Xero, QuickBooks and FreeAgent card sync: how the bank feed works

How the feed works

Capital on Tap’s homepage advertises “Auto-sync to Sage, Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent, and more”. Connecting the account, in the words of its FAQ, “creates an automatic data feed that syncs all your financial activity (card payments, refunds, interest charges, etc.) to your accounting software every 12 hours”. In practice it behaves like a bank feed: transactions arrive in your software’s bank reconciliation screen against a Capital on Tap account, and you match each one to a bill, an expense or a rule.

The account it feeds is a credit card account in your books, so the balance it builds up is a liability, cleared when your monthly repayment leaves the business current account. That repayment shows up twice, once as money out of the bank feed and once as a payment into the card feed, and the two are matched to each other as a transfer. Get that right once and everything else is straightforward.

Connecting it in the portal

The steps from Capital on Tap’s FAQ: log in to the online portal, go to the Accounting page, click “Connect” under your chosen software and follow the prompts. You will be sent to your accounting software to sign in and authorise the connection, then returned. The feed starts from that point; for history before the connection, use the Export button on the same Accounting page, which downloads transactions for a date range you choose, and import that file as a statement in your software.

Two setup decisions worth making at the start. First, connect the feed to a dedicated credit card account in your chart of accounts, named for the card, not to a general liability account; it makes the year-end reconciliation to the statement trivial. Second, decide who owns the connection. If your accountant or bookkeeper will manage it, give them the Accounts role in the portal, which lets them manage integrations and see transactions without being able to issue cards or change payment settings.

To disconnect, Capital on Tap recommends removing the connection from within the accounting software’s own settings rather than from the portal, and says you can reconnect at any time. If you also open the Instant Savings account, it can be added to the same connection for Xero, Sage and FreeAgent by disconnecting and reconnecting.

What syncs, and what does not

Card purchases from every card on the account, with the merchant name, the sterling amount and the cardholder. Refunds, as separate credit lines. Interest charges, if any. Your repayments, as credits to the card account. And, if you use it, Bill Pay transfers, which Capital on Tap says sync alongside card spend; the HMRC and Bill Pay guide covers those.

What you should not expect: receipt images do not travel with the transaction into the accounting software (they are stored in the Capital on Tap app and portal), so receipt matching in Xero or QuickBooks is still a step, though the cardholder name on each line makes it a quick one. Transactions that are still pending on the card may not appear until they settle, which for hotels and fuel can be a few days after the purchase. And the feed does not code anything for you; that is what your software’s bank rules are for.

What to check at reconciliation

A monthly reconciliation of the card account should take a few minutes once the rules are in place. These are the lines that need a human eye.

• Pending versus settled. The feed reflects settled transactions. If a purchase you know about is not in the feed, check whether it is still pending in the portal before raising a problem; it will arrive on the next sync after it settles. At month end, this is the main reason the software’s balance and the portal’s current balance differ.
• Refunds. Match each refund line to the original purchase (or to a credit note against the supplier), not to income. A refund also reverses the cashback: points are cancelled on refunded purchases.
• Foreign-currency amounts. With 0% non-sterling transaction fee, the statement amount is simply the Visa conversion with nothing added, so post the sterling figure shown. Against a fixed-amount dollar bill there will be a small exchange difference each month; that is expected. The FX fee calculator shows why this line is smaller than it would be on most cards.
• Interest lines. If you pay the statement in full there should be none: no interest on purchases if you pay the statement balance in full by the due date. An interest line appearing is a signal to check the repayment option and Direct Debit, per the avoid interest guide, not just to code it to bank charges.
• Rewards credits. Points can be redeemed as balance credit, cash, gift cards, Avios, Virgin Points or Radisson Rewards. A redemption against the card balance appears as a credit on the card account; a cash redemption arrives in the business bank account instead. How to treat rewards in the accounts is a question for your accountant; the rewards page explains the mechanics.
• The repayment transfer. Confirm the month’s repayment is matched as a transfer between the bank account and the card account, not posted as an expense in one and income in the other.

