Synced Accounts

Synced accounts are bank connections that import your transactions and balances into Cadence in the background. Instead of typing every coffee, every grocery run, and every bill into the app yourself, your synced accounts keep the transaction list current throughout the day. Balances refresh on each sync, so your net worth and cash flow stay accurate without any extra effort.

Once an account is linked, the rest of Cadence lights up around it: budgets track actual spend, recurring detection spots new subscriptions, and your dashboard reflects the real state of your finances rather than a snapshot you have to maintain by hand.

Synced accounts are available on Cadence+ and Premium plans. Cadence+ supports up to three synced banks, and Premium lifts the cap for unlimited connections. The entry-level Cadence plan supports manual accounts and CSV imports, which is a good way to try Cadence with real data before adding bank syncing. If you upgrade later, all of your existing manual accounts and history stay in place - you simply add bank connections alongside them.

Linking a bank takes about a minute. The flow is handled by Plaid, which is the same connection layer used by most major budgeting and personal finance apps.

1. Open Settings → Connected Banks and tap “Connect a Bank” (or “Connect another bank” if you already have one linked). You can also start from the Net Worth page by tapping Add Asset → “Synced Bank”.
2. Search for your bank or financial institution by name.
3. Sign in securely with your bank credentials inside the Plaid window.
4. Approve any multi-factor authentication your bank requires.
5. Select which accounts you’d like to sync to Cadence.

Managing your connections lives primarily in Settings → Connected Banks. Supported institutions cover thousands of banks across Canada, the US, and the UK. If your bank isn’t listed, you can fall back to CSV import while the connection is being added.

Most account types are supported, though what gets synced varies slightly by type:

1. Chequing and savings - balances and transactions.
2. Credit cards - balances, transactions, and minimum-payment metadata where the bank exposes it.
3. Investment and brokerage - balances and holdings; transaction history depends on the institution.
4. Loans - outstanding balance and payment activity.
5. Mortgages - outstanding balance and amortisation details where available.

You can mix and match in any combination. Linking your everyday chequing account, your primary credit card, and a savings account covers most people’s daily flow without overwhelming the dashboard.

New transactions appear in Cadence throughout the day as your bank posts them - typically within a few hours of being charged. Balances refresh on each sync. If you want the freshest possible view, open Settings → Connected Banks and choose “Force Refresh” from a bank’s overflow menu to trigger a sync on demand for that institution.

Pending transactions are included as soon as your bank publishes them, then automatically reconciled when they post. You don’t need to clean up pending entries by hand.

Cadence supports CAD, USD, and GBP accounts side by side. You can hold a Canadian chequing account, a US dollar credit card, and a British pound investment account in the same dashboard without confusion. Each account keeps its native currency on its own page so the figures you see match what your bank shows.

On dashboard-level totals like net worth and cash flow, foreign balances are converted into your account’s primary currency using daily rates so the totals are meaningful at a glance. The original currency is preserved on every transaction.

For security, banks periodically require you to re-confirm your connection. When that happens, Cadence shows a prompt next to the affected account asking you to re-authenticate. The flow is the same as the initial link: a quick sign-in inside the Plaid window to refresh the connection.

If a connection has been broken for longer than a few days, see troubleshooting connections for the most common causes and fixes.

Your bank credentials are never stored by Cadence. The sign-in step happens entirely inside Plaid’s secure window, and what comes back to Cadence is a read-only access token that lets us fetch transactions and balances. We can’t move money, can’t change your bank settings, and can’t see your login on our side. You can revoke any connection from inside Cadence at any time, and doing so removes the access token both from Cadence and at Plaid.

Synced transactions are yours to refine. Categories, budget assignments, tags, and merchant names can all be edited without affecting the underlying bank record. Renaming a messy “SQ *FOO BAR LANE 11472” to a clean “Foo Bar” is a one-tap change, and category learning will pick up the pattern so future transactions arrive pre-cleaned.

Original bank data is preserved in case you ever need it - you can always view the raw merchant string and amount as reported by the bank. See transactions for more on managing your transaction list.