Enter your idea

There is a lot of negativity towards Xero here. How long has it taken CAF Bank to upgrade there system to meet the security needs of an online bank? And that didn't go well.

Patience folks. Xero will get there.

And if anyone is considering other options other than Xero, I would caution against ruling out Xero. Xero Accounting is too good and easy to use to warrant going anywhere else.

Yes, its a pain to export and load transactions, but if you have a system it only takes a minute. I would rather load manually that use QuickBooks!!

Does anyone else on this thread who has contributed to the repeated pleas for Xero to implement a CAF Bank feed feel like they are ******* their head against a brick wall? Because I certainly do. And I will be very happy when I no longer have to keep doing it.

What I find most frustrating isn’t even the lack of progress , it’s the lack of basic courtesy. There has been a recent flood of messages, all saying essentially the same thing: this integration is needed, it’s overdue, and it’s causing real problems. Yet there has been no meaningful acknowledgement, no update, not even a holding response.

What exactly is the problem Xero has with responding politely and transparently to its users? Even a brief “we hear you, this is where it sits, and this is why it’s not happening yet” would be better than this wall of silence. At the moment, it feels less like a product discussion and more like shouting into the void.

I am really sorry to have to share my frustration here, I thought there was an update on this today but it seems the latest update from the Xero team was still the one given in July to say that the idea had been accepted. Where are we now? That update suggests that there are various stages stated as Submitted
In review
Existing functionality
Feedback
Gaining support
Accepted
In discovery
In development
Completed
Not in pipeline

so we should expect some kind of update to say that this has now reached the "in discovery" stage, but here we are all these months on and no news at all.
When we do get to the "in discovery" stage there will still be another further stage to go - what does this mean? how can we plan? should we give up? Are there any other finance software providers out there that work in a similar way and have a more effective alliance with the needs of charities? has anyone else taken the step to switch yet? I am really keen to hear from anyone that has and if you have had a good experience? Our charity won't move from CAF and while we have many issues with them if there is not a solution to the bookkeeping that xero can provide I want to find another sensible answer. thanks to anyone that responds.

Alongside an integrated feed, is it also possible to have some choice over the format of your spread sheets that can be downloaded. Before the system change, when downloaded these appeared with beginning of the month at the top annd end of the month at the bottom I.e. 01/04/24…..30/04/25. In addition they had debit and credit columns which were helpful for preparing the accounts.

Now when you open the downloaded cvs sheet, the newest date is at the top, I.e. 30/04/25 and the oldest date at the bottom (01/04/25) and there is no debit column - just one column with both credits and debits.

I could probably live without the debit column being changed but having the transactions back to front is so annoying as every single transaction has to be reordered individually (order of all can be done in a couple of strokes but then it isn’t in the order on the statements, which makes reconciliation more complex.

Georgia
Thank you so much for responding but this update gives us nothing to go on in terms of how long we need to continue with things the way they are. If you could give us a time frame it would at least give some light at the end of this long tunnel.
If Xero has any care for the charity sector in the UK and understood the number of particularly small charities that use CAF you will know just how much of an issue this is, while it is great to hear from you, telling us that QFX improves the uploads is just not a thing.. no it doesn't!! our charity are doing two uploads each month and we also had issues with the manual uploads and errors created that were time consuming to resolve. Does Xero only care about big banks? When we first moved to Xero it was because of the notion that Xero cares about charities but I am really starting to doubt this. We need a timeframe, we need hope and we need to get this sorted.

This would streamline our processes. A definite plus.

As charities this is so important to us, and i see from CAF banks recent update they are ready to provide a bank feed option with Xero - so we are waiting for Xero to move forward with this.
I love xero and CAF but the fact they haven't integrated is a huge sticking point and is costing many charities time and therefore money. Getting this live would make a huge difference and give back to so many charities.

It would make my life easier / quicker if there were a direct feed - would ensure that I don't inadvertently duplicate or miss entries which I have done in the past

As a charity treasurer using both CAF Bank and Xero, a direct bank feed would make a meaningful difference to governance, audit readiness, and day-to-day financial controls. Manual imports add unnecessary risk and delay, especially where multiple volunteers are involved in financial processes. CAF already supports the technical requirements, and a Xero feed would significantly improve accuracy and efficiency for charities relying on Xero. This connection would benefit a large portion of the UK charity sector and would remove a key friction point in compliant bookkeeping.

Hello, we are a small charity and rely on the benefits of technology to support our over burdened team. It would be an essential addition to our financial workload to have Xero automatically integrate with CAF. Please please consider! Thank you.

I Clerk to two charities, both of which use Xero. The charities are currently looking to change bank. CAF Bank would be our first choice, but without the option of a live bank feed, we must effectively rule them out. I've been a specialist charity clerk for 13 years, worked with around 15 boards of trustees and have dealt with pretty much every bank out there... but CAF Bank was the winner of the recent Charity Excellence Framework 'Best UK Charity Bank Account' survey and rightly so in my view. They are clearly a (the!) key player in the charity banking sector, so both Xero and CAF Bank are missing a trick here...

We would so welcome the live bank feed. We spend quite an amount of additional time uploaded and reconciling the CAF account compared to other accounts held and as a small charity with limited time resources, every minute matters

Not having a bank feed for CAF bank has a time and therefore a financial cost, taking vital funds away from our cause. This isnt a nice to have it is essential.

Agree with the comment below our church ( a large registered charity ) is just implementing Xero and has bank accounts with CAF bank . A bank feed would save so much time . Please implement as soon as possible

Many UK charities use CAF bank and a bank feed may mean many more charities implement Xero - a clear marketing opportunity for Xero !

Our Church uses Xero and CAF Bank. An automate feed form CAF Bank into Xero would be most useful and would save much time.
Please implement as soon as possible.

We have wanted to integrate CAF bank and Xero for the last two years as this is critical to managing our accounts as we are all voluntary and have to do this in our spare time. Manual uploading of bank statements and transactions takes hours - integrating CAF and Xero would save us hours and hours, so please implement an integration for CAF bank ASAP so that we can move away from manual uploading and be much more efficient. If this is not done soon, we will have to move to an alternative software that is already integrated with CAF bank.

Please implement an integration for CAF bank ASAP so that we can move away from manual uploading. This would be massively helpful to us and many other charities that bank with CAF.

Please let CAF Bank join Xero so I can upload my bank statements to get me started with Xero. We are looking to change our software provider in January but as Xero isn't with CAF yet this is severely hindering things. Already stuck as the two organizations can't merge their info.

As a social housing provider we receive income from multiple residents on different dates during the month depending on their individual set up.

As volunteer trustees managing this, it would add huge value to our existing income management process to not have to manually import these transactions each week.

As a bookkeeper its extremely difficult when you don't offer bank feeds. It means I either have to constantly chase clients for csv files which I then have to manually process, or they have to give me bank access.
It's much harder to sell Xero to clients because of this