo
Starling
Revolut
Wise
Tide
AMEX
Barclays Personal
Barclays Business
Bank of Scotland Business
Bank of Scotland Personal
HSBC Business
HSBC Personal
Lloyds Business
Lloyds Personal
MBNA
Halifax
Nationwide
Natwest Business
Natwest Personal
RBS Business
RBS Personal
Ulster Bank
Danske Bank Business
Danske Bank Personal
Santander
Barclaycard
Capital One
TSB
Once you select the bank you'd like to connect, you will be sent to the following screen:
This will ask if you mainly use the account you're connecting for Business or Personal transactions. Once selected you will be redirected to connect the bank to Ember.
You may be in the position where you use both a business and personal account for your sole trade – in which case please add both to Ember so you don't miss out on any transactions.
Business accounts
Business should be selected if this is a sole trader business account that is separate from your personal bank account. We will then treat all the transactions coming in as business and our model will try to place them into the correct category for you.
Once connected, your transactions will automatically feed into Ember every time you spend or make money. The below image shows how your account will look once you have approved transactions. You will initially be shown a screen with a banner up the top, mentioning your transactions require approval. You will need to go through and categorise these transactions, to make sure they are in the right spot.
If you have added both a business and personal account, you can switch between the two screens really easily by selecting from the top menu bar.
Personal accounts
Personal should be selected if you want to add your normal 'everyday' account to Ember. This could be because you receive your sole trade income/pay your sole trade expenses from this account.
If you select personal we will categorise all the transactions as personal initially and you will then need to click on the relevant business transactions to pull them into the business section.
Ember will assume all transactions are personal:
To mark a transaction as business related – you will need to click in to the transaction itself and select the toggle.
This will change the category to Other Costs and you will then be able to update it with the correct category/VAT rate yourself.
You also have the option to add sales and expenses manually if you find that easier than connecting a bank account. You'd generally do this if you don't have too many transactions running through your business. Make sure to check out our article for how that works here.
What date will my transactions come in from?
We will use the info you provided during onboarding about when you started your business, to determine the date for when to bring transactions in from.
If you selected Since April 6th 2021 > We will use 6th April 2021 as the date to bring in your transactions from.
If you selected on the next screen that you haven't filed your Self Assessment for the previous year, we will bring in back from 6th April 2020. To make sure we have all the info to help you sort your previous tax year as well.
If you selected Before April 5th 2021 > We will use 6th April 2020 as the date to bring in your transactions from.
Bank connections
To connect with your bank, we need your authority to access some of the financial data that exists on your bank's side.
Note: This will only ever grant read-only access to your banking transactional data.
Once you click allow you will be redirected to your provider to complete further authorisation on their end. Follow the steps requested by your bank and you will be re-directed back to Ember with a live connection. 🥳