Fondo Reference Architecture
Overview
Reference architecture for a startup's financial operations with Fondo at the center, connecting payroll, banking, payments, and internal reporting.
Prerequisites
- A data-flow inventory, authorized business purpose, system owners, access/retention policy, and professional-review boundary.
- Separate scoped identities for data sources, processing, storage, reporting, and support, plus synthetic integration fixtures.
Instructions
- Enforce field allowlists, access checks, encryption, and retention requirements at every financial-data boundary.
- Keep financial/tax conclusions under the designated finance professional’s review; integrations may prepare evidence but not replace that review.
- Use idempotent queues, redacted telemetry, staged promotion, and a correction/rollback path for each downstream consumer.
Output
Maintain an architecture record describing sources, trust boundaries, approved destinations, access/retention controls, owners, professional-review points, and recovery mechanisms. Do not include finance data or secrets.
Error Handling
- Quarantine unknown fields, unapproved destinations, and reconciliation mismatches for finance review.
- Disable unsafe consumers and preserve only redacted evidence during recovery.
- Restore the prior mapping/configuration before replaying any financial workflow.
Examples
Route a fictional aggregate expense event through an approved staging pipeline, deny an unapproved reporting consumer, and verify a duplicate event is suppressed. Record only the opaque event ID and aggregate outcome.
Architecture
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Data Sources │
├──────────┬──────────┬──────────┬──────────┬─────────────┤
│ Mercury │ Gusto │ Stripe │ Brex │ AWS/GCP │
│ Banking │ Payroll │ Revenue │ Expense │ Cloud │
├──────────┴──────────┴──────────┴──────────┴─────────────┤
│ Plaid / OAuth Connections │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │
│ FONDO PLATFORM │
│ ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐ ┌────────────────┐ │
│ │ Monthly │ │ Tax │ │ R&D Tax Credit │ │
│ │ Close │ │ Filing │ │ Study (6765) │ │
│ └──────────┘ └──────────┘ └────────────────┘ │
│ │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Outputs │
├──────────┬──────────┬──────────┬────────────────────────┤
│ P&L │ Balance │ Cash │ R&D Credit │
│ Report │ Sheet │ Flow │ Certificate │
├──────────┴──────────┴──────────┴────────────────────────┤
│ Internal Dashboard (optional) │
│ Revenue metrics │ Burn rate │ Runway │ Board deck │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Recommended Stack
| Category | Tool | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Banking | Mercury or SVB | Startup-friendly, API access, Plaid compatible |
| Payroll | Gusto | Best startup payroll, Fondo integration |
| Revenue | Stripe | Standard payments, clean webhooks |
| Expenses | Brex or Ramp | Auto-receipt capture, categorization |
| Bookkeeping | Fondo | Automated, CPA-managed |
| Tax Filing | Fondo (TaxPass) | Bundled with bookkeeping |
| R&D Credits | Fondo | Integrated with bookkeeping data |
| Cap Table | Carta or Pulley | Equity management |
| Board Reporting | Fondo exports + internal dashboard | Custom metrics |
Data Flow
- Transactions flow from banks/cards/payroll into Fondo via Plaid/OAuth
- Fondo CPA team categorizes and reconciles monthly
- Financial statements generated and delivered to Dashboard
- R&D credit study prepared annually from same data
- Tax returns filed using reconciled data
Resources
Next Steps
Start with fondo-install-auth to set up your Fondo account.