Connect a bank with Plaid

Step 3 of the Quick start. You have at least one account you typed in yourself. This page adds one that keeps itself up to date.

A connected account imports its balances and its transactions on its own. You can keep manual accounts alongside connected ones — nothing forces you to connect anything.

Choosing how much history to import

When you connect, Tovari asks how far back to import. It matters:

• A short window gets you running quickly with a small, tidy register.
• A long window gives your reports and your typical-spending figures real history to work with, but takes longer to import and brings in a lot of rows to review.

Whatever window you choose, Tovari writes a single Starting Balance entry standing in for everything that happened before the imported window, so the account lines up with your bank instead of starting from zero.

One case overrides the choice: if the account you are attaching to already has transactions in Tovari, only new activity is imported, so linking cannot duplicate the history you already have. The web app tells you this on the spot and hides the history picker.

Web

Connect

1. On Accounts, press Add Account and choose Connect a bank. (Onboarding offers the same chooser.)
2. Plaid’s own secure window opens. Choose your institution, sign in, and choose which accounts to share inside that window. Tovari never sees your bank credentials.
3. Back in Tovari, a dialog appears — Confirm accounts to add — listing the accounts you just chose in Plaid so you can confirm them. There is nothing to tick: every account listed is added. Anything already connected is shown with an Already added mark and is left out, so it cannot be added twice. When you are attaching to one existing account, the dialog reads Choose the account to link instead and you pick the single Plaid account that matches it.

Pick the history window

The same dialog carries an Import history dropdown. The choices are:

Option	What it imports
None (start fresh)	No history — only activity from now on
15 days	The last two weeks or so
30 days	About a month
60 days	About two months
90 days	About three months — the preselected default
120 days	About four months
All available transactions	Everything your bank makes available (roughly two years)

Pick one, then press Add accounts (or Link account when you are linking a single account).

The first import runs in the background; transactions appear in the register as they land.

Mobile

Connect

1. Open the Accounts tab and tap Add account, then the Connect a bank card at the top of the sheet. On a first run, the empty state’s Connect a Bank button does the same thing.
2. Plaid’s secure flow opens natively. Choose your institution, sign in, and choose your accounts inside that flow — exactly as on the web, where the selection is also made inside Plaid.
3. The app returns straight to the Accounts list and the new accounts appear there. This is the first real difference from the web: there is no follow-up confirmation dialog and no history picker on mobile. There is no success toast either — the list you are already looking at is the confirmation.

There is no history picker on mobile

The native connect flow imports a fixed 90 days of history. There is no dropdown and no choice to make. Ninety days is enough to give the register and your typical-spending figures something to work with without pulling your entire history down over a phone connection.

If you want a different window — none at all, or every transaction the bank has — connect that institution from the web app instead, where the Import history dropdown is offered.

One connection per institution

If you try to connect a bank the household has already linked, the app stops and tells you so by name, with a pointer to open it from Accounts. It will not create a second connection to the same institution.

Where you are now

You have a connected account whose transactions are arriving on their own, plus whatever you added by hand. Next Tovari asks what you want to budget: the budget interview.