Plaid Account Linking

Plaid Account Linking lets you securely connect your bank accounts to TrendingBudget. Once linked, transactions are automatically synced and categorized — powering budgets, bills, income tracking, and intelligence alerts.

The integration uses Plaid's Link drop-in module for the connection flow and the Transactions Sync endpoint for ongoing data retrieval.

1. Go to the Accounts page and click Link Account.
2. A secure Plaid window opens — select your bank and log in with your bank credentials.
3. Choose which accounts to link (checking, savings, credit card, etc.).
4. After linking, a sync dialog appears to pull in your recent transactions.

After linking, transactions are fetched using Plaid's cursor-based sync. This handles added, modified, and removed transactions incrementally.

Sync Triggers

• Manual — Trigger a sync from the Accounts page per-account.
• Post-link — Automatically runs after linking a new account.
• Scheduled — A background cron job syncs all accounts periodically.

Data Synced

Each transaction includes: amount, date, merchant name, category, pending status, and a unique ID for deduplication.

• View all linked accounts with balance, institution, and type.
• Toggle between card and list views.
• Unlink accounts at any time — this removes the connection and associated data.

• Your bank credentials are never stored — they go directly to Plaid.
• Access tokens are encrypted in the database and never exposed to the browser.
• All Plaid API calls happen server-side only.
• Each user can only access their own linked accounts.