Plaid Setup
This guide will walk you through configuring Plaid for your self-managed Bigcapital instance. You will learn how to obtain your Plaid credentials, set up the required environment variables, and configure webhooks.
1. Obtain Your Plaid Credentials
To connect Bigcapital (self-hosted) to Plaid, you need your Client ID and Secret. These can be found in your Plaid Dashboard:
- Log in to your Plaid Dashboard.
- Navigate to Developers > Keys or go directly to Account Keys.
- Copy your Client ID and Secret for the environment you wish to use (Sandbox, Development, or Production).
Never share your secret key publicly. Treat it like a password.
2. Configure Environment Variables
Add the following environment variables to your .env
file or your deployment environment:
If your PLAID_SECRET
is for the production
environment, make sure to set PLAID_ENV=production
to match.
Using the wrong environment may cause authentication errors or prevent access
to live data.
Variable Descriptions
- PLAID_ENV: The Plaid environment to use. Use
sandbox
for testing,development
for real data with limited access, orproduction
for live data. - PLAID_CLIENT_ID: Your unique Plaid client ID from the dashboard.
- PLAID_SECRET: Your Plaid secret key from the dashboard.
- PLAID_LINK_WEBHOOK: (Optional) The URL where Plaid will send webhook events. This should be publicly accessible if you want to receive real-time updates from Plaid.
4. Setting Up the Webhook (Optional)
If you want to receive real-time updates from Plaid (such as transaction updates), you need to set up a webhook:
- Deploy your API endpoint to a publicly accessible URL (e.g., using ngrok for local development).
- Set the
PLAID_LINK_WEBHOOK
variable to your endpoint URL. - Ensure your endpoint is configured to handle Plaid webhook events. See Plaid Webhooks Documentation - To configure your webhook URL in the Plaid Dashboard.
- From Plaid Dashboard. Go to Developers > Webhook URLs.
- Click Add webhook URL (or edit an existing one).
- Enter your endpoint URL (the same as
PLAID_LINK_WEBHOOK
). - Save your changes. For more details, see the Plaid Webhook Configuration Guide.
5. Enable Bank Feeds Feature
After completing the Plaid configuration, you must enable the bank feeds feature in your environment. Add the following variable to your .env
file or deployment environment:
This setting activates the bank feeds integration, allowing your Bigcapital instance to sync and process bank transactions via Plaid.