In this blog post, I’m going to discuss two of our most popular connected services: Direct Access and stock quotes. Specifically, I layout out our roadmap on where we are with our services today and where we are headed. If you missed our last post, “A subscription that doesn’t suck,” please consider going back and reading it before diving into this one.
Direct Access Roadmap
Direct Access is our service that allows customers to easily connect their bank accounts in Banktivity. This allows you to import your transactions without having to log in to a bank’s website or manually download any files. When Direct Access works, it’s great. But over the years, as banks have changed their security practices more and more financial institutions require their customers to enter additional multi-factor authentication (MFA) questions and provide one-time passcodes (OTP). Some banks, like Capital One, require you to provide a OTP every single time Banktivity tries to get new transactions. To say this is annoying is an understatement. It’s really bad user experience.
Once our move to subscription is done we are taking on a major project to build out our next generation Direct Access service. This new service will use our backend provider’s latest APIs and platforms. It’s a large undertaking as it is essentially developing “Direct Access 2.0” but it is absolutely something we have to do. Getting to their new platform should result in several major improvements:
- Less MFA/OTP interactions*
- Faster fixes when a bank connection stops working
- Reduced latency for account linking
- Reduced latency for transaction downloading
- Support for additional authentication protocols
*We don’t have any control over which banks require MFA and how frequently they require it. Ultimately, it is largely determined by the agreements our backend provider has for each bank.
What about UK and EU customers?
I know that our UK and EU customers are probably thinking, “well this investment in Direct Access is great if you’re a US or Canadian customer, but what about if you are in the UK or Europe. Your Direct Access service doesn’t work here.”
I’m happy to announce that we are currently negotiating with another provider that can offer data aggregation services that are in compliance with Open Banking! This means we will be able to start supporting banks in the UK and EU again. The first step to adding support for this Open Banking provider is to build our v2 Direct Access service. Once that is in place we will be working on integrating this provider for our UK and European Union customers. I also want to point out that this is a roadmap and things can change. We don’t have hard dates yet as there is still a significant amount of preliminary work to do before the actual integration starts.
Stock quotes
We used to use Yahoo Finance for stock quotes. Unfortunately, they shut down their public-facing API which forced us to switch to a new provider. For many customers, the transition has been relatively seamless – we still get stock quotes from over a dozen exchanges. However, if your investments are traded on an exchange that is not supported, the experience is dismal. You have to hand enter your stock prices. The customers most affected by this are in Australia and Brazil.
We are currently looking for a data source for Australia and other stock exchanges. However, we are having a hard time finding one. Our current provider indicates they may add it in the future, but they aren’t offering anything concrete. I’ve also reached out to the Australian Stock Exchange directly and we are currently exploring working directly with them. If you know of a reliable way to get quotes for ASX and other exchanges please let me know!
As of November 16, 2020 we now support getting end of date and historical prices for Australia, Brazil and Switzerland in the new Banktivity. We hope to add additional exchanges soon.
Lessons Learned
We’ve learned a lot over the years about developing services to meet the changing needs of our customers. For those interested, I thought it would be fun to share two of our biggest lessons learned.
First, free services, rarely if ever, stay free. When you find a service you want to incorporate and the price is free, it’s hard to put the brakes on and not move forward. But trust me, don’t do it. Free services rarely stay free. We were bitten by this with Yahoo and we now prefer paid services so that they are less likely to be pulled out from underneath us.
Second, services need lots of maintenance. In this day and age, you can’t just stand up a server, get your service installed and working on it and call it a day. There are constantly new security vulnerabilities being found which results in someone changing something on the server to address the vulnerabilities. It usually isn’t our code that needs to change, rather the frameworks and tools we use to build our services need to be upgraded and patched. Then we have to test our services on the upgraded backend and so on. Even if you don’t need to upgrade your services for security reasons, if you don’t upgrade them to stay on the latest technology stacks at some point you’ll have too much accumulated technological debt. Someday someone is going to come to you and say, “Hey, your service is running on frameworks from 10 years ago and we are dropping support for that, so you have to upgrade.” You can’t outrun the technological debt, we’ve found the best strategy is to be always dedicating some resources to “paying it down”.
