A working Xero bank feed eliminates the single largest source of manual data entry in small-business accounting. Done well, it's invisible — transactions land in Xero overnight, reconciliation rules categorise most of them automatically, the bookkeeper reviews edge cases for a few minutes a day.
Done poorly, the bank feed becomes the daily friction — duplicate transactions, missing days, feeds that quietly stop working, reconciliation rules that misfire on transactions that look similar but aren't the same.
This piece walks through the three types of bank feeds Xero offers, the Singapore-specific bank coverage, the reconciliation rules worth writing first, and the maintenance discipline that keeps feeds reliable.
The three types of bank feeds in Xero
1. Direct bank feeds
The premium option. Xero has direct integration partnerships with specific banks — in Singapore, this includes DBS, OCBC, and UOB. With a direct feed:
- Transactions flow into Xero automatically each day
- The connection is maintained by the bank, not by you
- Authentication is bank-side (typically a one-time setup with bank approval)
- Highly reliable — feeds rarely break
Direct feeds are free for the bank's customers (Xero subscription cost is separate). For Singapore SMEs banking with DBS, OCBC, or UOB, this is the default choice.
2. Yodlee / third-party aggregated feeds
For banks without a direct Xero partnership, Xero offers feeds via Yodlee (a third-party financial data aggregator). Yodlee logs into your bank account on your behalf and pulls transactions into Xero.
- Wider bank coverage — most Singapore banks supported
- Some monthly subscription cost on top of Xero
- Less reliable than direct feeds — credential changes, bank UI updates, or 2FA changes can break the connection
- Requires you to provide bank credentials to Yodlee (the security model is well-established but worth knowing)
For banks Xero doesn't directly support, Yodlee is a reasonable fallback. Expect to spend a few hours a year troubleshooting broken connections.
3. Statement uploads (manual CSV / OFX import)
The fallback. You download a CSV or OFX file from your bank's portal each week or month and upload it to Xero.
- Works with any bank that lets you download a statement
- No subscription cost
- Manual — requires somebody to actually do the upload
- Risk of missing days, duplicating uploads, or importing the wrong format
Workable for low-volume operators. For anyone running daily transactions, the manual layer becomes the bottleneck pretty quickly.
Which Singapore banks Xero connects to directly
As of 2026, Xero's direct bank feeds in Singapore cover the three major local banks:
- DBS — direct feed, free, well-supported
- OCBC — direct feed, free, well-supported
- UOB — direct feed, free, well-supported
Other Singapore banks (Maybank, Standard Chartered, CIMB, HSBC, Citibank, foreign-currency-focused banks) generally require Yodlee or statement uploads. Aspire — Acuitas's recommended expenditure-banking layer — has its own Xero integration that's tighter than a generic bank feed.
Xero's bank-feed coverage updates periodically; check the latest in the Xero app store under Bank Feeds.
Setting up a direct bank feed
The process for DBS, OCBC, or UOB (similar for each):
- In Xero, go to Accounting → Bank Accounts → Add Bank Account.
- Search for your bank. Select the direct feed option.
- Xero generates a bank-side authorisation request. You sign into your bank's online portal and approve the Xero connection.
- The bank sends Xero a daily transaction file.
- Within 24-48 hours of approval, transactions start appearing in Xero.
Account-level mapping happens in Xero — each bank account in your real world maps to a corresponding general-ledger account in Xero's chart of accounts.
Reconciliation rules — what to write first
Once the feed is live, Xero brings transactions in but doesn't categorise them. The categorisation happens via reconciliation rules.
Rules to write first, in this order:
- Recurring suppliers.Match-by-payee for your top 10-20 suppliers. Each rule says “if the payee matches X, code to account Y with tax code Z.”
- Recurring expenses. Office rent, utilities, software subscriptions, professional fees — all predictable and named.
- Payroll runs. Salary batches usually have a recognisable pattern (specific amount, specific day of month, specific reference). Rule them.
- CPF batch payments. Recurring monthly outflow with a CPF Board reference.
- Card settlement deposits. Per merchant (NETS, Visa/MC acquirer, AMEX) — deposits usually carry a recognisable reference.
- Recurring customer receipts. If you have repeat B2B customers paying regularly, rule those too.
A well-coded rules library handles 70-90% of typical SME bank transactions automatically. The bookkeeper reviews the agent's drafts and approves; only the unusual transactions need individual attention.
What can go wrong with bank feeds
- Feed stops working silently. Direct feeds rarely fail; Yodlee feeds fail more often. Xero will flag it but you have to be watching for the notification. Check feed health weekly.
- Duplicate transactions. Can happen if you both have a feed and accidentally upload a statement covering the same period. Xero usually catches these as suspected duplicates; review the flag promptly.
- Rules misfiring. A new transaction from a new payee that happens to match part of an existing rule can get coded wrongly. Review categorised transactions weekly for the first month after writing rules.
- Foreign currency transactions. Direct feeds usually handle these but the FX gain/loss posting needs to be set up correctly at account level.
- Missing days at year-end. Some banks occasionally skip a transaction at year-end batch close. Always reconcile the closing balance against the bank statement at year-end.
Maintenance discipline
Three habits keep bank feeds reliable:
- Daily review of unreconciled transactions. Five to ten minutes a day from the bookkeeper. Reviews rule output, handles exceptions, catches anything unusual.
- Weekly feed-health check. Confirm the feed has produced transactions every day of the week. If a day is missing, investigate.
- Monthly closing-balance reconciliation. At month-end, reconcile the closing bank balance in Xero against the bank's month-end statement. Any variance means a missing or duplicated transaction somewhere.
Common questions about Xero bank feeds
Are bank feeds secure?
Direct feeds are bank-authorised and travel over the bank's own secure infrastructure. Yodlee uses established financial-data security standards. Neither mechanism gives Xero or Yodlee the ability to move money — only to read transactions. The risk profile is similar to using any banking-aggregator service.
Can I have multiple bank accounts on the same feed?
Yes. A single bank login can authorise feeds for all your accounts at that bank. Each account in Xero maps to a separate GL account.
What about foreign-currency bank accounts?
Direct feeds usually support multi-currency accounts. The Xero setup involves picking the base currency at account level. FX gains and losses post to a dedicated FX gain/loss account that you configure once at setup.
How do I handle credit card statements?
Credit cards can be set up as bank accounts in Xero and fed similarly. Most Singapore corporate cards don't have direct Xero feeds; Yodlee or statement upload is typical. Aspire's corporate card offering has a tighter Xero integration than generic cards.
What if a transaction shows up that I don't recognise?
Don't code it. Hold it until you've confirmed what it is — the bank counter, the card statement, the supplier portal, whichever applies. An uncoded transaction is a clarification cost; a mis-coded one is a hidden problem.
Bank feeds are the foundation layer of a working Xero. Get them set up properly, write the rules with care, watch the feed health, and the reconciliation work that used to consume a third of the bookkeeper's time becomes a daily 10-minute review.
— The Acuitas team