Sage and FNB bank feed integration: 4 ways business benefits

More than ever, we crave convenience. With things moving at the speed of light, it’s important that you can run your business with as little hassle as possible. But you also need security and efficiency.

Sage and First National Bank (FNB) customers can now access all this and more, with the new direct bank feed between Sage Accounting and your FNB Business Account.

Before we unpack the benefits of the FNB bank feed and how it can simplify financial management, it helps to understand what bank feeds are and how they work.

What are bank feeds?

A bank feed is a secure online connection between your Sage Accounting solution and your bank to ensure the seamless transfer of financial transaction history to your accounting system.

Once set up, Sage Accounting automatically imports transaction details from your bank account, meaning you can say goodbye to the drudgery of manual transaction entry or importing transactions from a downloaded file. Once your data is imported, it’s easy to create or match transactions.

So, what’s new with the Sage Accounting and FNB bank feed?

First National Bank has added new functionality that allows you as a Sage Accounting customer to import your bank transactions directly from FNB Business Accounts instead of the current indirect bank feed option.

This gives you a more controlled process of authorising your bank feed, as well as a clear view of how your business is doing and who still owes you money.

Jesse Weinberg, SME Segment Head at FNB says, “Our aim is to help our customers eliminate some of the manual and administrative processes associated with bookkeeping and bank reconciliations. This should save them time and money so they can focus on growing and running their business efficiently. Direct integration between our online banking services and Sage’s software offers SMEs the easiest and most secure way possible to carry out their bank account reconciliations, with no need for third-party integrations or compromising their bank login credentials.”

Four benefits of the new FNB bank feeds for SMEs

1.    Convenience

Manually downloading and uploading your transaction history is time-consuming. It’s a hassle that no one looks forward to, and it takes up time and energy that could be better spent on other things, like growing your business.

With Sage Accounting and Sage 50cloud Pastel for small businesses, and Sage 200 Evolution and Sage Intacct for medium businesses, you no longer need to spend time on manual entry of banking transactions. It’s done for you! More flexibility. More convenience. Admin smashed.

2.    Affordability

Normally, convenience doesn’t come cheap. But in this case, it’s free. That’s right. Bank feeds are an additional benefit for new and existing Sage and FNB business customers.

3.    Security

You’re accessing sensitive data all the time. No one wants to download that kind of information onto their laptop or send it in an email. And for good reason.

The FNB Direct Bank Feed uses your consent for Sage to collect your bank transactions, and FNB and Sage ensure your data is transmitted safely and securely, using regularly audited systems that comply with the latest industry standards and regulations.

This puts you in control to grant Sage access to your authorised accounts through the FNB online banking platform.

4.    Efficiency

Manual processes can be cumbersome. Matching your transactions in your bank account with those in your accounting solution takes up valuable time. And time is money.

An instant, once-off Sage and FNB bank feed integration is all it takes to reclaim both.

Besides the fact that you no longer have to manually import your financial information, you can also train the system to recognise and allocate regular and repeat transactions, saving you even more time.

But that’s not all…

You can also enjoy the benefits of a direct and secure connection between FNB Business Banking and your Sage Accounting solution with no third parties and no SMS login notifications.

“We’re tremendously excited about this partnership with FNB because it supports our vision at Sage to make accounting invisible for businesses, giving them the time to focus on more strategic tasks. Partnering with FNB is one of the ways in which we’re making the lives of small and medium business owners easier,” says Pieter Bensch, Executive Vice-President at Sage Africa & Middle East.

Good to know:

• If you are already a Sage customer, you can set up your connection directly from your FNB Business Banking app. Not yet using Sage Accounting? Sign up for a Sage Accounting trial now.
• There are no additional fees to use the service.
• If you have an existing FNB bank feed set up, you will need to replace the existing Sage Accounting bank feed with an FNB Direct Bank Feed. You can access a User Guide on the Sage Knowledgebase for help with the connection process.
• Check the date of your last manually imported or captured transactions. Set the FNB Direct Bank Feeds import start date from then to avoid duplicate transactions in Sage Accounting.
• There is no limit to the number of FNB Business Bank accounts that can be linked.
• If you are an authorised representative, you will be able to set up and authorise the bank feeds solution on behalf of your client. If you don’t see the tab, it means you don’t have authorisation to perform this task on behalf of your client.

FNB bank feed integration is supported for the following products:

• Sage Business Cloud Accounting
• Sage 50cloud Pastel
• Sage 200 Evolution
• Sage Intacct