How to Sync One Table to Another in Airtable Without Using Automations

You run a small insurance and finance company, and most of your work revolves around managing client policies and the documents tied to them.

Every client can hold multiple insurance policies such as health, dental, vision, or life, and each policy is assigned a unique policy ID.

For every policy, the insurance carrier requires documents to be signed or shared, which means policy data and document data must always stay in sync.

The tables in your base

Your base contains two main tables. One table stores insurance policies, and the other stores insurance documents.

A policy record is created first and includes details like policy ID, carrier, policy type, and client.

When documents are received from the carrier, you add records to the documents table to upload and track those files.

The automation you are using

To keep everything connected, you set up an automation. Whenever a policy record is created or updated, the automation runs.

It searches for a matching record in the documents table where the policy ID matches the policy number.

If a matching record exists, the automation updates fields in the documents table with the latest policy information.

Why this approach breaks down

At first, this setup seems reasonable, but problems appear quickly. Every time you add or modify a field in the policy table, the automation must run.

If the automation fails or misses a change, the data quietly goes out of sync and documents no longer reflect the latest policy details.

As your base grows, maintaining multiple automations becomes increasingly fragile and time consuming.

The real issue is not creating the initial document record. The real challenge is keeping both tables synchronized over time.

Using automations to copy data back and forth is not the right tool for this job.

A better approach using linked records

This is a perfect use case for linked record fields instead of automations.

Each document record should link directly to its corresponding policy record using a linked record field.

First, you create the policy in the insurance policy table and assign it a policy ID.

When documents arrive, you create a record in the documents table and link it to the correct policy.

Once the link is established, the relationship stays intact and requires no ongoing maintenance.

Any change made in the policy table automatically appears in the documents table through those lookup fields.

No automation is required, and there is nothing to monitor or fix. This approach is simpler, more reliable, and scales as your business grows.