Conclusions
We have a lot of work ahead of us, but that is pretty much always the case with software development. It’s great to be finally starting to execute some of these big projects that have been on our radar for a while now.
The next blog post I’ll dedicate to new features coming in Banktivity for Mac, iPhone and iPad. We have more to share!
- Banktivity 9.5 and Monthly Subscriptions - October 18, 2024
- Coming soon: Banktivity 9.5 - July 19, 2024
- Continuing Investments in Direct Access - February 26, 2024
Thanks Ian, very candid and most welcome here in UK. Sorry we gave you such a hard time on the previous blog entry!
Thanks Ian.
I fully understand the difficulties you mention. I am in Spain and I do not receive access direct or stock quotes. With the change to subscription I have to pay for some services that I will not receive. What’s the point of that?
This is all entirely reasonable.
I’m a (small, hobby) iOS/macOS Developer and this technological debt & dependency issue really requires *constant gardening* to keep things running smoothly.
Unfortunately the end-user never really sees this and assumes that the small update that didn’t change anything visually required little effort when the opposite is usually the case – sometimes the smallest updates require the most work!
I think your strategy for a subscription service is a good one: Buy the subscription you need for the year, if you don’t need/use the online services, cancel and then you still have a working app which you can resubscribe to when you need. Almost nobody does this: they just turn the app back into a crippled ‘demo’ effectively. In effect the new subscription service is no different to what we do currently – buy a new version every few years.
This also links the ‘subscription’ with the ‘services’ which is really the only way you can justify subscriptions these days. Subscription apps that require no back-end maintenance for hardware/software/services annoy me… but so do single-purchase apps that do have these background expenses as I’m always worried they’ll just ‘pull the pin’ when they realise they can’t get out of the tech debt without going broke.
Look forward to more Banktivity updates.
The option to subscribe and then cancel can be valid as long as the synchronization services are maintained that allow the use of the Mac and the Ipad interchangeably. But is it possible?
Well, that requires IGG to maintain data & pay for servers to store that data for you so I’d imagine the answer to that will be ‘no’… which is probably fair.
But who knows really? They might still allow syncing of a Banktivity file between two devices for ‘free’.
Of course if you already use an existing third party cloud syncing storage solution you can use that (iCloud Drive/DropBox) to effectively do that. I’ve been storing my Banktivity files on iCloud Drive for years and this is the primary way it syncs – no issues so far.
Cloud Sync is one of our connected services and will only work with an active subscription.
Hi Ian
As a UK user, I’m pleased to see that you’re looking at Open Banking support. Maybe have a chat with Scott at syncforynab.com as he has built an excellent third party service to add Open Banking support for YNAB.
For stock quotes, the data for UK mutual funds is crucial. FT.com is a good source and moneydance has an extension based on https://code.google.com/archive/p/hle-ofx-quotes/#! which works very well.
Looking forward to seeing how this progresses…..
I stopped using banktivity because I think it is a service designed only for US customers. I also thought that European customers deserved a discount given the reduced features compared to American friends. Having the program only in English is already a limitation … so we hope that the new features will bring you closer to the European market. I am stopped in June, I have not entered any more expenses … I hope to be taken back, I await convincing 🙂
Stock prices for the Brazilian market are priceless
indispensable
Ian, you asked… ‘If you know of a reliable way to get quotes for ASX and other exchanges please let me know!’
As a matter of fact, yes, I do. I made the switch from a competing product (M…xxxxx…ance) early in 2019, after watching my wife using iBank/Banktivity since 2011. The competing product developed some issues with QIF import, so Banktivity’s Direct Access feature convinced me to make the move.
To allow automated downloading of stock quotations, your competitor requires a user to complete a once-only web registration for an API key at https://www.alphavantage.co (note: domain is *.co, not *.com). This is a simple process taking only a minute. On subsequently opening the app, the user is prompted to enter the API key into a dialog, and, once the app’s preferences are set to use Alphavantage as the data source for stocks and currencies – voila, it just works.
I have, in the last few minutes, re-installed the latest version of their app, and, sure enough, the stock price downloads for ASX are still working just fine, with the downloaded and displayed prices matching those that I can currently see via the Apple ‘Stocks’ app on my iPhone.
