How to Automatically Link Records Between Tables in Airtable

Linking records between tables is one of Airtable’s most powerful features, but doing it manually can quickly become frustrating.

When you’re managing large amounts of data, you don’t want to keep selecting related records by hand every time a new entry is added. Ideally, you’d want Airtable to automatically create and maintain those links for you.

Take this real example.

A financial manager at a nonprofit was tracking sales tax for their classes using two tables. One table, Registration & Tuition, recorded each student’s registration, payment details, and calculated sales tax.

The other table, Sales Tax Records, was designed to collect and sum up all sales tax amounts by month.

The issue was that each new registration had to be manually linked to the correct month in the Sales Tax Records table, which became tedious over time.

What they wanted instead was a setup where new registrations would automatically link to the right monthly record based on the payment date.

This same concept applies to almost any situation in Airtable. Whether you’re linking projects to clients, invoices to companies, or orders to products, the goal is the same: automate the linking process so that records connect themselves without manual input.

Here’s how to do it.

Step 1: Create a Summary Table

In this case, the Sales Tax Records table serves as the summary. You can create one record per category you want to group by, for example per month, per client, or per project type.

For the monthly sales tax example, create one record per month such as “January 2025,” “February 2025,” and so on.

Include fields like:

• Month Name (e.g. “January 2025”)

• Total Sales Tax (Rollup field to sum linked records)

Step 2: Extract the Grouping Value (Month, Category, etc.)

In your source table (like Registration & Tuition), create a formula field that determines which group each record belongs to.

For the monthly example, use:

DATETIME_FORMAT({Payment Date}, 'MMMM YYYY')

This will convert your payment date into a readable month, such as “March 2025.”

Step 3: Set Up the Automation to Link Automatically

Now you can tell Airtable to handle the linking for you.

• Go to Automations and create a new one.

• Set the trigger to “When a record is created” in your source table.

• Add a Find records action that looks in your summary table (for example, Sales Tax Records) for a record where the Month Name matches the month value from your formula field.

• Add an Update record action that links the record from the Find records step to your current record.

Now, whenever a new record is created, Airtable automatically finds the matching group and links it.

Step 4: (Optional) Create the Group Record If It Doesn’t Exist

If there’s a chance a month or category doesn’t exist yet in your summary table, add an If-Else action.

• If the Find Records step finds one match, link to it.

• If none are found, create a new record in your summary table and link to it.

This ensures your automation keeps working month after month without you ever needing to add new group records manually.

Step 5: Use Rollups to Track Totals or Counts

Once everything is linked automatically, use Rollup or Count fields in your summary table to track totals such as total sales tax, number of registrations, or completed tasks.

By setting this up once, you can automate almost any type of linked record relationship in Airtable. Whether you’re grouping by time period, client, location, or any custom logic, your base will always stay organized and connected automatically.