How Bourn built a best-in-class accounting data infrastructure in days with Rutter
Bourn is a modern lending platform for SMEs built around a single promise: underwriting decisions within 24 hours. Delivering that requires fast, reliable access to applicants' accounting data, from whichever platform they use.
Accounting platforms are not built to look alike. Each has its own authentication flows, data models, quirks, and rate limits. For a lender like Bourn, integrating even a handful of platforms means learning each one in depth before writing a single line of product code. The cost is not just the build. It is the learning curve, the ongoing maintenance, and the fragility of bespoke connections.
A single accounting platform integration built in-house would have taken Bourn's engineering team roughly two weeks, and that estimate assumes the engineering knowledge was already in place. With seven platforms on the roadmap, that added up to months of effort before Bourn could serve applicants across the accounting ecosystem. Bourn needed a partner that could collapse that complexity, without compromising on the speed or freshness of data a 24-hour underwriting cycle demands.
"Rutter provides a very smooth onboarding experience for the customer. Quick, easy, and the data comes through fast. Both of those things are critical to hitting our 24-hour turnaround."
Bourn evaluated several options and Rutter stood apart immediately. Rutter's self-service, developer-first platform meant Bourn's engineering team could move without waiting on lengthy sales or onboarding cycles. Where competitors required extended setup processes, Rutter's modern API experience gave engineers the autonomy to build quickly and confidently.
Real-time data where it matters
For Bourn's underwriting model, the frequency and freshness of data is a commercial necessity, not a technical detail. Rutter's Accounting API was built for this use case: fast, reliable connections that deliver data when decisions need to be made.
"It wasn't just about engineering time saved. It was about removing the complexity entirely. With Rutter, we didn't have to become experts in seven different accounting platforms. We just built."
By partnering with Rutter, Bourn integrated Xero, Sage, QuickBooks, and four more in the time a single in-house build would have taken.
Rutter gives Bourn's underwriters instant access to the financial data they need — no delays, no drop-off.
Bourn connected its first accounting integration through Rutter and was underwriting with live data almost immediately.
Bourn views Rutter as a foundational layer of its technology platform, not a vendor. The immediate roadmap includes expanding connections, growing the volume of customer integrations, and widening the data footprint. Rutter's pace of adding new data points has kept step with Bourn's product needs. When Bourn identified a need for supplier and bills data, Rutter was already moving in that direction.
As the lending landscape evolves and new accounting platforms emerge, Rutter's data model is broad enough to grow with Bourn's ambitions.
"The future is more platforms, more customer connections, and more data. Rutter is how we get there."
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