Just saying……
Great work Al , just had a quick look at that website and looks promising. Not sure how alpha vantage funds itself so I guess there is always a risk with the ‘free lunch’. That said I would be overjoyed if ASX quotes worked again (my only genuine gripe with B7).
To your comment, I have over the years kicked tires with finance software competitors and they all seem to have no issue getting ASX data so this can’t be a bridge too far.
I am onboard with the subscription as long as the service works, I would find it silly to subscribe to V8 and then cancel because my ASX feed does not work. The cost of the sub needs to fund the ongoing improvement of the product. Luckily for me DA works perfectly but I am done with updating my security prices daily.
Hi Al, thanks for the comments. We’ve looked at AlphaVantage and in fact, at one point we were using them as a datasource. However, they couldn’t handle our load. It looks like the competing software gets around this by having each customer sign up for their own API key. We’d rather not have each app hitting a datasource on its own. This can cause headaches down the road when say, AlphaVantage changes its URL or formatting, then everyone using it breaks. Whereas if they hit our own server, we can just fix our server and everyone is back in action.
I wondered about this myself when I looked at the actual limitations on the API’s server requests. Using a ‘personal’ API key for each user of a third party application is probably NOT how they intended their API to be used (abused)… and that risks them pulling the pin on it.
Hi Ian,
I read your comment about Alpha Vantage not being able to handle the Banktivity load so I just want to make sure you have explored their premium API offerings, outlined at https://www.alphavantage.co/premium/
At the bottom of that page they say: “If you are targeting an even higher volume than the premium plans offered above, please contact premium@alphavantage.co. We support up to an unlimited number of API requests per minute.”
Hopefully you can work something out with them, especially with you upcoming transition to a subscription model.
Thanks,
Kent
I also came across this helpful article with some other potential service providers you could look into: https://medium.com/@patrick.collins_58673/stock-api-landscape-5c6e054ee631
For example, it looks like Xignite has coverage for both Australia and Brazil.
Hi Kent, thank you for sharing this. The last time we integrated AlphaVantage they didn’t even have a paying option, so this is encouraging!
Update: I’ve been trying AlphaVantage for a few different ASX tickers tonight and I’m not having any luck. Most recent chatter on the internet suggests they can’t get ASX tickers anymore (e.g. https://wordpress.org/support/topic/australian-exchange-companies-not-working/)
Update 2: I’ve communicated with AlphaVantage and they DO NOT support ASX 🙁
Hi Ian
I am another Australian user impacted by the lack of stock market updates. I have tried another couple of programs but I did not like how they worked, however, they were able to not only update stock prices but also individual fund prices in my super. When I log into either the bank I use for stock trades or the company that holds my super, I can see both transactions and stock or fund prices. As Banktivity can, through, direct access, log into those accounts, why can’t you get both transactions and stock or fund prices at the same time which is what the other two software providers were doing.
We are currently exploring this option. This will work well for people that use Direct Access AND their bank provides a price for their holdings and we get that price through our DA provider. So while it isn’t a sure-fire solution, it would certainly help.
I don’t know the ins and outs or technical difficulties of obtaining ASX quotes. But other financial software packages somehow manage to get the data, and even macOS has a native stock app that works for ASX. ASX provides information services as outlined here:
https://www.asx.com.au/services/information-services.htm
…and they provide a list of about 30 third-party data providers that can give a range of real-time, delayed or end-of-day quotes in this document:
https://www.asx.com.au/documents/professionals/asx-information-vendors-guide.pdf
If there is really some obstacle to obtaining ASX (or other exchange) data then PLEASE consider adding a .csv import function to reduce the pain. As present, users must update prices one-by-one for EACH DEVICE they (and their family) use, because manually-added security prices do not sync.
:
Ian, FWIW, I absolutely second Colin’s suggestion that the ability to import a *.CSV file of securities prices would go a long way towards assisting those customers who have been left behind by IEX’s inability or unwillingness to provide ASX (et al) data.
Not quite on my knees begging here, but pretty close!!!!
