Lunch Money transactions not syncing: relink, refresh and import fixes

How Lunch Money gets your transactions

Lunch Money's native bank integration is Plaid, which it describes as a third-party banking provider sitting between your bank and Lunch Money. Syncing is event-driven: Lunch Money fetches balances and transactions when it receives a webhook notice. On rare occasions that notice never arrives, which is the most common reason a manual refresh fixes things.

Accounts connected through community plugins (such as bunq or Monzo), Lunch Sync, Lunch Flow or Synci are treated as manually managed and updated through the API, not Plaid. If one of those stops, troubleshoot that tool rather than following the Plaid steps below.

Step 1: read the status timestamps

Open the account on the Accounts page and look under Status. Lunch Money shows three times: its last successful import, Plaid's last successful fetch from your bank, and its own last successful fetch from Plaid. Hovering over Last updated on the Accounts page also shows the last server fetch and the last transaction update.

The pattern tells you where the problem is. If Lunch Money's fetch updates after a refresh but Plaid's timestamp stays old, Lunch Money is working and Plaid does not have current data from your bank. If you use the Lunch Money Discord, typing /status with the institution name shows successful or relinked connections for that bank over the last 30 days, which tells you whether others are affected.

Step 2: refresh, relink or force a reconnect

Refreshing from the Overview or Accounts page fetches all synced accounts in a background process that usually finishes in under a minute. Refreshing from the Transactions page fetches only the month you are viewing. Lunch Money warns that an update from Plaid does not guarantee new data.

If the account is in relink mode, open Edit Account on the Accounts page and use the Relink button under Status, which re-authorizes through Plaid. For an active account, Force Reconnect lets you go through the same relinking process even when Lunch Money has not asked for it.

Step 3: replace a stuck connection by merging

When relinking does not help, Lunch Money's syncing guide suggests a fresh connection. Go to Accounts, click Add account and choose Auto-import from my bank. In each account's Setup Account dialog, turn on Yes, I am merging this with an existing account and pick the matching account.

Merging avoids duplicate transactions: Lunch Money sets the new account's Import Start Date automatically based on the merged account's last imported transaction. If transactions are still missing or the balance is wrong after that, open a bank syncing ticket rather than repeating the merge.

If duplicates appear anyway, Lunch Money's Deduplication Tool selects likely duplicates for review; it is a one-time action that does not run in the background and does not delete anything automatically.

Step 4: fill the gap with a CSV import

While you wait on Plaid, you can download the missing transactions from your bank and import them. The settings matter, because a synced account needs Allow modifications to transactions turned on before it accepts an import.

• Download a CSV of the missing transactions from your bank.
• In Accounts, open Edit Account, then Advanced Settings.
• Set Earliest import date to the date of the file's last transaction.
• Enable Allow modifications to transactions.
• On the Transactions page, click Import, upload the file and pick the account.
• Map columns: date, payee or description, and amount (or inflow and outflow columns) are required. Keep Skip Duplicates on; it treats rows as duplicates when date, payee and amount all match exactly.
• Stay under 3 MB and 10,000 rows per upload.

Step 5: open a bank syncing ticket

Lunch Money prefers in-app tickets. For a connected account, open it on the Accounts page and click I need help with this account. For a bank you could not connect, click Help, choose Open bank syncing support ticket, select I am having trouble with a new connection and pick the recent attempt; if it is not listed, try connecting again first, and use Submit a bug or feedback only if that fails.

Support reps contact Plaid for you and update you when Plaid responds. Because the fix often sits with Plaid or your bank, expect the CSV route to be your bridge in the meantime.