Accounting integration — Monite Documentation

Overview

Many SMEs use various accounting solutions to store and prepare their financial data for submission to tax authorities. With Monite, you can connect your users’ data to their preferred accounting software and pull necessary financial data for import into your interface, as well as push data in case they need to do any post-accounting work outside of your application.

Supported accounting systems

Each entity can connect to one of the following accounting systems:

QuickBooks Online
Xero

New supported accounting systems will be added in future releases of our platform. If you have any specific requests, please contact our Support team.

An entity can connect their data to only one accounting system. If they want to connect to another accounting system, they have to disconnect the currently connected system first.

Requirements and considerations

All Monite partners that intend to support accounting integration must create developer accounts in the accounting platforms they intend to support.
Each entity that wants to connect to an external accounting system (like Xero or QuickBooks) must have an account with that system before attempting to create an accounting connection with the Monite API.

How the integration works

The first step required to enable accounting integration for an entity is to establish a connection to an entity’s accounting software and ask an entity user to authorize the connection. Once the connection has been established, the entity’s financial data will be synchronized automatically between Monite’s and the entity’s accounting software. After the initial synchronization, Monite will automatically trigger synchronizations between both systems every 24 hours.

Monite does not push older invoices or bills to the entity’s accounting software during the initial synchronization. Therefore, only invoices and bills eligible for pushing after the accounting synchronization will be pushed to the accounting software.

You can track the data synchronization status by calling GET /accounting_connections/{connection_id}. This endpoint returns information about the entity’s connection to an accounting system including the status of the connection and the last synchronization.

What data is synchronized

In our accounting integration, we support two key actions for handling synchronized data:

Pull for matching

This feature pulls external data into our system for comparison or matching with existing records. No new records are created within the Monite platform; the purpose is solely to match the pulled data with corresponding data that already exists in our system.

Pull for creation

This feature not only pulls external data but also creates new entries in the Monite system for any unmatched records. If the pulled data does not have a corresponding match, a new record is automatically created in our platform.

Currently, Monite pulls and pushes the following data from and to accounting systems. Data is synchronized every 24 hours:

Data	Pull for matching	Pull for creation	Pushed
Ledger accounts*			References to ledger accounts in invoice line items, and products
Counterparts	✔️		✔️
Products	✔️	✔️
Tax rates	✔️
Accounts receivable: invoices**			✔️
Accounts receivable: credit notes			✔️
Accounts receivable: invoice payment records			✔️
Accounts payable: bills			✔️

_{* Ledger accounts are not matched, they are pulled only to be applied to products.}
_{** Invoices are pulled only for access purposes, they are neither matched nor created.}

Entities can also pull records from the accounting system on demand by calling POST /accounting_connections/{connection_id}/sync.

How data is synchronized

Pulling

This section describes how data is pulled from an accounting system.

Ledger accounts

Ledger accounts are pulled only for mapping to products. Monite does not create any new items during this process.

Counterparts

When retrieving counterpart data from your accounting system for use in Monite, counterpart information is matched based on their names, countries, cities, and addresses—in that exact order—till there is an exact match. If there is more than one counterpart with the same name, we additionally attempt to match them based on the other information provided.

Monite does not create any new items during this process; therefore, no action is taken if no match is found. If a mismatch occurs, entities can create counterparts on Monite to match the counterpart details on their accounting system.

Monite also creates a new counterpart in the entity’s accounting system whenever a new counterpart is created using our API.

Products

All products are pulled from the accounting system on the first connection. Data is pulled, and IDs are matched based on their names alone. If a product does not exist on Monite, Monite will create a new product in our database and link it to the corresponding product from your accounting system.

Every time a new product is created in the accounting system, Monite checks if there is a match for this product in the Monite system. If the product is not found, Monite pulls the product’s data and automatically creates the product internally.

Tax rates

Tax rates are pulled only for mapping purposes. Monite does not create any new items during this process; therefore, no action is taken if no match is found.

Handling multiple matches

If a product’s name matches with multiple products on either system, Monite does not attempt to match any of the results. The resulting error will be returned in your sync_object.

Pushing

This section describes how data is pushed to an accounting system.

Ledger accounts

Ledger accounts are not pushed into the accounting system.

Accounts Payable: invoices (bills)

Only payables in the ‘issued’ and ‘canceled’ statuses are pushed. Before pushing, bills are validated to confirm the presence of references for tax_rate_ref_id, ledger_account_id, and line_items. Issuance of bills without this validation is prohibited.

Accounts Receivable: invoices

Monite does not push any of the entity’s older invoices during the initial synchronization. After synchronization, invoices in Monite are only pushed to the entity’s accounting system when they are moved to the issued status.

