Current Issues with Rabobank Exact Online Connection and Other Banks
Since around February, there have been frequent disruptions in processing bank files coming from Rabobank via the traditional channel and through the new PSD2 connection. It is not unusual for there to be a different issue each working day. These disruptions are expected to continue until early August and are related to the implementation of PSD2.
Given the significant impact of a disruption in the Rabobank Exact Online connection on users, we at Invantive expect these problems to be resolved. As Invantive, we continue to use the old connection as long as possible since it seems the most reliable. Once the old Rabobank connection is retired (expected by 1 August), we will monitor the stability as described below through the various pages.
Pros and Cons of Online Software
Invantive’s software products are used with more than ten thousand Exact Online administrations in various countries. Exact Online generally works well, but sometimes it is more challenging to exchange data due to an Exact Online disruption.
This is partly because the software is continuously updated. As a user, you benefit from always up-to-date software instead of costly on-premise upgrades, but you also deal with current bugs (a bug is an error in the software) that sometimes unexpectedly pass quality checks. The result can be a usually short but sometimes long Exact Online disruption.
One problem might be being unable to log in, but it could also be a slow response on a page.
Furthermore, an Internet connection is significantly less reliable than a local network or a connection with a SCSI disk. Our experience indicates that a data request via the Internet fails on average 1,000 times more often than a local connection.
A browser may also sometimes cause problems; for example, do you see issues in Internet Explorer? Then check with colleagues to see if they are also experiencing issues with Exact Online accounting. If they are not having problems, there is no Exact Online disruption, but rather a problem with the browser or PC.
The Invantive SQL engine uses dozens of mechanisms to maintain the Internet connection where possible, even when issues arise. These mechanisms ensure that the Exact Online data continues to flow in both directions via the Exact Online API’s, even with many small Exact Online disruptions. However, these mechanisms can also seriously delay the operation and throughput of financial data from the administrations.
Is there a Disruption: The Exact Online API Status
Invantive Status Page
Invantive offers an overview of the connected platforms including Exact Online via its own status page, but this overview is only a secondary source.
For the performance and reliability of the Exact Online API’s, the Invantive status page is a good source: the 95th percentile of response times is continuously measured for both frequently used REST API’s and the Sync API’s of Exact Online.
The API reliability is also visible at “Exact Online API reliability E2E”: it shows the percentage of API calls that fail as measured by the thousands of Invantive end-users with an Exact Online connection. A score of 4 means that end-users experience an error in 1 out of 10,000 API calls (1 followed by four zeroes); a score of 1 means that this is measured in 1 out of 10 API calls. In practice, Invantive software conceals such error messages under the hood, but because delays of up to factor 100 per API call sometimes occur, the problems are noticeable to the end-user.
status.exact.com
The disruption status of the Exact Online API’s and disruptions on Exact Online can be retrieved in the following ways:
- Via https://status.invantive.com
- Via downdetector (recommended)
The status can be seen at https://status.exact.com/; however, the Exact status page is not always up-to-date during disruptions and some Exact Online disruptions do not appear in the list.
The Exact status on 12 July 2021 shows:
The Exact status page does not offer the option to subscribe to notifications, but it is possible to use an API. This API is also used, for example, on the Invantive Currency Tools to import exchange rates into Exact Online:
Downdetector
For a more accurate picture, we recommend checking the downdetector. It shows at the same moment that users are reporting problems:
The grey dotted line is the regular number of disruption reports. Something seems to be happening from 9:00 onwards.
By leaving a comment at the end of the page, you automatically receive an email if someone adds a message. Experience shows that users only add messages if there is really something significant happening on Exact Online.
If You’re the Only One Experiencing a Disruption?
It is also possible that no disruption is found on the pages with status and that the connection via the Internet is working, for example, that a website like nu.nl can be opened.
However, the Exact Online website might be blocked. The connection to Exact Online runs via Akamai. Based on the rules set by Exact, Akamai automatically performs checks. Scraping the Exact Online website, but also scraping other websites accessible via Akamai can cause the connection to Exact Online to be blocked by Akamai when a threshold is exceeded. This block is on the IP address.
When opening Exact Online, a notice with the following status is displayed:
Access Denied
Dear Exact Online user,
Our content delivery network has detected harmful traffic from your network and has denied you access to Exact Online. This is usually caused by the scan tools and web scrapers active on your network.
If you received this message in error, please contact Support.
If you contact us, please mention the following reference number: 18.cd465b68.1652265269.487ff2
Our apologies for the inconvenience.
Best regards,
The Exact Online team
For instance, by using Chrome’s DevTools, it can be seen that the HTTP status is 503 on the page itself. Additionally, two missing images give a 403 message. The reference number can vary, and may also be “18.1ff06e68.1652265210.2ec1c85”. The reference number is needed to whitelist the IP address; it is not possible to get a whitelist entry on Akamai with just the IP address.
Normally, the connection is automatically reinstated by Akamai after 24 hours.