How to Connect Bank Accounts to Prosaic

Bank transactions come into Prosaic through secure open-banking connections. This guide explains who can connect accounts, how the connection works between Prosaic, Akahu and your bank, and how connected accounts are assigned to entities.

Who can connect bank accounts

There are two types of user in Prosaic:

• Workspace (practice) users — Admins, Advisors and Owners — manage the accounting work.
• Client users — Clients and Standard Users — connect and manage bank accounts.

An email address can only belong to one user type.

If you need bank feeds from a client, invite them using an email address they have access to. They'll use it to sign up, authorise and connect bank accounts via Akahu, and to reach a dashboard where they can add or manage those accounts. You can then assign the accounts to an entity. Client users don't have admin workspace access.

If you're an accountant or bookkeeper and want to connect bank accounts for testing or your own business, invite yourself as a client using a different email address. This creates a separate client login you can use to connect and manage bank accounts.

Why it works this way: bank feeds run on open banking, so the account holder has to actively authorise access in their own banking app (for example ANZ goMoney) — just like authorising Xero or Microsoft. There's no form to sign on someone's behalf, which is why only client users can connect feeds.

Connecting bank accounts

There are two ways to get a client's accounts connected.

1. Invite the client to connect (the usual way)

When you add a client, send them an invitation. They complete a short onboarding and connect their bank feeds securely via Akahu, authorising access in their banking app. Clients connect during initial onboarding, and can add or manage accounts anytime from their client dashboard.

2. Connect the accounts yourself

If you hold access to bank accounts and want to be the authoriser, eg to bring in your own bank accounts:

1. Add yourself as a client using an email that's different from your work/admin login (for example a personal Gmail).
2. Sign out, then sign in as that client and complete client onboarding.
3. From the client dashboard, connect your bank accounts and assign each to the right entity.
4. To add or manage accounts later, sign in as the client again and do it from the client dashboard — connections are always managed from the client login.

If a client can't connect an account, you can import bank statements manually instead. See Importing bank transactions manually.

Assigning accounts to entities

One client login can authorise many bank accounts, and you assign each account to the relevant entity. A single entity can have more than one account. So a client with three companies and a trust is one client login → several connected accounts → assigned across the four entities. Each entity keeps its own chart of accounts, reports and GST.

How Prosaic, Akahu and your bank connect

• Akahu is a secure open-banking provider that sits between your bank and Prosaic — the intermediary that handles the bank connection.
• Transactions flow in: banks → Akahu → Prosaic.
• Set up and manage flows out: from Prosaic you're redirected to Akahu (and your bank) to add, remove or reconnect accounts.
• Authorise once, then connect any number of accounts and manage them anytime.
• Use the same email for your Akahu account and your Prosaic client login, so Prosaic can hand you straight through to Akahu.

When someone needs to be both a user and a client

Sometimes a person is part of your team and owns a business you do the books for — for example a practice owner who's also a client. Keep the two roles separate:

• Invite them as a workspace user first (owner or admin) — their team login.
• Invite them separately as a client user, with a different email, for the business whose feeds need connecting.

That way their workspace access never collides with the bank connections.