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Another Vote for this!!!

Tell everyone you know to vote for this to bring it to the top of the pile for Xero Dev Team.

It is critical for Xero to provide a bank feed for CAF bank ASAP especially since CAF bank have updated their banking platform to enable this to happen. The upgrade has also removed several useful features making the banking feed even more critical especially as Xero's competitors allow a bank feed from CAF bank

Bank Feed it vital now as others have said, I thought it might be helpful to list some of the issues I have identified and reported to CAF bank about statement exports since their "upgrade":

1) You need other select more than 1 day for an export to contain any data
2) QFX is the one to choose instead of OFX
3) CAF are coding their files as US dollars so Xero rejects them. Workaround is to open the QFX file in a text editor (notepad for PC or Textedit for Mac), search for "USD" and overtype with "GBP". Import will then work.
4) Any purchase on a CAF Card will import just as "POS" no more data about Merchant.
5) For incoming Faster Payments, the Account name and reference are now reversed vs old online banking so this caused several of our bank rules to not work.

I have reported these all to CAF Bank, and I hope they can fix them, but the need for a bank feed it even more urgent now.

Hope this helps others.

The CAF "upgrade" is going swimmingly so far isn't it?!

CAF bank have removed the OFX download option, so please prioritise this

This is even more critical as CAF banks shiny new "update" has removed the option to download transactions as an OFX file!
Please prioritise this feed

I have found Xero not much quicker than the spreadsheets I created 30 years ago, when I inherited the hand written ledgers the Charity had been using. However I find that the standard Xero formats seem to be aimed largely at limited companies and their layout requirements.
Charity accounts are different, especislly for below the line overhead expenses. I have created a new Chart of Accounts, so that the profit and loss account will need minimum attention at the end of the financial year. As well as creating a feed from the CAFBank, it would help to have a standard balance sheet as specified for Charities.
I am in my mid 80's and feel like Ian Kelly

Thanks for the update Kelly. I suppose as this has been going on for 5 years, another 5 years won't make a big differece. Except as I am in my 60's, I might well not live to see it.

I am so glad too, that this has gotten the attention of the product team. How on earth did they find out?

I also agree this has been requested for a very long time, but to be fair to Xero until very recently it has not been possible for them due to CAF Banks refusal to implement standard Open Banking APIs. However as CAF are now totally overhauling their online banking systems it will now be possible for Xero to link to CAF using Open Banking. Let’s keep reminding Xero how many people require this to happen ASAP. 👍🏼

Excellent and so badly needed. Shame it has taken so long to get this far but I am sure Xero, will progress this request with urgency.

CAF are about to have faster payments etc so you never know...

Hi Kelly, thanks for the update but there have been requests for this for several years and we really need a bit more from Xero. Knowing that it has your attention and that you are exploring it doesn't really help us in doing our jobs. Sorry if this sounds ungrateful but this is sooo frustrating.

We are a Community Benefit Society operated entirely by volunteers. While our current transaction volume is relatively modest, the organisation is entering a phase of growth and operational maturity that will see a significant increase in financial activity. This will include a higher frequency of transactions not only between our organisation and CAF Bank, but also with a growing number of external creditors and suppliers.

As a volunteer-led entity, our capacity is limited, and our focus must remain on delivering community value rather than administrative burden. In this context, the ability to access an automated bank feed would greatly enhance our operational efficiency. It would reduce the need for manual transaction processing and reconciliation, allowing our volunteers to redirect their efforts towards more strategic and impactful activities in support of our mission.
Any updates you could provide on the anticipated timeline or current progress toward enabling this integration would be greatly appreciated

Strange that QB has a bank feed facility with CAF Bank yet Xero does not?

very keen for Xero to action this bank feed- we have decided to pause opening a CAF account until this issue is sorted!

Hi. New to Xero. I see there has been quite a few votes on expanding the search bar . At this stage u can enter you invoice number or customer name but I really need to be able to type in a.property name and the system must indicate all transactions done on that property. For example QuickBooks as used to type.in the property i .searching for of work I have done there and it would populate all the recent work done there from the most recent date to oldest. If a client calls me and asks me what was done and when I want to be able to type in the property name, i am in maintenance. I have 1 landlord that has 5 properties for example and work there on a daily basis, so it is crucial for me to be able to see what was last invoiced on his property and the detail of what was done. This is the search bar at the top i am referring too.
Thanks

Just had the OFX format. Worked well and quick.

@CliveMence
Have you tried setting up a Bank Rule for your incoming payments. These are really powerful as they can be highly selective or quite broad, and can allocate the transaction however you want. If the transaction are regular from the same source this works really well.

https://central.xero.com/s/article/Create-a-bank-rule

Hope it helps.

I haven't tried out getting the OFX format yet. Only heard of this today. So, thanks, everyone, for the tip.

I'm new to Xero after manually working my charity accounts for the last 30 years and it's quite easy to download the .OFX file and drag it across. However allocating incoming payments to their respective codes is tedious.
I'm told there is some expensive add-on that will do it automatically, but I'm sceptical.

@PaulIngram
Have you tried downloading your transaction data from CAF as an .OFX file as Susan mentioned? This will import directly into Xero with no issues at all. This can be done from CAF Bank Online and not their 'Statements' site which only provides PDF versions.