# How to track spending across several banks at once > Your money is split across a salary account, a digital bank and a savings account. Here's how to see the whole picture in one place. Source: https://trybica.com/guides/track-spending-multiple-banks/ Updated: 2026-08-13 --- The typical European setup is now three or four accounts: a traditional bank where the salary lands and the direct debits sit, a digital bank for daily spending and travel, a savings account somewhere paying better interest, and possibly a joint account. Each app shows you its own slice. None shows the whole. So the question "how much did I spend last month" has no answer without exporting three statements and doing arithmetic — which is why almost nobody knows. ## Why the banking apps can't solve this Your bank can only see its own accounts. That isn't a design flaw, it's the boundary of what it has access to. Open Banking exists precisely to cross that boundary: it lets you authorise a third app to read all of your accounts at once, at every bank, and put them in one place. The legal framework is PSD2, it applies across the EU, EEA and UK, and it means any bank you hold an account with must let you do this. You don't need your bank's permission in any meaningful sense — you already have the right. ## What actually changes when the accounts are together **Your spending total becomes real.** Not "€800 on the main account plus whatever went through Revolut" but one number covering everything. **Duplicate counting stops.** This is the subtle one. If you top up your digital bank from your salary account, that €200 appears as an outflow in one and an inflow in the other. Counted naively, your spending is inflated by every top-up you made. Any tool worth using [pairs the two sides](/guides/transfers-are-not-spending/) and removes them from spending — Bica does this automatically. **Categories work across banks.** Groceries paid from two different cards land in the same category total, which is the only way that total means anything. **Net worth becomes computable.** Balances across every account, plus savings, minus what you owe. See [working out your real net worth](/guides/calculate-net-worth/). ## Setting it up The mechanics are short. For each bank: choose it from the directory, approve on your bank's own screens, pick which accounts to share. It takes about a minute per bank, and you're authenticating with your bank, not handing credentials to anyone — see [bank sync](/docs/bank-sync/) for the detail. Three things worth knowing before you start: **History comes with it.** Most banks return up to two years of past transactions on connection. You're not starting from zero — you get a usable picture immediately rather than in three months. **Connections expire.** Open Banking consents lapse periodically by regulation, typically every 90–180 days. You reconnect with a couple of taps. Any tool that doesn't warn you before this happens will silently show you stale data, which is worse than no data. **Connect everything, including the boring ones.** The instinct is to connect the account you spend from and skip the rest. Don't — the savings account you never look at is exactly where an unnoticed standing order lives, and a joint account you exclude makes household totals meaningless. ## The multi-currency case If you hold balances in more than one currency — common with Wise or Revolut — check how a tool handles it before trusting the totals. Spending should be converted at the rate on the day of the transaction, not today's rate, or last summer's holiday keeps changing cost every time you look at it. ## What to do once it's all in one place Give it a week of syncing, then run the exercise in [where your money actually goes](/guides/where-your-money-goes/). The gap between guess and reality is almost always larger for people with several accounts, for the obvious reason: more places to lose track of. After that, a [five-minute weekly review](/guides/weekly-money-review/) keeps it current. The one-off cleanup is satisfying; the habit is what actually changes anything. ## A note on what this doesn't require No spreadsheet. No receipts. No categorising four hundred transactions by hand. If a system asks for daily maintenance, it will be abandoned by March — the entire value of connecting accounts automatically is that the picture stays true whether or not you were diligent this week. If what holds you back from connecting is safety, [that question has a concrete answer](/guides/is-open-banking-safe/).