What?
This is an article on restoring an automatic banking feed within Zoho Books, specifically within the United Kingdom. The article serves as a store for both a possible resolution as well as findings from the research/investigation into the issue.

Why?
The workaround for a lot of our clients is to do a manual import (CSV) of the transactions for a particular account and then to reconcile these. This particular case covers where the Cx had a working automatic bank feed for a while but at some point simply stopped working.

How?
First let's go through a resolution and get the official response on what impact this has on refreshing the token. Then I'll put all my notes I made along the way.

When a Zoho Books bank feed stops syncing in the United Kingdom, there are a few possible causes. Sometimes the issue is with the bank or the Open Banking token, but other times the feed itself becomes stuck and cannot be refreshed or disabled from within Zoho Books.

Pre-amble: I had to check

• ZohoBooks Downtime Server Incidents: US Zoho Services Availability or Zoho EU Services Availability
• Permission Issue: Are we logged in to Zoho Books as the super admin? Most likely yes and the client would have already checked this.
• Did this ever work before? Kinda pointless question but needs to be asked just in case this was never meant to work in the first place.
• When did the connection last work? Within ZohoBooks > Banking > Active Accounts > Account > Filter by "Matched Transactions"
• Bank Issue: Check with client which bank they use, type in the "Search" when connecting a bank on a demo system to see what comes up. If there are multiple options then note these; note it if there is just 1 as well.
• Zoho Issue: If you can, try to mark it as inactive, and you should get the error: Accounts associated with Integration cannot be marked Inactive

Summary
In this case, the client’s bank account had previously been syncing correctly. After several weeks, however, the feed stopped updating, and the option to Refresh Feed was missing entirely from the Banking module. Comparing screenshots showed that the expected menu option (“Refresh Feeds”) had been replaced with only “Automatic Import.” Attempts to make the account inactive failed with the message that it was “linked with an integration.”

This message doesn’t necessarily mean a third-party app; it usually means the existing bank feed integration is still registered within Zoho’s system. Even if it’s no longer functioning, Zoho treats that integration as active and blocks you from deactivating or deleting the account until the connection is reset.

The resolution in this situation required confirming with Zoho Partner Support whether reconnecting a new feed (and thereby generating a new Open Banking token) would have any impact on existing balances or manually imported transactions. The short answer is that reconnecting or refreshing a feed does not affect historical transactions, but deleting the account altogether can affect balances, so that should only be done after Zoho confirms it’s safe.

Once the backend team confirmed there was no risk to balances, the correct approach was as follows:

Resolution

1. Confirm permissions. Sign in as the Super Admin in Zoho Books. Feed management options can be hidden for standard admins.
2. Check the current feed. Go to Banking > Selet the active account (click into it) and click the gear icon in the top right of this page (not the one next to your profile as that's global settings but the one next to the "Import Statement" button).
3. There are a couple of options here depending on what you can see
   1. If you can see "Refresh Feeds" and/or "Deactivate Feeds" then try "Refresh Feeds" (note my below notes on impact analysis)
   2. If you can see "Automatic Import" then selecting this will run you through setting up the connection again.
   3. If you can see "Update Credentials" then selecting this should also run you through setting up the connection again (never seen this option myself).
   4. If it shows “Connected via Yodlee” or “Connected via Plaid,” note it for later. These indicate which aggregator the feed was using.
4. TBC

Caveat(s):

• Refreshing the feed means that duplicates will be created. You will need to delete the ones manually imported in order for the numbers to be brought in line.

Notes and findings:

• Integration locks: The “Accounts associated with Integration cannot be marked Inactive” message almost always refers to a stuck bank feed token, not a third-party app. This can only be cleared by Zoho’s backend support.
• Yodlee vs Plaid: Older Zoho Books feeds in the UK were powered by Yodlee. From 2024 onward, Zoho migrated UK accounts to Open Banking connections handled by Plaid. The “via Plaid” or “via Yodlee” tags no longer appear in the UK interface; instead, you’ll see the bank listed as “& Country (United Kingdom).”
• Deleting accounts: Deleting a bank account can affect balances and reconciliations. Always confirm with Zoho before deletion to ensure historical manual imports are preserved.
• Manual import workaround: During any downtime, you can manually upload transactions using CSV import and reconcile as usual. Once the feed is reconnected, Zoho Books won’t duplicate entries if date ranges are managed carefully.

Source(s):

• ZohoBooks - Help Docs - Bank Feeds
• Spondoo - How to refresh Zoho Books Bank Feeds in the United Kingdom - what to do when Token expires: August 3, 2022