Guide · Connect your bank
Connect your bank to Arden — Plaid sync, step by step.
Bank sync is a Plus-tier feature. The Privacy plan stays manual + CSV by design — if that's what you want, you can skip this page entirely. If you'd rather have transactions land automatically, here's the exact path through Plaid Link, what gets imported, and how Arden auto-categorizes without ever seeing your bank credentials.
Step-by-step: link an account
- From any page in the app, open Settings → Bank Connections.
- Click Connect a Bank. A Plaid Link dialog opens — that's Plaid's own UI, not ours. Your banking credentials go directly there and never reach Arden.
- Search for your bank, authenticate, and pick which accounts you'd like Arden to see. Arden treats each linked institution as one Plaid item — a single item can carry multiple accounts (checking + savings + the joint card at the same bank).
- A confirmation dialog shows the linked accounts and their current balances. They're added to your sidebar immediately. Click any account, then click Sync to import transactions for the first time.
Opening-balance anchoring
On first link, Arden captures the account's current balance from Plaid. After your first sync completes, Arden inserts a Starting Balance transaction equal to (balance at link time − sum of synced transactions). That anchors the register so your running balance matches your actual bank balance from day one — no manual reconciliation pass required. The starting-balance transaction is created exactly once per account.
How auto-categorization works
Three lanes, all silent unless they actually need you:
- Auto-pilot — high-confidence matches. A payee rule you've confirmed before, or a high-signal merchant + amount combo. Arden categorizes and confirms it; you never see it in the inbox.
- Confirm — passive lane. Auto-categorized but confidence is below the autopilot threshold. Lands in /inbox so you can confirm in one tap, or correct if it's wrong.
- Decide — active lane. First-time payees, ambiguous descriptions, or category rules that disagree. You pick the category and Arden learns from it for next time.
The sidebar badge counts only the Decide lane — so the number you're looking at is the number of transactions that actually need your judgment, not your acknowledgment.
Under the hood, payee learning takes priority over every other signal. Confirm a transaction once, Arden saves the payee → category rule, and the next transaction from that payee skips the inbox entirely. Three confirmations promotes the rule into autopilot territory.
Recurring-bill matching
If you've set up scheduled transactions in Upcoming, incoming Plaid transactions automatically match against them when all three conditions hold:
- Payee name matches (normalized — case-folded, punctuation stripped)
- Amount is within 10%
- Date is within 5 days of the scheduled date
A matched transaction is auto-confirmed and the scheduled item advances to its next occurrence. Same Netflix charge stops needing to be acknowledged twice.
Connection health
Banks occasionally require periodic re-authentication — typically every 90 days for some institutions. When that happens, an amber reconnect banner appears at the top of the affected account page. Settings → Bank Connections → Reconnect runs the Plaid Link flow again; existing transactions are preserved.
Disconnecting an account
Settings → Bank Connections → Remove unlinks the Plaid item. Existing transactions stay in your register; only the live sync stops. You can re-link the institution any time, or move to manual + CSV permanently.
What Arden never sees
FAQ
Do I have to connect a bank to use Arden?
No. The Privacy plan ($5/mo) is manual + CSV only — drag a statement onto /import and Arden figures out the columns. Bank sync is a Plus-tier feature for people who'd rather not maintain CSVs by hand.
What happens to my banking credentials?
They go directly into Plaid's secure interface and never reach Arden. Arden only receives an access token after you authorize the connection — that token lets us request transaction data on your behalf, nothing else.
Will Arden auto-pay my bills?
No. Arden is read-only with respect to your bank — we receive transaction data and that's it. No write permissions, no transfers, no payments.
What if my bank requires periodic re-login?
Some institutions re-authenticate roughly every 90 days. When that happens you'll see an amber banner on the affected account asking you to reconnect — Settings → Bank Connections → Reconnect handles it in under a minute.
Can I disconnect later without losing my transactions?
Yes. Settings → Bank Connections → Remove unlinks the Plaid item but keeps every transaction already imported. You can re-link the institution any time, or keep going with manual entry.
Bank sync ships on the Plus tier. The Privacy plan stays CSV-only by design — pick the one that fits how you'd rather work.