You would have to ask if IEX is the right partner for a product with global sales and a subscription model ! I think the support for subscription is there, but it all falls apart with data downloads.
Agree with you Mario. IEX is just not good enough for UK/European stocks and mutual funds. There is no support at all for mutual funds (well as far as I have been able to find out), those stocks that are supported only update with last night’s closing price, and around 5% of stocks don’t update at all. So it is really not good enough – especially as most of us Euro customers will have to buy Gold as I suspect we are the customer group that uses foreign exchange the most.
I am really looking forward to the benefits of the subscription model – but only if the downloads work 100% same as US customers.
First of all, I’ve been using your app, just about daily, since it was iBank. I have been very happy with everything you’ve done with the app so far. Yes there are times things are broken or do not work the way I think it should but in most cases you addresses them in one of your fairly frequent updates. Thank you, and thank you for staying with the Mac community.
Now I’ve been using Macs since the beginning and I’ve seen excellent programs go away on account of Apple’s decisions to migrate CPUs and even the entire OS. Do you have plans in place to bring this app compliant with the next iteration of Apple’s CPU change?
Thanks again.
Stay tuned 🙂
Pretty much any macOS App that will be developed with Xcode (Apple’s Development Environment) & submitted to the App Store after macOS Big Sur is released will be compiled to run on both Intel & Apple silicon natively. You don’t have to do anything.
To the user this will all be invisible. The correct binary will be downloaded & run on your computer no matter what.
Hello. Like other people said it’s a very good software but it’s very dedicated to US market. I suggest you guys start thinking about others countries.
Besides that you gave me a bad news. I’m from Brazil and I won’t have my Brazilian stock prices updated anymore. How do you intend to solve this problem? I’m very worried because when I bought this app I was hoping to have this feature.
Ian,
I’m looking forward to the new version and I know you’re going to list details sometime soon, but I’m wondering about the ability to import stock prices via spreadsheet import and the corresponding ability to view the price history in tabular format. Can’t find a way to do either in the present version.
Thanks,
Donna G.
Hello Ian,
Having been a European customer for many years now , I have read your post with interest.
I have absolutely no problem with a subscription based software in the future if it all works to my needs. Gold is fine for me but even today the exchanges you mention in this blog that are supposed to download stock quotes don’t work anymore. I have changed the suffixes for brussels , amsterdam and paris etc .IT DOES NOT WORK ANYMORE for quite a while now.
Is this going to work properly in banctivity 8 gold , then of course most europeans will be happy to take this on . If downloading stock quotes for europe like it did a year ago does not return then this a absolute disappointment .
I only wish all the very best to you and your team for now and the future !
Christian
Hi Ian,
I followed your last post with interest and this one too. I am, perhaps, one of the few Indian users of your software and have been using it quite successfully for over 3 years now. I came from Quicken, then migrated to Moneywiz, had a quick dabble with Moneydance and then moved to you.
In terms of features and getting the software to do what I want it to, plus getting meaningful information out of it, Banktivity is unrivaled.
It’s one of the only reasons I stick to the Mac/iPhone combo primarily and can’t fully switch to Windows/Android, or get my data on my Windows desktop and Android phone.
I like the reliable cloud sync and really want to continue using your software, preferably available on all platforms now that it’s becoming a subscription (like Moneywiz!).
However, as I use investments and currency prices, I can only get the $100 tier subscription. While I can afford it, it seems like quite a steep increase, specially for me as I also cannot use the stock quotes service anymore (they used to work fine with Yahoo finance and stopped with IEX), I do not use Direct Access (it would not work well with many banks anyway), I do use the accounts in multiple currencies as I have accounts in two different countries plus like to keep track of cash in major currencies while traveling.
So I would be paying $100/year for a product where I have to manually enter stocks and index funds and to monitor my investments by manually updating them, while also being able to track various currency accounts and get cloud sync.
Ideally, $50/year would be about right for this service. Have you thought of changing around some things on the tiers for those of us who do not require access to Direct Access but only Cloud Sync?
Overall, I will still continue to use your software (upgraded to Banktivity 7 on day one, before a lot of the bugs were ironed out), but I do not want to replace the joy I feel while using it now with a feeling of helplessness and despair, or being stuck with it.
