---
title: "Feed Monitor: Know When Data Stops Arriving"
description: "Turn on the Feed Monitor to get alerted when a feed stops syncing, or keeps syncing successfully but silently stops producing records."
section: "Enrichments"
canonical: "https://banksync.io/docs/enrichments/feed-monitor"
---

The **Feed Monitor** watches sync health rather than record content: it tells you when data *stops arriving*. That failure comes in two distinct shapes, and the monitor has a check for each — a feed that stops syncing, and the sneakier one: a feed that keeps syncing "successfully" while the bank connection quietly produces nothing.

You can create **as many Feed Monitors as you need** — each instance targets its own feeds via its Dependencies tab. A common setup is two: a tight stale-sync threshold on business-critical feeds, and a relaxed one (or none) for experimental feeds. Each instance alerts and cools down independently.

Because the monitor watches sync health rather than record content, it has **no data type**: any feed is a valid target — transactions, balances, holdings, invoices — and the editor shows no data-type selector.

## The two checks

- **Stale sync** — No successful sync in N hours. Catches outright failures, broken connections, and schedules
  that silently stopped running. Set the threshold comfortably above your sync cadence — 24
  hours works well for daily feeds.
- **Silent no-records** — Syncs keep succeeding but produce zero records. Everything looks healthy on the surface —
  green sync jobs, no errors — while the provider has stopped delivering data. This is the
  failure that otherwise goes unnoticed for weeks.

Enable either check or both; each has its own threshold. When a feed trips the stale-sync check, the no-records check is skipped for it — a feed that is not syncing trivially produces no records, and one clear alert beats two overlapping ones.

The no-records check uses a **rolling window** rather than consecutive quiet days, so a card you simply did not use over the weekend does not page you on Monday. Two exemptions keep it honest:

- **Feeds that have never produced records are exempt** — a newly connected or genuinely quiet account is an onboarding state, not an outage.
- **Paused feeds and feeds that have never synced are skipped** entirely.

> **Balances feeds: read the alert carefully:** 'Balance data is served from provider-side caches. When a balances feed triggers the no-records check, it usually means the provider has not refreshed its snapshot — not that your balance is wrong at the bank. The alert copy reflects this ("provider last refreshed"), so treat it as a freshness signal, not a correctness one.'

## How it runs

The monitor is evaluated on a schedule by BankSync itself, **not** during your syncs. That distinction matters: a stalled feed never runs its own pipeline, which is precisely when you need the alert. The monitor looks at each targeted feed's sync history from the outside, so it fires even when nothing else is running.

## Setting it up

1. **Create it** — On the Enrichments tab, click "Add an enrichment" and choose Feed Monitor in the Watch
   group.
2. **Enable the checks** — Toggle stale-sync and/or silent-no-records and set each threshold. At least one check must
   be on.
3. **Choose where alerts go** — Pick the delivery channels — email recipients, a Slack channel via incoming webhook, or a
   webhook endpoint of your own. These are the same alert channels Alert enrichments use.
4. **Set the cooldown** — The cooldown (default 24 hours) is the minimum time between repeat alerts for the same feed
   and check, so an outage that lasts three days does not page you every evaluation.
5. **Target the feeds** — In the Dependencies tab, tick the feeds to watch (or leave it applying to all), then flip
   the switch to Enabled.

![The Feed Monitor configuration form: a Stale sync check enabled to alert when a feed has not synced successfully in the last 48 hours, a No records check enabled to alert when syncs succeed but no records arrive for 7 days, an Email alert to section with two of three workspace members selected, and a Cooldown (hours) field set to 12.](https://cdn.banksync.io/screenshots/enrichments/monitor-form.707343d9dc46c87a.png "Both checks enabled, each with its own threshold, plus recipients and the cooldown.")

## What the alert contains

The alert names the feed and the check that fired — for example, that a feed has not synced successfully in 26 hours, or that it has been syncing without producing records for 3 or more days — so you know immediately whether you are looking at a broken connection or a quiet provider.

> **When a no-records alert fires:** 'Check the bank side first: log into the institution and confirm recent activity exists. If it does, reconnecting the bank in BankSync usually restores the flow — silent starvation is almost always provider-side.'

## Related guides

- [Alert enrichments](/docs/enrichments/alerts): condition-based alerts on record content, using the same delivery channels.
- [Setting Up Scheduled Feeds](/docs/bank-feeds/scheduling-feeds): sync cadence determines sensible stale-sync thresholds.
- [Troubleshooting guide](/docs/bank-feeds/troubleshooting-guide): what to do once the monitor has pointed at a feed.