Bank Connection in the Cashbook: Automatic Sync, Member Recognition and Balance Check

Anyone running the treasury of a choir or association knows the monthly routine: log into online banking, download the bank statement as CSV or PDF, type every single transaction by hand into Excel or the Chorilo cashbook, check the amounts, dig out receipts. That quickly adds up to one or two evenings a month spent re-typing numbers that are already there in your own online banking. The new bank connection in the Chorilo cashbook puts an end to that: the cashbook is connected once to the association's bank account, after which Chorilo retrieves new transactions automatically, suggests matching categories and members and even checks whether the cashbook balance and the bank balance still match.

What the Bank Connection Does

Once the connection is established, Chorilo loads the new transactions of the association's account once per night (around 3 a.m.) and creates each transaction directly as a cashbook entry — with the status "awaiting confirmation". These entries appear in the regular cashbook transaction list immediately, with category and member already suggested. A banner at the top of the list shows how many bank transactions still need confirming and leads with one click to a dedicated reconciliation page where several entries can be checked and confirmed in quick succession.

Confirming means: the status of the entry switches from "waiting" to "confirmed"; the actual booking data does not change, the entries were part of the cashbook from the start. Rejecting is just as easy: an imported entry that was, say, a private transaction or had already been booked elsewhere is rejected and disappears from the list. If the treasurer has already entered a matching booking manually, Chorilo recognises this by the booking date (±3 days), amount, booking type and — if available — the counterparty IBAN, and offers a merge. On confirmation, the bank entry becomes the leading record, the manual entry is removed with a GoBD-compliant audit trail; category, chart-of-accounts entry, reference and notes from the manual entry are carried over into the leading entry where they were previously empty. The full cashbook feature set — statement of operating income (EÜR), GoBD lock after 24 hours, donation receipts, receipt management — works with bank entries exactly as with manually entered ones.

Category Suggestion from Your Own Booking History

Chorilo learns with every confirmed entry. As soon as an imported bank entry lands in the cashbook, the system looks through the most recent confirmed entries for the same payer or payee details — first by exact IBAN, otherwise by matching name — and reads the category and chart-of-accounts entry from there. So whoever once booked the first GEMA direct debit as "licence fees" gets the suggestion automatically the next time it comes in. The same applies to regular donors, insurance direct debits, electricity and telecom debits and the rent payment for the rehearsal venue. The suggestion is always just a pre-fill, the treasurer can accept it with one click or change it before confirming — nothing is booked without confirmation.

To prevent a one-off mis-categorisation from dragging all future entries with it, Chorilo does not look at just the latest entry, but at the last five. The most common category among them is taken; in case of a tie, the most recent wins. This way the majority of correct classifications prevails, while outliers fall out.

Automatic Member Assignment for Membership Fees and Donations

Membership fees and member donations can now be assigned directly to a member without the treasurer having to go through name lists. The prerequisite is that the member's IBAN has been recorded in their profile — for example because a SEPA mandate was issued or the IBAN was captured at admission. As soon as an imported bank entry matches that member's IBAN, Chorilo links the entry to the member automatically. The comparison is generous: upper- and lowercase letters as well as spaces in the IBAN do not lead to false negatives.

In the cashbook, the member assignment is visible as its own field in the transaction details and can be changed retroactively in the 24 hours after creation (the GoBD lock for booking data kicks in after that). If a member later switches from a dummy account to a real user account, the link is automatically transferred by the user-swap logic. The assignment stays ensemble-bound — only members of the choir in question are suggested, no data leak between independent associations using Chorilo in parallel.

Balance Check: Bank vs. Cashbook

With every sync, Chorilo also fetches the current bank balance of the connected account and compares it with the cashbook balance. On the bank connection page of the account a balance card appears: at the top the balance at the bank, below it the balance of confirmed entries in the cashbook and the total of bank entries still waiting for confirmation. If everything matches, the card lights up green ("matches"). If there is a difference, it is shown in orange with a hint that either entries still need confirming or a booking is missing in the cashbook.

That makes it possible to see at a glance at the end of the month or year whether the association's books and the bank account still agree — a step previously done with a calculator and the most recent statements.

Which Banks Are Supported

The connection runs technically through BANKSApi, a German-licensed and regulated provider for bank account interfaces. Chorilo currently only supports German banks — from Sparkassen and Volksbanken through direct banks such as ING, DKB, comdirect or N26 to commercial banks like Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank and Postbank. Associations in Austria, Switzerland or other countries are welcome to get in touch at support@chorilo.com — we will assess demand and add further countries as soon as enough requests have come in. Several accounts can be connected side by side for the same association — for example a current account and a savings account, or accounts at different banks; each cashbook account gets its own bank link.

Setup in a Few Minutes

The connection is set up once per account and only requires the usual login process at your own bank. Under "Accounts" in the cashbook you will find the "Connect bank" toggle. Clicking it opens a secure window of the respective bank in which the treasurer enters online banking credentials and TAN — exactly as during a normal login. No credentials are passed on to Chorilo. The bank then returns an access permission that allows read-only access only: no transfers, no standing orders, no changes to the account.