I understand you’re trying to sort out your future here and I definitely support it, as I want your software to stick around for many years like Quicken has. I can still go into it and check out transactions and my spend patterns from 2001!
I just wish there is a balance and truly a subscription that won’t suck and won’t make us pay extra for features we will never get to use!
Vish,
You put it beautifully , I have looked around and found no other product ” In terms of features and getting the software to do what I want it to, plus getting meaningful information out of it, Banktivity is unrivalled. ”
I just hope they address the shortcoming for stock downloads and sell a subscription that works in every way, I don’t want to bail out after a year and lose ongoing development because data feeds don’t work. I suspect only US customers are getting acceptable data from IEX so may be time to look for a more globally engaged partner.
Ian – Thanks for the update, I’m definitely looking forward to hearing more, especially the update for iPad.
Stock prices for the Brazilian market are priceless indispensable
Another European customer here – and writing to underline the need for much better stock price service than IEX (only yesterday’s prices, no mutual fund support). I suspect that it is mostly your international customers that will be paying the Gold subscription level to get exchange rates – but it is galling that we get such a lousy stock data service. I hope that once you are on a subscription service you can look at direct connections to London Stock Exchange and Euronext rather than going through a data provider.
Hi Ian, thanks for your concerns regarding Brazilian users.
It has been totally frustrating not to have our Brazilian shares updated in the Banktivity.
Hope you guys can get it fixed asap.
Best regards,
Luiz
I get the price of stocks and mutual funds with a Google Sheets sheet. Would some import mode be possible so as not to have to type one by one?
Thank you
I use other investment tools here in Brazil and they use it to search for steel data at https://www.theice.com/market-data, and there is also a company that can synchronize with some accounts in Brazil which is https : //www.saltedge.com/.
Hope this helps
I hate to ask, but what’s the timing on your next post about the new version enhancements? I’m in desperate need for new mac financial software and I was about to pull the trigger with a competing product until I heard about this upgrade. If your upgrade is compelling enough I’ll hopefully be able to wait–or help beta test as an early onramp– (since purchasing the current version would be a waste given the timing). Looking forward to seeing what’s new!
Hi Ian, thanks for sharing the good news about open banking! As something of a power user with bank accounts in UK, Spain and USA I relied heavily on Banktivity (and iBank as it was) over several years before I had to abandon it and switch to an alternative provider when support for EU banks was dropped.
I would happily come back to the fold and pay the gold subscription without questioning if you can get this fixed! I know that users like myself are a small number but I think we disproportianately see the value in a system like Banktivity and are more than ready to pay a fair price for a good solution!
Dear Ian
I am another UK user and have been very happy with the program, particularly when direct access was working! The prospect of having it back would sugar the pill of a shift to a subscription model. Lets hope it works out in Direct Access 2.o
In reading some of the comments, it would seem that a lot of problems with folks being able to track investments properly could be solved if spreadsheet import of securities prices could be made an option.
Hi Ian.
Please note that Moneywiz automatically updates the quotes for Brazilian securities (and for all other exchanges). When you click on it for more details, the software directs you to Yahoo`s website, so I assume they are getting the quotes from Yahoo Finance. Not sure how they are getting around this API problem that you mention above, but maybe Banktivity could try switching back to Yahoo Finance.
I looked into what Moneywiz is doing and yes, it appears they are using Yahoo. However, my understanding is that they are violating Yahoo’s terms of service. I don’t want to do that.
I see. They may have struck a deal. Moneywiz can use Yahoo`s data for as long as it includes Yahoo`s website link in the software. This way Yahoo gets more traffic in its website.
Anyway, I think your software is truly great, but this issue is the reason why I am not moving from the trial version to the paid version. Having to manually insert the quotes is a huge drawback. I will be looking forward for updates. Cheers from Brazil.
Ian could you look more closely at going back to Yahoo? The Yahoo data is far from perfect but it is way better than IEX for us non-US users. Is having a link to the Yahoo website a problem? It would actually be really useful to have a link from each security to the yahoo page of that security – so for example if you want to drill down to see the purchase history of a security, include a link so you can open the Yahoo web page for that security in a link. After all the Yahoo graphics are actually not bad and way better than the Banktivity graphics buried in Settings/Securities.
