How Financial API Helps Bookkeeping Apps

Cintya Nursyifa
Brick — Financial API
2 min readSep 9, 2021
Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

Diving into the intricate world of financial services, we discover that technology can be so exciting, so interconnected only so that we can use it with better ease. Yet, every element of the financial ecosystem is complementary to one another. One such element is Application Programme Interfaces (APIs). APIs bridge each function of the financial technology industry, reducing processing time and optimising processes to deliver the best service for users.

Today, there are technologies available for businesses’ operational activities including record and monitoring transactions. For the latter, book-keeping apps can help in recording transactions automatically and even process reports.

A bookkeeping app is a platform that helps the user to record and monitor transactions, cash flow, and balances. These platforms generate analytical reports that help business owners define the health of their businesses. Further, businesses expend resources verifying transactions made in each financial account using manual processes that tend to be fraught with human error. A bookkeeping platform can change that.

To be effective, a bookkeeping platform must be able to integrate all of the company’s financial account data within its platform. This means being connected to every financial institution their users use. This is definitely no mean feat, considering the both the technical and business challenges in the integration process The huge amount of time spent and costs incurred may not guarantee a successful or reliable integration, that is the ability to ensure seamless, accurate, and real-time connections for users.

Building integrations with many institutions can be quite laborious as each institution has its own set of standards and mechanisms for data collection, and these platforms need to ensure the integration works well. There is a shortcut: using open financial APIs. Open financial APIs such as those provided by Brick enable bookkeeping platforms to integrate with many financial institutions, and allow these platforms to interact with transactions or verification data. Besides providing valuable data, financial APIs also offer excellent performance. Utilising financial APIs allows bookkeeping platforms to direct resources to other, more valuable aspects of their businesses, while providing their end-users with reliable products. They say to “leave it to the experts” — it is perhaps high time bookkeeping platforms heed this advice!

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