Tracking spending across Italian banks

The way to track spending across several Italian banks is to connect each supported bank, read-only, to one budgeting app, and let it combine and categorise the transactions automatically. Checking each bank’s app separately and adding things up in your head (or a spreadsheet) can work, but it leaves the totals fragmented and makes every combined answer a manual calculation. Bilance, a budgeting app made for European banks that does the connecting and categorising for you, supports 390+ banks in Italy (the full list).

When your money is split across Italian banks

If your money is spread across several banks and cards (a current account at a traditional bank, an online bank for daily spending, a prepaid card for online purchases), most bank apps cannot answer the basic questions across all of them; the rare ones that aggregate external accounts are the exception. What did you actually spend on groceries, across all cards? Which subscriptions are quietly renewing, and from which account? What is the real total balance today? The information exists, but it is split several ways.

What connecting them changes

Connect each bank to Bilance (read-only, approved at your own bank; later your bank will sometimes ask you to confirm access again), and the answers come from one screen. The general benefits of a combined view are covered in how to see all your bank accounts in one place; the parts that matter most in a multi-bank Italian setup are these:

• Categories that add up across banks. The AI categorises most transactions automatically — groceries, transport, bollette — so a category total covers all accounts at once. Correct a wrong guess and it learns from you.
• Transfers between your own accounts marked for what they are. You can mark movements between your own accounts as internal transfers, so they do not count as new spending. In separate bank apps, the same euro shows up as an expense in one and income in another.
• Recurring costs looked for wherever they are paid from. Bilance searches for subscriptions and bills across connected accounts (correct or add what it misses). In a multi-bank setup, forgotten renewals hide on whichever account you check least.

Cards, and other honest notes

Some card products do not expose transaction data through open banking, so a particular card may not be connectable even when your bank is supported. The Italian bank directory is the source of truth. Anything that cannot connect can be tracked as a manual account, so the picture stays complete, just with a little typing for that one account.

Also worth saying plainly: the access is visibility only. Bilance reads transactions and balances; it cannot move money between your accounts or make any change at your bank.

Getting started

Availability, language, and setup for Italy are covered in does Bilance work in Italy?. The short version: check your banks on /banks/italy, connect them one by one, and give the categorisation a couple of weeks of corrections. From then on, most of the tracking is automatic, with occasional corrections and reconfirmations when your bank asks. That is the entire point.