I hope that someone can prove me wrong about this, but you can’t use Yahoo’s data by just putting a link to the security on Yahoo’s site. The only company I know of that is using Yahoo’s data legally is Apple in their Stocks app and Numbers app. Yahoo has created a special URL and API endpoint for Apple (I found this by snooping outbound traffic). I would love to use data from Yahoo, it isn’t perfect, but the coverage is vast. But alas, I know of know legal way to do this. If you know who we should contact at Yahoo please email us!
Hi Ian, I too find not having ASX data a pain.
I do use a stock charting program from
https://www.beesoft.net
which uses Yahoo data, and it works fine. Perhaps they can help.
I also think that US$100 is a bit steep given I do not use direct access, but do use the sync function, and stock prices do not automatically update.
Hi Ian, have you tried contacting Apple about this? I would presume that it would be in Apple’s interest to help third party app developers to get good online data. Maybe they would ask Yahoo for authorisation for other apps on the Apple platform to use the API?
I do have an address for Yahoo Finance directly – they do usually reply within a few days. – finance@cc.yahoo.com
Yes, I’ve tried contacting Apple. I doubt their licensing agreement allows 3rd parties to use the data, but just getting us in contact with the right people would be nice. Thanks for the email, I’ve reached out to them.
Allowing uploading of security prices from an excel sheet or csv file is really overdue. Entering unsupported security prices manually one date at a time is extremely clunky!
Hello Ian,
I am still not sure why you can’t use Yahoo API. This API still works fine:
query1.finance.yahoo.com/v7/finance/quote?symbols=IUKD.L,USA.PA,BTMA.AS
That will download from LSE and Euronext in Paris and Amsterdam.
Also, have you looked at finnhub.io for non US symbols? They seem very pro-active.
We know about that API, but Yahoo throttles us if we use it from our server. It works fine if you personally connect to it, but if our server hits it thousands and thousands of times a day, they apparently don’t appreciate that. I’d love to formalize an agreement with them, but I can’t get a contact to respond. I’ll checkout finnhub.io.
Don’t run it on server level then. Let each client connect using its own IP?
I was forwarded this post a bout challenges I have with DA, but as a Canadian the Canadian mutual funds not being provided by your stock feed is a pain as well. Barchart.com is a provider used by some key Canadian newspapers for their feeds. It has Canadian mutual fund prices which would be a great improvement for Banktivity…looks like it has an Australian Stock Exchange feed as well.
Ian take a look at https://www.theice.com/market-data, it looks like they have a very large base with several markets around the world
Thanks for the info. Unfortunately, I don’t see support the Australian Stock Exchange at this site.
Yay for UK/EU open banking access! I am still yet to find any comparable tool and it leaves me with major pain to have to perform the sync manually
Re Currency Exchange,
As a regular user of four currencies (USD, EUR, SGD, IDR), I’ve never found Banktivity’s automatic setting of currency exchange useful. I always have to override what Banktivity think my cross-currency transaction exchange was and enter my own rate.
You see, even when Yahoo provides an exchange rate, it’s always just “indicative”. The actual rate depends on who you made the exchange with (i.e. the financial institution or chain thereof) and how much you made the exchange (different amounts often yields different rates).
As for direct connect and open banking, it’s never been useful for me since none of the financial institutions that I do business with supports any of those. I have to download CSV files manually, convert those “bank CSV” into the standard CSV that Banktivity supports, and reconcile the changes.
For investments… most of my money are in government retail bonds that Banktivity aren’t even aware of, thus I have to manage the symbols manually. Some others are in ETFs that I’m not that sure Banktivity have knowledge about.
Thus the only online feature that I use is sync. If that could piggy-back to iCloud Drive or one of the other storage providers, that would be swell.
Given those considerations, I’d like a “reduced cost” options that allows manual management of investments currencies, and then some.
W.r.t. exchange rates, as a regular user of four currencies (USD, EUR, SGD, and IDR), I’ve never found Banktivity’s currency exchange feature useful. I always had to override Banktivity’s defaulted exchange rate and enter my own for the transactions I’ve done.
