Data sources
A data source is an external account that Chartsy reads your business records out of. It is the foundation of everything else: no data source, no metrics. Connecting one is the only mandatory setup step in Chartsy.
Definition
Data source - a live, authorised, read-only connection to a system that already holds your commercial records. In practice that means your payment processor or your store platform. Chartsy does not ask you to send it data; it goes and reads what your provider already has, including everything from before you signed up.
It is worth separating three words that often get used interchangeably:
- Data source
- The account itself - "our Stripe account". One authorisation, one billing system.
- Data model
- One object type inside that source - customers, subscriptions, invoices, charges. A source contains many models. The exact list per provider is documented in Stripe, Paddle and Paddle Classic data models.
- Record
- One row of one model - a single customer, a single invoice. What charts are ultimately counting.
Which data sources Chartsy supports
- Stripe
- Subscriptions, one-off charges, invoices, refunds and balance transactions. The most complete integration. Connection guide
- Paddle Billing
- Paddle's current platform, covering subscriptions, transactions and adjustments. Connection guide
- Paddle Classic
- Paddle's legacy platform, kept as a separate source because its objects differ from Paddle Billing. Connection guide
- BigCommerce
- Orders, products and customers from your store, installed as a BigCommerce app rather than an API key. Connection guide
What happens when you connect one
- You authorise access. Chartsy never asks for your provider password - authorisation happens on your provider's own screen, and you can revoke it there at any time.
- Chartsy backfills your history. Every supported model is read from the beginning of the account, which is why your first dashboard already has trend lines rather than a single day's point.
- Webhooks are registered. From then on, new activity arrives as it happens instead of on a nightly schedule. See Syncing and data freshness.
- Metrics become available. MRR, churn, LTV and the rest are computed from the copied models - nothing further to configure.
Permissions and what Chartsy never reads
Access is read-only, with one narrow exception: Chartsy needs limited write permission solely to register the webhooks that keep your data current. It never creates, modifies, or deletes a customer, subscription, invoice, or payment in your provider.
Chartsy also never has access to raw payment instruments - card numbers, CVVs, and bank account details are not exposed by these APIs and are not stored by Chartsy in any form.
If you do not want PII stored at all
GDPR mode connects the same data source but leaves personally identifying fields behind. Every metric still calculates; you simply see an anonymous identifier where a name or email would otherwise appear.
Connecting more than one source
You can connect several data sources to one Chartsy account. The common cases are multiple Stripe accounts for separate products or legal entities, and running Stripe alongside Paddle during a migration. Metrics can then be read per source or combined into one view, so a business split across two processors still has a single MRR number.
Disconnecting and deleting data
Revoking access in your provider stops the sync immediately. To also remove the data Chartsy has already copied, email support@chartsy.app and the synchronised records are deleted. Nothing in your provider account is affected either way.
