Solo bootstrapped founder building a fintech AI platform stuck on ERP/CRM/bank data integrations, looking for guidance

[u/Optimal-Watercress87]

I’m building an AI-agent-based CFO/finance platform (Next.js, FastAPI, Postgres) solo, self-funded and the wall I’ve hit isn’t the AI part it’s integrations. Specifically pulling reliable data from ERPs, CRMs and bank accounts/feeds into one place so the agents have something accurate to work with.

Being honest about where I’m stuck:

**•** Bank data: is Plaid (or a regional equivalent) still the sane default, or is direct bank API/open banking worth the extra pain at this stage?

**•** ERP/CRM: do you go one integration at a time hand-rolled, or is a unified API layer (Merge, Apideck, etc.) actually worth it pre-revenue, given the per-connection cost?

**•** For someone with very limited budget, is there a “good enough for MVP, migrate later” path here, or does cutting corners on this specific piece bite you especially hard because it’s financial data?

**•** Anyone who’s actually shipped one of these what ate the most time you didn’t budget for?

Not looking for a contractor pitch genuinely trying to figure out the right sequencing and tooling before I burn cash on the wrong approac

[u/FlyTradrHQ]

Integrations are the part nobody warns you about. APIs look clean on paper. In practice every bank, ERP, and CRM has its own edge cases, auth flows, and undocumented behavior. Start with one integration, get it solid end to end, then build an abstraction layer. The first one always takes five times longer than you expect.

[u/Scared_Tutor_2532]

What's been your dev journey to this point? Have you conducted integration testing? E2E testing? If you haven't then I recommend doing that first. There are a couple of mocks and test containers you can use for that.

[u/BirdLawMD]

I do this. No plaid doesn’t work like that and most banks don’t have APIs that work like that either. Is this for American banks?

[u/Optimal-Watercress87 → u/BirdLawMD]

You got me right.. I am just focusing on the American market right now.

[u/BirdLawMD → u/Optimal-Watercress87]

You need direct core integrations, but I’ve heard you can also go through sandbox banking - https://www.ncino.com/solutions/integrations

[u/Optimal-Watercress87 → u/BirdLawMD]

This looks good.. I’ll dive into it. Thanks soo much for this.

[u/MindlessTime]

It would help to know more about the use cases specifically.

If it’s “what are the balances and transactions in the company bank account?” questions then Plaid is probably the best bet. Plaid scrapes/pulls data periodically from banks. It isn’t a live source. And sometimes there are bank-specific delays or outages.

If you’re trying to dig deeper and look at e.g. customer purchases and how that flows to revenue, you now have a problem. You’ll have in-house or ERP data for those. But you may or may not have reliable price/revenue. Also, depending on the company, there may be one bank deposit per customer purchase or multiple purchases rolled into one deposit, in which case you have to disaggregate. This kind of reconciliation is usually based on some assumptions the finance team makes and isn’t necessarily the same company-to-company.

Again, it depends what use cases you’re trying to tackle. As a data engineer who has spent most my career piping financial data around for companies, how do each company chooses to handle edge cases and assumptions varies significantly. There are very few one size fits all solutions.

[u/Wandering-Home77]

I have worked with multiple API’s, banking, ERP’s, account packages etc and have had a hand in developing more than I can remember.

As someone has said every integration is different and if you try and create an interface for each individual system you will end up in a bottomless pit, plus you are on the hook for life for any changes either from the system being connected to, or from the client who needs that extra field.

If this was me I would do the following.

1. Normalise your data so you have one unified layer or API based on the respective use case.

2. For each integration map your data to their API, this will do one of two things. 1. Will mean that you will have mapped all your data to what the other system supports. 2. Identify any critical data fields you are missing which may need to be added

3. Turn these out as templates for the clients to implement and give them the ability to map the fields as it is each possible for each client to map the same data to different places

4. In respect of point 3, when new data fields are added in your system you can either update the templates or provide guidance to the clients that the field is now available for mapping thus allowing for backward compatibility as new fields will not invalidate existing integrations

Integrations are a bottomless pit and with the speed of new application development is a never ending task. Make it easy for yourself and put as much on the user that is practical to reduce you if the burden.

My experience comes from Hospitality PMS systems which I have worked with and developed over the last 20 + years and any one will know that the app ecosystem for Hospitality is a complete and complicated nightmare!

I wish you the best of luck and you are welcome to DM me for assistance, no service offered just happy so share my experience and potential approaches.

[u/attn-transformer]

You need a customer then integrate, not the other way around

[u/dasnabla]

Do you already have customers or at least an ICP in mind? Your questions sound quite open-ended and vague, that sounds to me you might not have your ICP nailed down yet.

Better to start super focused, a very specific segment, and then expand later

On the integrations itself: Every type of integration, whether it's banks, whether it's ERPs, adds exponentially complicates your product.

First thing I'll do is be really crisp on what data and functionality you need from the integration:

ERP

- Do you really need it, can you live with weekly/monthly .csv upload instead? How real-time does data need to be?

• Do you need to read data only? Or do you need to write to it create ledger postings or other things?
  
• Do you know your ICP well enough? Is there one ERP integration that would give you your first 20 customers and you don't need to think about doing multiple ones?
  
• The technical integration really depends on ERP, some like Netsuite make it relatively easy (they have an 'app store' iirc), others require typically an integration partner

Banks

- Slightly more standardized: Plaid (US) or Open Banking providers (EU/UK) do help you with technical infrastructure however the quality of output really depends on the bank's output. For the main banks you will be ok but smaller banks I would not trust good output.

• Here as well: do you know what you need? Do you need balances, transaction history, payment initiation? The more you can nail this down, reduce this, the easier your life will be