I would appreciate this a great deal on the financial planner side of things. It creates efficiencies on the data gathering side of things. It also strengthens my financial planning offering because I can do a client expense audit, where I find ways to reduce the clients spending naturally.

Reduce travel budget with travel hacking.

Reduce financial fees, etc.

From an advisors perspective this is mandatory. I couldn’t consider subscribing without it. Hopefully we will be notified when this happens.

Don’t forget to considera european banks, PSD2, etc

I am currently using a separate tool for budgeting and transferring big numbers to expenses here. It would be great to have one tool that could do both.

Plaid integration would a god send 🙏

Plaid integration would be unbelievable! Or just acquire Kubera and integrate that into ProjectionLab.

I agree this would be awesome! Currently I use Empower as a net worth tracking tool and their retirement planner looks like a high-school project compared to what you have here. I also use YouNeedABudget which pulls transactions from accounts automatically and lets you categorize them and run reports and stuff. Their product is nice, but really doesn’t give much analysis capabilities.

Plaid has really gone downhill since the acquisition so maybe in addition to projectionlabs you could build a plaid competitor and profit

Yes, would love a plaid integration for real-time account balances. Currently using empower and have been underwhelmed.

I am loving your product.

I’m not sure if the target here is professionals or individuals. I’m just an individual. The best way to hook me is with linked accounts. I would check ProjectionLab much more often. Plaid (or similar) integration seems like it would be outside the core competency for this tool. It might be better to just link to a tool that already does live account linking, like YNAB/Mint/Empower. Not sure if theres APIs for that though.

I’m also thinking the near perfect all in one tool would be a marriage of Kubera and PL. Kubera can cover the account linking, balance updates and performance analysis, and PL can cover all of the planning and modeling, it would be near perfect!

I actually think it would be better not to pursue this. It’d dig into your margin if you used Plaid or force prices up, cause all kinds of support noise, and honestly detract many people with privacy concerns.

I mean shouldn’t it be an option i.e. subscription tier that does automatic linking using plaid if you don’t want it don’t pay for it

I would never use it personally but having it as an option would be fine. I main thing I like about this is not having to link accounts because I don’t want that information being spread around.

I second either mint or empower – they’ve already done all of the API work from there!

Tbh linking accounts even in combo w/ a 3rd party provider is a job for a complete team (just check out what maybe.co tried - and failed at). Plus a lot of ppl are concerned about giving away access to their brokerage accounts.

Long story short: so far I guess PDF imports (I know this sounds old-fashioned) is the way to go.

At least for europe their are import projects open sourced @ github

I agree. I subscribe and use YNAB but also started a subscription on PeojectionLab to analyze my financial options.

I currently Use Xero, its a great example of Intergration to Bank accounts, works well in Australia.

As an individual user, I would not find much value in this. When I have a plan that I like, I do not want it randomly changing when my account balances fluctuate.

Also, it seems that all these linking services ALMOST work. For something like PL, I would spend more time checking and fixing the broken links than it is worth it to me. Now in a checkbook balancing program, this is a very important feature and it is well with the time messing with getting the links to work.

As an individual, this becomes important as you have more accounts. Especially as you have 20+ accounts/assets that need updating.

However, I’d be really happy with a CSV bulk export/import feature that updated balances. Especially if it supported exported formats from Empower/Personal Capital or Kubera. Just being able to export and import would be useful, epsecially for those onboarding the first time into ProjectionLab.

https://www.tillerhq.com/201749how-do-i-get-my-personal-capital-data-into-a-spreadsheet/

Personally, I agree with a previous commenter who also does not like the idea of providing access to their accounts. Rather I prefer a way to load your holdings (stock symbols, mutual funds, etc) and the share quantities,, which would then have their share price updated daily. NO SECURITY ISSUES! Even with all the so-called security measures out there, I have personally had my bank, credit card, and even my security clearance account hacked.

Please do this. Going in and updating each month is a pain.

A https://www.yodlee.com/au integration would be nice. Or even just Upbank integration

I would like to integrate with danish banks and investment banks via aiia.eu. I can help with this integration as well.

Would be great to have this feature, please have a look at Finary.com who did integrate with lot of stuff via API pretty quickly

As long as it’s not mandatory. One of the reasons I came to PL was because I didn’t want bank information linked to a planning tool. I’m the kind of person who likes a camera and a phone while wearing a belt and suspenders though, so maybe I’m in the minority wanting my tools separated.

