Airtable destination
Push your categorised transactions into Airtable
Fin creates a table in a base you own and fills it with your sorted transactions as properly typed fields — an Amount that adds up, a real date, and selects you can group by. Daily on its own, or on demand.
Airtable
What does the Airtable destination do?
It creates a table inside an Airtable base you authorised and adds each categorised transaction as a record, with the nine fields typed the way Airtable expects them.
Of the four destinations this is the closest to a real database. Airtable’s base → table → typed fields model lines up with the nine fields more naturally than a grid does, which means less shaping on your side before the data is useful.
Once the records are there, everything Airtable does works on them: interfaces, automations, grouped and filtered views, linked records to a clients or projects table, and formula fields you add yourself. Fin fills the table; what you build on top is yours.
How do you connect Airtable to AI2Fin?
You authorise AI2Fin on Airtable’s own screen and choose which bases the grant covers. Airtable requires the stricter PKCE authorisation flow, which Fin uses — so no password is ever handed over.
Airtable’s consent screen asks you to pick the bases, so the permissions below are bounded twice over: by what they allow, and by which bases you selected. A base you did not tick is not visible to the connection at all.
Access renews itself in the background so a scheduled push keeps running. One thing worth knowing: Airtable retires an authorisation that has gone unused for around two months, so a destination nobody has pushed to since autumn will ask to be reconnected. That is Airtable’s design rather than a fault, and reconnecting takes a moment.
What you are agreeing to on Airtable’s screen
Create and edit records
The push itself. This is what lets your transactions arrive as records in the table you chose.
See and edit the structure of the bases you picked
Needed to list your tables, to know what type each field is, and to create the table and its nine fields in the first place.
Your email address
Used only to label the connection, so two Airtable accounts are told apart on the settings screen.
What is deliberately not asked for
Permission to read your records. Fin writes transactions into your table and has no reason to read what is already in it, so it does not ask to.
Can Fin create a new Airtable base for you?
Fin creates the table, but not the base. You point it at a base you already have — one you authorised on Airtable’s consent screen — and it builds the table inside it.
The honest reason: creating a base through Airtable’s API requires a workspace identifier, and Airtable publishes no way to look one up. Rather than guess at where a new base should live, Fin does the part it can do properly and leaves the base to you. Creating an empty base in Airtable takes a few seconds anyway.
The picker only offers bases you can actually write to, and only offers “create a new table in…” for bases where your own permission level allows a table to be created. A base that would refuse the first push is left out of the list rather than accepted and failed later.
Existing tables are welcome too
You do not have to let Fin create the table. Point it at one you already have and it adds only the fields it cannot find, by name, leaving everything else exactly as you built it — nothing is renamed, retyped or removed. Before each push it reads the table’s current field types and sends each value in the shape that table actually expects, so a field you converted later keeps working.
How are the fields typed in the Airtable table?
Properly. The Amount is a real number field with two decimal places, the date is a date field, currency, category and tax category are single selects, tax deductible is a checkbox, and the receipt is a URL.
The Amount deserves a note, because it is the field that decides whether the table is useful. It is a plain number rather than Airtable’s currency field, and that is deliberate: a currency field carries one fixed symbol for the entire column, which would state something false about every transaction in another currency. Your rows already carry their own currency field, so a plain number sums exactly as well and claims nothing untrue.
Description comes first, because Airtable’s first field is the table’s primary field — the row’s name and always the leftmost column — and the description is the only one of the nine that reads like a name. That is the single place the field order departs from the other destinations, and Notion’s title property departs identically, so switching between the two shows you the same layout.
| Field | Type | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Description | Single line text | First, because Airtable’s primary field is the row’s name. |
| Date | Date (ISO) | Sortable, groupable by month, usable in a calendar view. |
| Merchant | Single line text | Free text and high-cardinality — a select would grow an option per merchant forever. |
| Amount | Number (2 dp) | A real number field, so it sums, rolls up and charts. This is the point. |
| Currency | Single select | A tiny closed set, so it groups — and stops “AUD” and “aud” becoming two things. |
| Category | Single select | Group-by and filter-by is most of what this table gets opened for. |
| Tax deductible | Checkbox | Genuinely boolean, and filterable as one. |
| Tax category | Single select | A small closed set, same reasoning as Category. |
| Receipt | URL | Clickable, rather than a string that looks like a link and is not. |
Select options fill themselves in from your real data as records arrive, so a new category is added to the list rather than rejected — nothing is seeded with guessed names.
Which of your transactions get sent to Airtable?
The ones you entered yourself, imported from a CSV, or captured from a receipt — categorised, tax-tagged and receipt-linked before they land. Transactions that arrived through a connected bank feed stay inside AI2Fin, where your reports and your tax view still count them.
It works the same way for every destination, so the file you keep in Airtable carries the records you assembled. The reasoning behind that, and what it means for a file you share with your accountant, is on the Destinations overview.
Would another destination suit you better?
The same nine fields go to all four, so the choice is about where you already work rather than about what you would be giving up.
Transactions to Google Sheets
Connect your own Google account, let Fin create a fresh spreadsheet or reuse one you have already opened with AI2Fin, and your categorised transactions land there as rows — kept updated on a schedule, or pushed the moment you ask.
Transactions to Microsoft Excel
Yes — into a real .xlsx workbook in your own OneDrive. Sign in with your Microsoft account, have Fin create the workbook, and rows append into it on a schedule or on demand.
Transactions to Notion
Share a Notion page with the AI2Fin integration, and Fin creates a database inside it and keeps it filled with your categorised transactions.
The Destinations overview compares all four side by side and covers what every push has in common. Outbound Destinations is included on the ELITE+ and AUTO+ plans — see what each plan covers.
Airtable, answered
Common questions about the Airtable destination
- Can Fin create a new Airtable base for you?
- It creates the table, not the base. Creating a base through Airtable’s API requires a workspace identifier, and Airtable publishes no endpoint that lists your workspaces — so there is no honest way to obtain one, and Fin does not pretend otherwise. Make an empty base in Airtable, tick it on the consent screen, and Fin builds the table with all nine fields inside it.
- Does the Amount arrive as a real number field in Airtable?
- Yes — a number field with two decimal places, so it sums, rolls up, drives formulas and charts without any conversion. It is deliberately not Airtable’s currency field type, because a currency field carries a single fixed symbol for the whole column and that would state something false about any transaction in another currency. The currency travels in its own field instead, which is both more accurate and more useful.
- Which Airtable permissions does AI2Fin ask for?
- Four, and one notable omission. It asks to create and edit records, to see and to edit the structure of the bases you selected — the last two are what allow the table and its fields to be created — and to see your email address so the connection can be labelled. It deliberately does not ask for permission to read your records: writing your transactions in does not require reading what is already there.
- How long does a large first push to Airtable take?
- Longer than the spreadsheet destinations, and for a reason worth knowing. Airtable accepts ten records per request and limits how quickly requests may arrive at one base, so Fin paces itself to stay comfortably inside that. A large first push of a couple of thousand transactions therefore lands over roughly a minute rather than instantly. Every push after that carries only what is new, so it is over in moments.
Your transactions, in a base you own
Getting your transactions sorted and categorised is the free part. Turn on the Airtable destination when you want them arriving as typed records you can build interfaces and automations on.
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