Bank Integration (Plaid)

Connect your group's bank account to see real transaction data alongside your planned expenses.

Overview

5-by-5 integrates with Plaid to give you visibility into your group’s actual bank transactions on the Finances page. This is optional — the rest of the billing and ledger features work without it — but it’s useful for comparing what you planned to spend with what you actually spent.

What Plaid Does

Plaid is a secure financial data service used by thousands of apps to read (read-only) transaction and balance data from your bank. 5-by-5 uses Plaid to:

• Show your current bank balance on the Finances page and the dashboard Overview
• Display your actual transactions for any month in the Actual Expenses section

5-by-5 never initiates transfers or makes changes to your bank account. The connection is strictly read-only.

Connecting Your Bank Account

1. On the Finances page, click Connect Bank Account in the Financial Snapshot section (or in the Actual Expenses section)
2. The Plaid Link dialog will open in your browser
3. Search for and select your bank
4. Log in with your bank credentials directly in the Plaid dialog — 5-by-5 never sees your username or password
5. Select the account you want to connect (checking, money market, etc.)
6. Confirm the connection

Once connected, your bank balance and recent transactions will appear on the Finances page.

Syncing Transactions

Transactions don’t update automatically on every page load. To pull the latest data, click Sync Now in the Actual Expenses section. This fetches the most recent transactions from Plaid and updates the displayed list.

Changing Your Bank Account

If you want to connect a different account or bank, click Change Account in the Bank Balance section of the Finances page. This runs the Plaid Link flow again and replaces the existing connection with the new one.

Disconnecting

To remove the bank connection entirely, click Disconnect in the Bank Balance section. You’ll be asked to confirm — once disconnected, the connection and all cached transactions are removed. You can reconnect at any time by clicking Connect Bank.