You connect a broker in Settings → Connected accounts: pick Trading 212 or Interactive Brokers, paste the read-only key you issued at the broker, and its transactions arrive in a portfolio on their own from then on. Connected accounts are part of the Ultimate plan.
A connection only ever reads. It places no orders and moves no money; you can revoke the key at the broker or disconnect here at any moment. If your broker cannot be connected, the same screen says so and points you at the CSV import instead.
Open Settings from the account menu and choose Connected accounts under Data. A connection belongs to one portfolio, so you need at least one portfolio first; with more than one, a Portfolio selector at the top of the card chooses which one the transactions land in. The combined view is not a choice here, because it is not a portfolio a trade can be written into.
On the free plan the card explains the feature and offers See Ultimate rather than a form. Every new account gets Ultimate for seven days once its email address is confirmed, with no card asked for, which is long enough to connect an account and watch the first sync finish.
Press Connect an account and pick Trading 212. The dialog asks for two values, API key and API secret, both issued in the Trading 212 app or website under Settings → API (Beta). That section exists for an Invest or a Stocks & Shares ISA account only.
A Trading 212 key has no expiry date, so the dialog does not ask for one.
Interactive Brokers is read through its Flex Web Service, so the dialog asks for a Flex Web Service token and the Flex Query ID of the query that token reads. Both come from Client Portal, and both are read-only by construction: a Flex Query can only report. When you pick Interactive Brokers the dialog lists every setting box by box; in outline:
Two things are particular to this broker. The token expires on a date you chose when generating it, and nothing reports that date afterwards — so the dialog has an optional Token expiry field for it (more below). And a connection can only ever reach the last 365 days: Interactive Brokers caps a Flex Query at a year, and the dialog says so in a warning above the Connect button.
The values you paste are masked as you type, and once you press Connect they are never shown again — not on this screen, not masked, and not in your data export. The key is stored encrypted and deleted when you disconnect. To replace a key, disconnect the account and connect it again with the new one; a portfolio holds one connection per broker. The security page describes how keys are held.
Connecting starts the first sync by itself. It runs on our servers, so you can close the page and come back. For Trading 212 the first sync reads your whole history, which the broker serves a year at a time at its own pace — several minutes, up to about ten for a long history. While it runs, the row carries an Importing history chip and a line saying how far back it has read so far, as a year rather than a percentage. Later syncs only ask for what is new and show Syncing.
When nothing is running, the chip beside the broker’s name says where things stand:
Under the line, the last finished run is summarised as a count — for example “12 imported”, or “Nothing new” after a quiet week. Skipped rows are ones that could not be placed, most often the sale of shares transferred in from another broker, whose purchase is not in the history the key can read. A trade you already entered by hand or imported from a file is recognised and not written twice.
Each connection syncs itself on a nightly schedule, and the row counts down to it — “Next sync in 6h 12m”, followed by the time on your own clock. There is no need to press Run now after every trade, and it would not help: a trade made today reaches the broker’s own statement only after the market closes, so it arrives in the sync after that.
The countdown disappears while a sync is running, and it is not drawn at all where no sync is coming — a rejected key, or an account no longer on Ultimate.
If you entered the token’s expiry date, the row states it calmly while it is far off. From thirty days before the date it adds a Key expires soon chip and asks you to issue a new token, then disconnect and connect again; once the day has passed the chip reads Key expired and nothing is synced. Use the date the token really carries: a sync after that day is refused without asking Interactive Brokers, so an earlier date switches off a token that still works. Leave the field empty if you are not sure.
Press Disconnect on the row and confirm. Syncing stops and the key is deleted — connecting again needs a new one. The transactions the connection already imported stay in your portfolio. You can also revoke the key at the broker at any time.
Only Trading 212 and Interactive Brokers let you issue your own read-only access, which is what a connection needs. The Other brokers card on the same tab lists the rest and why:
For any of these, export a file from the broker and bring it in with the import wizard: the card’s Import a CSV button opens it. The steps are in how to import transactions from a CSV file, and what the portfolio does with the transactions once they arrive is in the portfolio tracker guide.