I have a live feed set up with Starling, but the amounts in QuickFile are not matching those on my Starling balance. There are some big discrepancies (which I’m investigating), but some small ones too.
With regards to the small ones, we’re talking about less than a pound discrepancy.
Has anyone else experienced this?
Thanks
Hi @fambi
Are you comparing the QuickFile balance and transactions compared to the downloadable Starling statements, or the transaction list in the app?
QuickFile bank transactions with downloadable Starling statements (csv + pdf)
There is a difference in the transactions here.
The Starling feed is live (like the transaction list on the app), which uses the date the transaction took place. The statement however uses the date the transaction was settled which can be several days afterwards.
I can appreciate a difference in dates. But how about amounts?
As in the same transaction being different, or a showing different balances for different dates?
As in the amount for transaction X is 12.23 in QuickFile but then 12.41 in Starling.
And not just one, but several.
Would I be right in thinking that these aren’t GBP transactions and have been converted by Starling?
If so, this could be why. The feed would pick up the current exchange rate at the time of the transaction (this would be supplied to us by Starling), but the settled exchange rate may be different, which can cause a slight discrepancy.
You’re right! And that would make perfect sense!
Considering that there is no obvious way of changing bank transaction amounts inside QuickFile, what do you suggest?
You could either move the difference to an exchange rate discrepancy account, or you can remove the incorrect bank transaction and add your own manually.
In the long run, that seems more of a hack than a solution.
After all, what’s the point of synchronising with the bank if the figures aren’t going to be correct? Especially if there’s going to be the added hassle of going through all the numbers again. In that case, it would make more sense to wait until the month-end and then upload the previous month’s accurate statement which doesn’t require any hacking.
Surely there must be some type of solution you guys can figure out at the Starling-integration level?
i will ask the question, but i’m not sure that there is
Does the information that starling feed to you allow you to determine if a “transaction” is actually just an auth rather than a settlement? Ideally you would ignore authorisations and just import the final settled transaction (which is what most other banks give you anyway).
The feed only provides the initial transaction, as in when it happens rather than when it’s settled.
Although it’s worth mentioning that not all transactions come through on the feed (such as post office deposits). This is down to Starling, which I believe they have said they will be included in the future. However, we do poll the account daily to check for anything that has been missed.
What happens if you notice something is missed?
Also, if you’re polling daily, any way for you to poll the balance daily to see if there are any discrepancies?
p.s. Am I the only person that thinks a Starling feed is worthless if we have to spend our time looking for discrepancies, deleting old transactions and inserting new ones in their place? The pain would be less if the amount could be edited directly instead of having to replace the whole transaction, but there doesn’t seem to be any obvious way of doing that.
This is on our radar 
I’ve been looking at switching to Starling and also have some slight reservations on the feed methods. Would be handy if Starling could give more options on the API (like skip auths etc) so you can use it as a direct feed or more like the open banking feed if you prefer. Probably something to raise with them.
Sadly, I have no idea about the inner-workings. One of the reasons I chose QuickFile was to save myself the hassle of figuring it out.
Back-end stuff aside, I love Starling bank. Absolutely love it. I do find not having a web interface annoying as I don’t like doing business stuff on my mobile phone. But, they have a mobile-only (as opposed t mobile-first) approach and that might be why their concept is so good.
So, feed issues aside, I would not turn back to Natwest in a million years.
Make it a billion.
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