How bank sync works

Effective April 2026 · Last reviewed draft 6 June 2026

ClearHold helps New Zealand residential landlords prepare their tax properly. It turns messy receipts, bank statements and property records into structured, accountant-ready workpapers with the evidence needed to support the result.

Bank sync is part of that. It saves you hours of manual data entry at tax time. This page explains exactly how it works, what data flows where, and how to control it.

1. What the connection is for

When you connect your bank, ClearHold fetches your transaction history (descriptions, amounts, dates, counterparties) so we can categorise them into rental income and expense lines for you. You review each one; nothing is filed automatically.

2. Who moves the data: Akahu

Akahu
ClearHold uses Akahu, New Zealand's open-banking aggregator, to fetch your transactions. Akahu handles the bank OAuth flow, and we never see or store your bank login.

3. What we ask for, and for how long

  • Scope: read-only access to the accounts you select, under Akahu's enduring consent. We cannot move money, initiate payments, or change anything at your bank.
  • Duration: ongoing, until you revoke it. We fetch recent transactions on a daily schedule so your tax summary stays current.
  • First sync: up to 90 days of history to seed your categorisation rules.
  • What we store: the transaction records we fetch, plus an encrypted access token so we can sync again next time. The token is encrypted at rest and never sent to your browser.

4. How to see or revoke access

  • View every connected account on your Bank Connections page. This page is available even if your ClearHold subscription has lapsed.
  • Click Disconnect to revoke a single connection. We call Akahu to revoke the token and stop syncing immediately.
  • If you delete your ClearHold account, we automatically revoke all Akahu tokens on the way out.
  • If your bank ends the connection on their side (for example, consent expiry or password change), we mark the connection inactive and prompt you to reconnect. No silent failures.

5. Privacy

ClearHold is a NZ operation subject to the Privacy Act 2020. We only use your bank data to provide the categorisation and tax-prep features of this tool. We don't sell or share it with advertisers. Full detail in our Privacy Policy and Privacy Impact Assessment.

6. Questions

Email hello@clearhold.nz. We reply within a working day during launch.

Questions? hello@clearhold.nz