I understand your point. As long you keep the option to add data manually everyone stay happy.

As a financial planner who would like to roll this out to my clients, aggregation is key- at least on the investment side.

Linking of accounts in real time would allow projectionlab to compare its projections with your real-word results, which ultimately improves the product, making it more accurate over time. This could also auto-import other values such as dividend yields (which change over time). Ultimately it could mean way less work to set up, and real-time tracking moving forward.

With Mint EOL EOY I am shopping for alternatives. Lots of people are shopping for alternatives. I believe 50 million users of the Mint platform if I recall. Sounds like a market opportunity!

This would be a great feature, but for privacy and security reasons, I would prefer OAuth to Plaid.

I decided to try ProjectionLab knowing that this feature was not (yet?) available. In the end I decided to cancel before the end of the trail mainly because of the lack of this feature.

my2cents: In theory this would be great, but its a lot of effort to build stable/reliable integrations. There are heaps of other features that should be considered first mainly because this will never fully cover all available options. It’s not a big effort to manually collect/aggregate the information and enter it once a month into ProjectionLab.

TLDR: Great idea in theory but probably not worth the cost and complexity to do it well.

Long Winded Explanation: If this is done it can’t be done with just one connector. Plaid and Fidelity don’t like to play well together. I also have run across a number of other institutions that don’t sync with the various connection offerings (Plaid, MX, Finicity, etc). This is going to drive the need for agreements with multiple data aggregators which is going to come at a cost, not to mention a lot of complexity.

I’ve tried a number of other programs all with automatic connections and I almost always end up doing manual accounts instead because they either don’t sync reliably or properly. For example, my 401k has both Roth and Traditional sides to it. Both of which should be treated accordingly in a financial planning software like this. However every program I have tried only syncs my 401k as a single account due to data aggregator limitations. So again I end up deleting and doing manual accounts.

If we can get an API access to Projectionlab.com then I can build the integration I need between that and my banking and portfolio.

Have you seen the YNAB > PL account sync chrome extension that Zach Whelchel built using the community plugin methods exposed on the early access site? (https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ynab-%3E-projectionlab-sync/loeekpinmlccgelapofbejkbnfilfggl)

Some more info on those methods here: https://discord.com/channels/869222901054857216/1071414867950575677

An API separate from this could be interesting though, granted that would only work for folks using the cloud sync data persistence method. If there isn’t an existing suggestion for that, feel free to add one.

Some really great points all around in this thread. Thanks everyone! It’s a lot to think about.

Don’t want this at all, better focus on other stuff

I also don’t think this is as important as other features. Updating account balances a few times a year when I’m doing other tasks like rebalancing is not a huge deal. Watching account balances more frequently can be counterproductive as well.

I would find a ton of value in this. I use Empower regularly and know I would never use it if it didn’t have account linking.

I don’t see how this is viable.. Empower is one of the “better” ones out there and I have to email their support to maintain appropriate connectivity almost monthly. This is despite fairly common companies. They change logins and security enough to make it a pain. The ongoing cost of implementing and supporting this over time cannot be overstated. It would be nice to have everything centralized of course, but not at the cost of the several other improvements that have been suggested. I don’t know how financially well off PL is, but I can’t see this being implemented and sustained on the cheap…

Syncing automatically with banks, brokers etc… in the end can be painful. Needs to resync the 3rd party apps frequently, introduces risk of blocking these accounts, potentially introducing cyber security threats. Finally I changed my mind and I prefer the manual process :), perhaps being able syncing with an excel file would be nice.

One thing I found helpful is using something like fidelity full view to have an aggregator, then just grabbing those values to just populate into current finances. I see this tool as a finance projection (as the name implies) tool, not a budgeting app. I’d rather Kyle spend time on honing the projection aspects of the product, and not trying to become next Mint

WealthTrace has very nice integration with brokerages, banks, etc. including bringing in information about % in stocks, % in bonds, etc. But the other features like future projections including Monte Carlo are more important to me than balance updates.

I would view this as more of a nice to have given the role that this app plays with my day to day with clients. i think there are bigger band for buck items out there that would be more valuable, i.e. account drawdown features or enhanced monte carlo, etc..

Many other sites successfully use multiple integration partners as fallbacks so they can get the best connectivity. This is something that I really need for Projection Lab as I have way too many accounts to update.

