FNB and Sage have partnered to simplify the process of transferring financial transaction history to Sage accounting solutions.
FNB customers will be able to share their financial transaction history with Sage via a secure application programming interface (API) automatically, without compromising online banking credentials.
This will be facilitated through the “direct bank feeds” service that will automatically imported, categorised and reconciled isupply financial transaction history data directly into the customer’s Sage software. The service is free for customers.
The banking service with Sage automates the first part of the bank reconciliation process for customers, by linking their online banking accounts directly to their Sage solution. This allows online bank transactions to be automatically imported, categorised and reconciled into the customer’s Sage software.
This is a big technological milestone not only for FNB, but for millions of SMEs.
Jesse Weinberg, SME segment head at FNB.
Pieter Bensch, executive vice-president at Sage Africa & Middle East, says his organisations is excited about the partnership because it supports Sage’s 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,” he adds.
“Our aim is to help our customers eliminate some of the manual and administrative processes associated with bookkeeping and bank reconciliations,” adds Jesse Weinberg, SME segment head at FNB. “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.”
The direct bank feeds service is configured firstly via FNB Online Banking, where customers can manage their consent and permissions to transmit their specific transactional history to Sage, and then assign and allocate those transactions within their Sage software.
FNB business customers using Sage accounting solutions can get financial transactions history fed through to the Sage platform periodically or set it to refresh automatically until they decide to stop the feed.
“This is a big technological milestone not only for FNB, but for millions of SMEs that now have a simple, efficient and more secure way to integrate their bank account transactions into their accounting software,” says Weinberg.
Over and above saving SEMs time, he says the partnership represents huge step towards increasing the level of financial inclusion by removing a barrier for more informal or less business-fluent SMEs to increase their accounting recording.
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