After the first connection, Chorilo loads the account history from the start date chosen by the treasurer and stores it as waiting entries. If older transactions have already been entered manually, those are retained — Chorilo recognises possible duplicates by date, amount and IBAN and offers a merge on confirmation. From then on, new transactions are pulled in once a day (around 3 a.m.) in the background. An immediate refresh via the "Sync now" button is also available at any time.

SCA and the 180-Day Cycle

The European Payment Services Directive PSD2 requires every read connection to a bank account to be renewed regularly via Strong Customer Authentication (SCA). For German banks this is usually 180 days. Chorilo sends an email reminder around two weeks before expiry; a two-minute login at the bank including TAN confirmation extends the connection again. If the renewal is missed, the connection pauses until the next login — the cashbook keeps working, only new transactions stop being fetched automatically in the meantime.

Data Protection and Security

The bank connection is explicitly built so that Chorilo never knows the bank credentials itself. Login and TAN end up only on the bank's page, mediated through BANKSApi. What Chorilo stores is an encrypted access token with read-only access, reissued at every SCA. The transaction data fetched is hosted in Germany, transmitted only encrypted and additionally stored AES-256-encrypted in the database (the provider's original payload). It is visible in the cashbook only to authorised people — typically board members, treasurer and auditors.

BANKSApi is named as a third-party provider in Chorilo's data processing agreement; GDPR-compliant processing is contractually safeguarded. The connection can be terminated at any time with a single click — already imported entries remain in the cashbook, no further synchronisations take place after that.

What the Bank Connection Costs

Because BANKSApi charges an ongoing licensing and transaction fee for every active bank connection, Chorilo cannot include this feature in the main subscription. The bank connection is therefore available as a paid add-on — for 2.50 euros per month or 25 euros per year, depending on the billing interval of the main subscription. Anyone booking the module in the middle of a billing period pays pro-rata: Stripe calculates the days until the next regular invoice and adds only the proportional amount to that invoice. There is no separate invoice; the bank connection appears as an additional line on the regular Chorilo bill. Ensembles that run sub-ensembles in the same subscription (for example a main choir with a youth choir) only pay once — the module applies to all ensembles billed together. The bank connection can be cancelled at any time to the end of the current month or year, again with a single click in the "Billing" area. Already imported entries remain in the cashbook even after cancellation.

Where the Bank Connection Pays Off

The added value is greatest wherever the account sees many smaller movements regularly — that is, exactly with associations that have membership fees, donations, event income and ongoing costs. Instead of taking on 30 to 80 entries a month manually, the treasurer clicks through the waiting entries in five to ten minutes — most of the time just confirming the pre-filled suggestions. The year-end close also gets easier: because every entry has a reliable link to the bank account and the balance check reports differences immediately, the cashbook and the statement can be compared exactly on the closing date.

Outlook: SEPA Direct Debits and Transfers Straight from Chorilo

The current state of the bank connection is deliberately limited to reading — that is the simpler stage and is enough for most associations. We are already working on the next stage, in which Chorilo will also be able to actively initiate payments. Two additional features are planned, which we expect to release in the coming months:

• Direct SEPA direct debit collection: Anyone collecting membership fees by SEPA mandate today exports an XML file from Chorilo and uploads it to online banking. In future the collection will be triggered straight from Chorilo — one click on "Collect fees", an SCA confirmation at the bank, and the entire bulk direct debit goes onto the association's account without a detour.
• Initiate transfers directly: Expense reimbursements for the choir director, fee payments to soloists or settling supplier invoices can be prepared straight from the cashbook or receipt list and executed with an SCA approval at the bank. The transfer then automatically appears in the cashbook again as soon as it is booked on the account.

Both functions will continue to be subject to the strict PSD2 rules — meaning: no payment is initiated without strong customer authentication of the authorised person. Anyone already using the bank connection today will get these extensions automatically, without having to set anything up again.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the connection work with two board members who manage the account jointly? Yes. The SCA must be performed by a person who is set up in online banking. Anyone with access to the cashbook then sees the imported transactions regardless of who originally established the connection.

Does Chorilo get access to other accounts? No. Only the one account whose access the treasurer confirms in the bank dialog is connected. Other accounts under the same online banking login remain invisible.

What if a member pays from a third-party account? If the IBAN does not match the member's stored IBAN, the member assignment stays empty and can be set manually. The next time a transaction comes in from that same third-party IBAN, Chorilo remembers the assignment via the category-learning logic.

What happens if the bank changes its interface? BANKSApi and Chorilo update the connection in the background. For larger changes, a fresh SCA login may be required — the treasurer is informed by email.

Can the connection be cancelled if the association's account is changed? Yes. The connection is simply deleted and can be set up freshly with the new account. Existing entries are retained.

Anyone with questions about the setup will find an illustrated step-by-step guide in the help area. For concrete problems we are happy to help — via the AI chatbot in the application or by email. And anyone already impatient for SEPA collection and transfers: we will be back with a dedicated post as soon as the next stage goes live.