I have been using other tools that claim to have this integration working - Mint, New Retirement. Personal Capital. It always breaks for investment accounts with 2 factor authentication. I also think from security perspective it is better not to. It of course depends how many accounts people have and much change happens. For my personal use I can do it manually without any issues and not worry about my passwords being stolen.

negative for a long term planning app. I don’t need to micromanage every single days update as it’s not relevant long term anyways.

I’ve yet to use a live update that doesn’t have constant issues up stream due to authentication changes. empower, mint,etc you name it i stop using those mostly i only have a short bit of time i don’t want to spend 30 minutes putzing with “re-validation required” every other day. It’s also requires extensive permissions from the upstream providers to data, empowers fidelity linked requires a lot of stuff due to micromanaging individual transactions that i do not want to provide empower for privacy reasons. IMHO It takes away from more valuable long term features.

I am deciding whether to pay for PL and the fact that I can’t have real numbers updating is making me lean towards not pulling the trigger. The ability to define asset allocations in more detail would help but still wouldn’t be sufficient. This tool is gorgeous with tons of functionality but without ‘real’ data in there it’s not providing real insights.

When considering signing up, I as well thought this was a major miss and hoped that PL would implement this feature at a later date. Now that I’ve used it for 4 months, I’ve realized it really isn’t needed. Here is my thought process, this is a long-term financial modeling tool, not a month to month tracker for investment growth and budgeting. When considering the primary use for long-term modeling, I just really don’t think it provides much value. I update the balances once a month, although even that is probably not needed. I use Monarch for budgeting and month-to-month investment picture. Hope this might help when considering this tool, because it really does seem to be best in class.

I would vote for just exposing a secured CRUD API for Current Finance/Progress Points and letting the community build their own plugins/scripts for handling real-time updates on their own accounts. That way there can be multiple solutions to make everyone happy.

Please support Canada users with MX Technologies connections

Plaid is a hit and miss with Canadian brokerages and MX would work better sometimes. Would be great to support both Plaid and MX

Would love to see this feature even with the understanding the links need refreshing something.

I have used other tools that offer this feature and I have discontinued them all and do manual updates to spreadsheets mostly.

In my experience, the auto-updates fail more often than not and it takes far too much time to keep the links active. I could see this feature becoming a headache for the developers of PL without much benefit.

As a planning tool, I think PL development time could be much better placed elsewhere.

I agree and disagree. I agree that the efforts of the PL team are much better used adding other features. There are tons of other tools that can auto-import balances (reliably… this is where I disagree with your experience). PL isn’t a day-to-day actual balance tracker nor should it be. It is a tool to do long term planning. After the initial analysis, you shouldn’t be coming back here a lot. You only need to come back from time to time (quarterly? bi-annually?) to see if you are on track. It is easy to update the account balances manually for those few times.

I really think Carlos has the answer here.

I would vote for just exposing a secured CRUD API for Current Finance/Progress Points and letting the community build their own plugins/scripts for handling real-time updates on their own accounts. That way there can be multiple solutions to make everyone happy.

Or link to my Quicken account which links to all of my accounts.

I’d be a downvoter of live sync. - Best in class is fabulous value proposition! PL excels at financial planning functions that are not widely available (e.g. long-term planning, international tax, milestone triggers, scenarios, montecarlo testing, …) - Granular account information and live/current data is not relevant to long-term financial planning. To my knowledge, Certified Financial Planners do not base forecasts on granular, live financial data - Many personal finance apps provide tools for everyday, short-term topics - such as budgeting, account balances, investment values (I use a great MacOS app). As such they use feeds + current data. But their functionality, if any, for long-term financial planning is generally dreadful. These tools are complementary to, not replacement for, PL - Data feeds can drain support staff. And some countries have lousy feeds (a major financial tool terminated support for Canadian banking feeds in 2023 due to unreliable feeds and support impact) - Developer time is a scarce resource. I’m super excited to see what further financial planning magic is ahead

I understand that a small development team makes it difficult to hit all their goals. However, the new v4 version broke plugins, and without this feature, it is a giant pain to input all the different accounts both my husband and I have to track this information. At this point, I might as well use PocketSmith for the limited functionality it does have, at least I don’t have to constantly ask my husband for either his login information or his balances every month or so to check overall finances (due to separated finances).

The plugin system should not have changed in v4. e.g. I tested the YNAB sync extension again today, and that worked normally. If you’re having trouble with a specific plugin, I’d recommend reaching out on one of our support channels and/or contacting that plugin’s developer.

This works pretty well in Australia there is an Open Banking API.

https://frollo.com.au/open-banking/