The problem is, exchange rate also depends on who you made the transaction with and how much was exchanged. Online exchange rate services can only provide an “indicative” rate which rarely matches the actual rate once you’ve done the transaction.
W.r.t direct connect and open banking, none of the financial institutions that I do business with supports it. I have to download their non-standard CSV files and normalize it with my own custom scripts to something that Banktivity reads.
W.r.t. investments, most of my investments are in government retail bonds – the ones that Banktivity know nothing about and thus I have to enter the symbols myself. The rest are in ETFs and mutual funds that I’m not that sure Banktivity is able to track anyway.
Thus the only “online” feature that I use is sync. But that is mostly because Banktivity doesn’t support iCloud Drive or any other 3rd party storage providers.
In conclusion, that new pricing scheme doesn’t seem to be a good deal for me. I’ve supported version 6 and 7 of Banktivity. The price increase with the subscription plans seems to be for supporting features that I couldn’t use.
Any roadmap update as to when you might add support for a better stock price API than IEX?
As others have pointed out, Alphavantage has live coverage of every major stock exchange worldwide (the only exception is Moscow), and also has exchange rates too. There are paid subscription services which allow almost unlimited connections – I am sure that you can find a level that would be suitable for your client base.
It is just impossible for me to envisage paying for a B8 subscription at the moment, when B8 offers such limited connectivity for us non-US customers.
I researched Alphavantage recently. They no longer provide Australian stock prices. We are getting close to implementing a new datasource, but we aren’t there yet. Thanks for your patience!
OK I will be patient. I’m just a single data point but I will be immediate Gold B8 subscriber if there is EU/UK Open Banking support and live (or at least near live) support for LSE and Euronext. If not I will just hold data in (free) B7 until a more connected app comes along..
Connectivity is the way forward for me.
The change is somewhat understandable. You have to get some money to provide the service and continue to develop it. The price is another issue – the market will dictate it. And your claim about a subscription that does not stink – you have cut-off the broker/bank direct connection that was included in Banktivity 7 – and that stinks! You did not even answer mails about the service stop. I did not see/you did not indicate any need for a subscription for buyers of version 7 – where a “standard” download work until a month ago!
Thanks for the comments Julian. We haven’t changed any functionality in Banktivity 7. In the new Banktivity, we put all connected services into our various tiers – this includes Direct Connect (OFX). You may ask why? And the answer is simple, it costs us to maintain the list of banks that support OFX and more importantly, it costs a lot to have an engineer trying to keep it working and improving it. It is OLD technology and is very finicky.
Why do currency rates no longer update reliably in Banktivity 7? EUR-GBP has been stuck on £0.9055 for a week….
I was very excited to know that Version 8 was finally out after using the Beta. I was also excited by one of your reps telling me that you would again support educators by offering a discount for educator back when I first started to use the beta. I was extremely disappointed a little bit ago when I chatted to a rep and he told me that there was no discount at this time and that when you do offer a discount a little later, it would not be available retroactive. So basically, if I want to keep my services going on with version 8, I need to pay the full yearly subscription. Once you offer the educator discount, I’m basically being told ‘too bad’ that I signed up early before you started offering the discount. Doesn’t sound like very good support for educators. Very disappointed.
Hi Ramiro, we will bring this back. We first want to make sure our new subscription architecture is solid and work out any kinks. Once we do that, we will like roll out the ability to purchase with coupon codes, but that functionality just isn’t there and tested yet.
Hi Ian,
Did not receive a reply to my august 12 message re. stock quotes from european exchanges.
So I do not know whether I should subscribe to the new software as I have not received news if on the new software the european exchanges quotes will work . please clarify the situation for us . Thanks
We will be adding a lot more stock exchanges, including many in the EU, by the end of the year. However, these will only get some historical and end-of-day prices – not intraday prices.
There are third-party providers that offer access to many countries (Saltedge, Plaid). Saltedge – to my surprise, even offers access to Israeli banks (where I live). Are you planning to use them?
On another issue – if I use multicurrency accounts but do not need direct-access to conversion rates or check printing the Silver level would cover it?
