Overview:
Plaid is the connectivity layer that sits between banks and the financial apps people use. You have almost certainly used it already: it's the screen that appears when you link a bank account to a budgeting app or a payments tool, and it's how thousands of financial products fetch account data without ever handling your banking password.
Plaid is not a bank and does not hold your money. It authenticates you with your bank, then passes read-only account and transaction data to the app you connected.
For Inkle Books, Plaid is the catch-all. SVB, Mercury, Brex, and Ramp connect through direct API integrations, and Plaid covers everything else: over 10,000 US banks and credit card providers. If your startup banks with a regional bank, a credit union, a national bank like Chase or Bank of America, or a card issuer that isn't in the direct list, this is how it gets into your books.
Features
If your bank is not one of our direct integrations, search for it in Plaid and connect it here.
Connect as many banks and cards as your company uses, and they all land in the same set of books.
Once an institution is linked, transactions flow into Inkle Books on their own, so your books stay current between closes.
Plaid fills the gaps around SVB, Mercury, Brex, and Ramp, so multi-bank companies still end up with complete books.
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Authentication happens inside Plaid's own secure flow, so what arrives in your books is transaction data and not your login.
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Plaid passes account and transaction information across to your books and does not grant Inkle any ability to move money.
How do you connect
Plaid
to Inkle?
Open Data Sources.
From the left navigation in Inkle Books, click Data Sources under Home.
Click Connect
in the top right to open the Connect Data Sources hub.
Look under Bank & Credit Cards.
If your bank is SVB, Mercury, Brex, or Ramp, pick it directly. For anything else, search from the 10,000+ institutions available through Plaid.
Find your bank and sign in.
Plaid's secure flow opens, you sign in with your bank credentials there, and complete any two-factor step your bank requires.
Choose which accounts to link.
Pick the checking, savings, or credit card accounts you want in your books.
Repeat for each institution you use. Everything you connect appears on the Reconciliations dashboard under Accounting, grouped by source, ready to close with Smart Reconcile (AI) or the guided manual flow.
What data does Inkle pull from
Plaid
?
- Account name, type, and last four digits
- Account balances
- Transaction date, amount, and description
- Counterparty or merchant name
- Your bank username or password
- Full account numbers
- The ability to initiate transfers or payments
- The ability to change anything at your bank
FAQs
You enter your bank credentials inside Plaid's own flow, so Inkle never sees or stores them. What reaches your books is read-only account and transaction data. Plaid cannot move money on your behalf and neither can Inkle, and you can revoke the connection from Data Sources whenever you want.
Search for it in the Plaid flow when you connect. Coverage spans over 10,000 US banks and credit card providers, including most national banks, regional banks, credit unions, and card issuers.
Use the direct integration if your bank has one. SVB, Mercury, Brex, and Ramp connect through Inkle's own API integrations, which are more stable than an aggregated feed. Plaid is for everything else.
Yes. Connect as many institutions as your company uses. The Reconciliations dashboard groups accounts by source, so each bank sits in its own group with its own last reconciled date. Reconcile your operating account first, then credit cards, then payment processors.
Aggregated bank feeds occasionally need re-authentication, usually after a password change or a bank-side security update. When that happens, reconnect the institution from Data Sources. If a period looks short on transactions, that's the first thing to check.
Yes. Manually added accounts work the same way once you upload statements, which is what most founders use when backfilling prior periods after migrating from QuickBooks, Xero, Pilot, or Puzzle.