Finish by comparing the software’s card-account balance with the statement’s closing balance. If they agree after allowing for pending items, the month is done.

Employee and virtual card lines

Every card on the account feeds the same accounting connection, and each line shows which cardholder made it. With unlimited free employee cards with per-card limits, that is the difference between a feed you can reconcile and one you cannot: the bookkeeper sees a purchase, sees the name, and knows whose receipt to look for. The employee cards guide covers limits and the receipt policy that makes this work.

Virtual cards named for a vendor go one step further. When a subscription has its own card, its line in the feed recurs on the same day, for roughly the same amount, from a card whose name is the vendor’s. That is exactly the pattern bank rules are built for, so most subscription lines can be coded automatically and only new or changed amounts need attention. The virtual cards guide explains the one-card-per-tool setup.

Receipts

Cardholders upload receipts through the Capital on Tap app, and the Receipt Chaser setting in the portal (under Notification settings, then Receipt Reminders) prompts them when a transaction has none. The images live in the portal against the transaction; they do not flow into the accounting software with the feed, so your receipt process in Xero, QuickBooks or FreeAgent runs alongside rather than through the card.

The practical arrangement that works for a small team: receipts go into the card app at the point of purchase, because that is the app the cardholder has open; the bookkeeper, with the Accounts role, can see them there when matching lines; and receipts that need to be attached in the accounting software for VAT (supplier invoices, in particular) are handled by the supplier bill process, not by the card. That way nobody uploads the same receipt twice.

The Xero offer

Capital on Tap advertises 6 months of Xero free for first-time subscribers, with the wording “6 months free Xero for first-time subscribers”. The conditions matter: it is for businesses that have not subscribed to Xero before, and Xero’s normal pricing applies once the free period ends. If you are already on QuickBooks or FreeAgent, it is not a reason to move; if you are choosing a package for a new company, it is a modest saving and the feed works the same on all four.

Common problems

Duplicate transactions. The usual cause is importing a manual export for a period the live feed also covers, or having connected the feed twice. Check the Accounting page for a single connection, delete the duplicates in your software, and only use Export for periods before the feed started.

Transactions that seem to be missing. Check pending status first; the feed reflects settled transactions and runs syncs every 12 hours. If a card has been replaced, remember that the feed is on the account, not the card number: Capital on Tap says a replacement leaves the credit limit, rate and due dates unchanged, that pending transactions on the old card still process, and that refunds to the old card still credit the account. Missing lines after a replacement are almost always timing rather than a broken feed.

The connection stops updating. Accounting software connections periodically need re-authorising. Capital on Tap’s guidance is to remove the connection from the accounting software’s side and reconnect from the portal.

Balance does not agree with the statement. Pending items, an unmatched repayment transfer, or a refund posted as income. Work through the reconciliation list above in that order.

A director’s personal card purchase that needs to be in the books. That is not a feed problem, but it is the most common “missing transaction” of all, and the answer is an expense claim, not a manual card line. The business vs personal card guide explains why.

How it compares with Amex and Barclaycard feeds

Most UK business cards now offer some route into accounting software, but the depth varies. American Express lists QuickBooks and Xero export for Business Gold and QuickBooks and Xero for Platinum, which in Amex’s case is an export or connection you set up from the Amex side. Funding Circle’s cashback card lists FreeAgent, Xero, Sage. Barclaycard’s Select Cashback page, as we read it, does not state an accounting integration, so check with Barclaycard directly before assuming a feed exists; the Barclaycard comparison notes what its pages do and do not say.

Bank-issued cards from NatWest, Lloyds and HSBC generally appear in accounting software through the bank’s own feed alongside the current account, which is convenient if you bank there and irrelevant if you do not. The Capital on Tap connection is independent of where you bank, covers all four main small-business packages plus Sage, and includes every card on the account with the cardholder shown. For an agency with several cards and a pile of subscriptions, that last point is the one that matters. The Amex comparison sets the two approaches against each other in full, and the review covers where the feed fits in day-to-day use.