Connect your bank to see your payments and expenses

Money in, matched to the invoice

The gap between sending an invoice and knowing it got paid is where most small trade businesses lose track. The check clears, or the transfer lands, and nothing tells the app about it — so you chase a client who paid you a week ago, or you never chase one who didn't.

With your bank connected, Workeey watches the deposits. One of them only marks an invoice paid when three things line up at once: it matches that one open invoice to the cent, it lands in the stretch of time that invoice could plausibly have been paid in, and it carries at least one other sign that it really is that payment — the client's name in the bank's text, the invoice number in the memo, a payment the client started from the invoice itself, the fact that it came over a payment app like Zelle or PayPal, or simply that this client has paid you this way before. When all three hold, the invoice flips to paid and the reminder texts stop.

When the amount lines up but nothing else does, Workeey asks instead of guessing: the deposit is put beside the invoice and you say yes or no. Deposits it cannot place at all collect in a list of their own, so money that arrived is never simply invisible. The one thing it will not do is mark a bill paid on a coincidence, because that is the failure that actually costs you — an app that quietly stops chasing something nobody paid.

Every expense, without the shoebox

The other half is what went out. Fuel, parts, the supply-house run, the drill you replaced last week. Most of it already lives in your bank and your card statement, and most tradespeople only ever see it once a year, in a pile, the week the return is due.

Workeey pulls those transactions in as they arrive — a rolling recent window, not your whole banking history — so the money-out side of your business is a list you can actually read instead of a year-end archaeology dig. What it files is buying: moving money between your own accounts, loan and finance payments, and the bank's own charges are left out on purpose, because they are money moving rather than money spent. And when something personal turns up, mark it personal once and Workeey stops asking about that shop again.

• Deposits matched to the invoices they paid
• Card and account spending, in one running list
• Works with most US banks and credit unions
• A rolling recent window of spending, not your whole history
• Read-only access — nothing can be moved or spent

Read-only, and your login is not ours to lose

The connection is made through Plaid, the service most banking apps use for exactly this. You sign in to your bank on your bank's own screen — with the large national banks that means you are handed to your bank's real login page and handed back when you are done — and Workeey never receives, stores or sees your banking password. What Workeey gets is permission to READ transactions, and that is the only thing it can do. There is no path in the app, for you or for us, that moves a dollar out of your account.

The feed is not kept forever either. The transaction history ages out of Workeey after 90 days, automatically, whether or not you ever look at it. A few things it taught the app do stay, on purpose, because the app would be worse without them and you would notice: an invoice whose payment was later taken back keeps the bank's own explanation of why, an expense you filed keeps the description that came across with it, a sender Workeey has learned to recognise stays recognised, and a shop you marked personal stays marked. You can disconnect the bank from settings whenever you like, and the connection stops that moment. The privacy policy is the long version and it says the same thing — it is worth two minutes if you want the detail.

Getting connected

It is a couple of minutes, once. Open settings, choose your bank, and sign in the way you always sign in — including whatever code your bank texts you. Most people connect the account the business runs through and the card they buy parts on. A shop you buy from personally you can mark personal once, and Workeey stops asking about it.

From there it runs quietly. New transactions turn up on their own, matched deposits mark their invoices, and the only time you think about it again is the day you decide to disconnect. If you also run QuickBooks, the two are not in competition — QuickBooks is where the books live, and the bank feed is what stops you typing the same numbers into them by hand.