Aqilla, the intelligent cloud-based accounting and reporting application, has announced it has integrated with Plaid, an open banking data network and payment API that enables digital finance. At no extra charge, Aqilla customers with accounts that offer open banking capabilities can access their bank account statements directly within the application — making reconciliations and other finance function processes much more straightforward and efficient. Aqilla’s open banking integration is the latest feature to be added to the application. It is part of the company’s drive to deliver industry-leading, innovative, and useful functionality to users.
Open banking creates an easy and secure way to exchange data between bank accounts and finance-related service providers such as Aqilla. Once an Aqilla customer gives permission, Aqilla can connect straight to the company’s bank account and seamlessly access financial information — including current and historical statements. This has the potential to make many core financial and accounting processes a lot easier. It also offers an innovative way to improve the productivity of accounting and financial teams.
Aqilla founder and CEO Hugh Scantlebury, commented: “Developing our integration with Plaid and enabling our customers to take advantage of open banking is part of Aqilla’s continued drive for innovation and modernisation. Giving customers secure, direct access to their statements within our application is the first step on our open banking development roadmap. It promises to bring even more integration, value, and functionality to our customers.”
Chris Lee, Finance Director, We Are Sunday, said: “Aqilla’s integration with Plaid and the resulting open banking functionality is fantastic news for us and for mid-sized businesses across the UK. We’re always looking for ways to help our accounting and finance team become even more efficient — and delivering direct access to statements within Aqilla does just that. Cutting down the time they spend on administrative tasks frees our accounting and finance team to work more strategically and contribute in an even more meaningful way to company growth and enhanced customer experience.”
Aqilla customers wishing to try the new functionality can do so from today onwards without needing to upgrade their software — this is because Aqilla is a cloud-based application, and all upgrades take place automatically. Activating the open banking functionality within Aqilla should only take a few minutes. Full instructions and support are available on a specially created landing page. Aqilla’s support team is also on hand to provide further guidance if required.
