Connect a bank account
Pippin reads your transactions through Plaid. It can match them and categorize them, and it can never move your money.
Before you start
A connection is read-only. Pippin sees transactions as they post and nothing else: it cannot initiate a transfer, pay a Bill, or move a cent. Nothing in the product asks your bank to do anything.
Each connected bank account is mapped to one account in your Chart of Accounts. That mapping is what lets a transaction become a posting rather than a line in a list.
You do not have to connect anything. A CSV statement export does the same work by hand, and some banks are easier that way.
Steps
- Open Accounting › Banking and choose Connections.
- Choose Connect a bank. Plaid’s own window opens — you sign in to your bank there, not in Pippin.
- Pick the accounts to bring across.
- Map each one to an account in your Chart of Accounts. An unmapped connection collects transactions that have nowhere to post.
- Transactions begin arriving. New ones show as uncategorized until you file them.
- Open Banking and choose Connections in the toolbar.
- Connect through Plaid, then map each account.
- Import a CSV statement instead with File › Import, or from ⌘K.
Good to know
Categorizing a transaction is what posts it. Until then it is something your bank told Pippin about, not something your books have recorded.
On the Mac, the transaction review is keyboard-first: ⏎ files the transaction to the chosen category and moves to the next, C opens the category picker, and Skip leaves it for later. Pippin suggests a category from what you have filed before, and you can turn any decision into a standing rule with Categorize + always.
A reconciled transaction is locked. Reconciling is the point at which your records and the bank’s are agreed, so what went into that agreement stops being editable.