As for your question – Saltedge connects to Banks in Australia. They might have what you asked for. At least one of your competitors works with Saltedge.
Hi Ian,
I agree with other non-US users that the subscription seems a bit too much particularly there are lots of features are targeting at US users.
I’m from Australia and having ASX and multiple currencies accounts tracking are important to me.
I understand that I will retain GOLD features if I subscribe to GOLD and subsequently downgraded to SILVER after 12 months. But, can I still sync my file across 3 devices after downgraded to SILVER?
Does Banktivity support DA for AUS user?
Also, will Banktivity consider different pricing based on the country?
Many thanks.
Jackson
Hi Jackson, yes you’d still be able to continue syncing even after you downgrade to Silver a year later. Direct Access does work for Australian customers. We just launched so we won’t be changing the pricing of tiers anytime soon, we really need to see how this goes and then assess.
The main reason I do try to switch to 8 is to regain access online to those brokers and banks that stopped working. But it looks like they still don’t. Schwab (not a completely unknown broker) is still out of bounds. The improved cosmetics are nice but what about the essentials?
You’ll need to connect to Schwab via Direct Access. They have disabled their legacy OFX server.
I am already using Banktivity8? What additional thing do I have to do?
Schwab did not disable the OFX server – they require an OTP code ONCE!
I understand now. I can’t use direct-access as my subscription will work only after the 1 month trial (by your decision) but I will not start my subscription until I see how DA works (by my decision) 🙂
You will have to update your help. The hep indications (menus) do not fit the new menus.
Also – I did thank you for letting the trial fit my recommended subscription. But that was yesterday. I enabled the Schwab account for DA – but it is not enabled anymore today. And stock prices are back from Yahoo (or a derivative) – BRK is not updated anymore. I don’t see the value of the subscription.
I’m a bit torn about this upgrade (and I’ve been a customer upgrading to every version since iBank 3). I’m another user with US/EU accounts and I’ve been waiting to see an improvement to entry of foreign transactions and more user-control to configure sync for a long time. Maybe I’ve missed it but I don’t seems to see improvements to either here.
I don’t use direct-access and don’t really need Banktivity to download quotes on my phone. Does v8 provide a way to control this? Even with my investment accounts hidden, the v7 iOS app takes a long time trying to sync over 500 securities and I don’t know why? I don’t own anywhere near that many securities. This causes sync to often stall causing the transactions to not show up on Desktop at times. I just want a reliable way for charges that I enter at places that I go to several times / week to sync to my desktop. This is way more important to me than looking at how my investments are doing.
And trying to enter a foreign transaction is just not simple. If I’m in Europe with the app’s currency set to EUR and I use a US card, the v7 app expects me to enter USD. How am I supposed to know this at the store? Downloading the exchange rate doesn’t help me at all. So I’m always having to do extra taps to change the transaction’s currency and then, for a bewildering reason, there’s a field so I can enter an exchange rate. I’m really curious, who uses this? There are two figures that are fixed: the total price of the purchase and the converted amount my issuing bank will charge in the US that will appear on my online statement 2-3 days later. Who wants to sit there figuring out the exchange rate that will make the match work?
Finally on desktop, it would be helpful to have the portfolio’s currency be independent of the app’s currency setting.
I don’t imagine there are many users like me regularly doing USD/EUR transactions but I would think there are other European users who, outside of pandemic times, travel and enter transactions in SFR, GBP, and other currencies.
I’m a developer so I know subscription is the way to go for independent developers to make a good living. But how is it fair for people outside of the US to contribute when features are very focused to just people in the US?
Using Banktivity 8 for some time. My US stocks update every time automatically the software is refreshed but London stocks only update around 11pm to midnight UK time 7 hours after the market closes. Can we not have intraday frequent live stock update during trading hours on the London exchange. I am in the UK by the way . Also is there ANY news on UK/EU direct access returning. It’s a pain having to hit the bank website manually downloading the transactions.
Upgraded my Banktivity to get claimed ASX end of day data. It is now 10:30 pm and I still don’t see end of day data and the market closed at 4pm. Have been trying to get this resolved with support since October last year but no one seems too interested. Don’t waste your time with Banktivity if you want to get ASX end of day data.