Accounts Receivable: credit notes

Credit notes are pushed without a document number. Users can backfill credit note numbers in the accounting system manually.

The pushed credit notes do not get associated with the corresponding invoices in the accounting system. As a result, invoices in the accounting system will not be automatically canceled when a corresponding credit note is pushed.

Payment records

Only payment records associated with accounts receivable invoices are pushed into the accounting system. Payment records for payables (bills) are not pushed.

Before payment record can be pushed, the entity must specify the ledger account to attach them to. Use the entity setting accounting.ledger_account_ids.payments to specify the target ledger account. For more information, see Assign a ledger account to payment records.

Counterparts

Counterparts from your accounting system are matched using their names. Once matched, there is no regular check for data changes in either system. If no match is found, new objects are created in the accounting system.

Monite also creates a new counterpart in the entity’s accounting system whenever a new counterpart is created using our API.

Products

Products are not pushed into the accounting system.

After every synchronization, you can track its status and any errors returned by calling GET /accounting_synched_records/{synced_record_id}. For more information, see Check synchronization logs.

Set up integration with an accounting system

1. Prerequisites

Before starting an accounting integration, you must have a partner account in Monite.

2. Generate a Monite partner access token

To authenticate your API calls with Monite, you need to generate a new partner-level token. To do this, call POST /auth/token with the following parameters:

1 curl -X POST 'https://api.sandbox.monite.com/v1/auth/token' \
2      -H 'X-Monite-Version: 2024-05-25' \
3      -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
4      -d '{
5         "grant_type": "client_credentials",
6         "client_id": "YOUR_PARTNER_CLIENT_ID",
7         "client_secret": "YOUR_PARTNER_CLIENT_SECRET"
8      }'

The successful response contains the token and its validity time (in seconds):

1 {
2   "access_token": "eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhb...",
3   "token_type": "Bearer",
4   "expires_in": 1800
5 }

3. Set up entities in Monite

If you have not already, create entities in Monite that represent your customers. Since the connection to an accounting system is configured on the entity level, Monite partners must have entities in Monite before proceeding further.

Entities that use accounts receivable must also create their product catalog in Monite before setting up an accounting connection.

4. Set up partner accounts on accounting platforms

Partners must set up accounts in QuickBooks and Xero to successfully support an accounting integration on these platforms.

5. Provide accounting credentials

After successfully creating a partner account in QuickBooks or Xero, partners must now provide their secure application keys (API Key and Secret) for whichever platform they intend to support on Monite.

To do this, please send the credentials to dev-accounting@monite.com via a secure password manager or file sharing tool, such as BitWarden.

6. Establish entity connection to an accounting system

To establish a new accounting connection that allows an entity to synchronize all its accounting data with a third-party accounting system, call POST /accounting_connections. In this request, you must pass the entity ID in the X-Monite-Entity-Id header:

1 curl -X POST 'https://api.sandbox.monite.com/v1/accounting_connections' \
2      -H 'X-Monite-Version: 2024-05-25' \
3      -H 'X-Monite-Entity-Id: ENTITY_ID' \
4      -H 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_PARTNER_TOKEN' \

The successful 201 Created response contains the information about the newly created connection:

1 {
2   "id": "cd16c05b-bd05-45c8-822c-a5aa4a6b1e78",
3   "created_at": "2024-06-08T19:52:22.557280+00:00",
4   "updated_at": "2024-06-08T19:52:22.557291+00:00",
5   "connection_url": "https://sites.railz.ai/ste-bac47d52-c7f3-452c-83d3-de55d6193924",
6   "errors": null,
7   "last_pull": "2024-06-08T19:52:22.557307+00:00",
8   "platform": null,
9   "status": "pending_auth"
10 }

Note down the connection_url value as you will need it on the next step.

Each entity can connect to only one accounting system at a time. The entity must be disconnected from any previous system before they can successfully establish a new connection. To disconnect an entity from an accounting system, call POST /accounting_connections/{connection_id}/disconnect endpoint. For more information, see Disconnect an accounting system

7. Entity user authorizes their connection

Send the connection_url value obtained on the previous step to the entity representative. This URL looks like this:

https://sites.railz.ai/ste-bac47d52-c7f3-83d3-452c-de55d6193924

The entity user must navigate to this URL in their browser. This opens an authorization page, where the entity user must select their preferred accounting system.

After selecting the accounting platform, the entity user must log in and authorize the partner’s developer account to access their data.

Partners can customize specific attributes on the authorization page. To do this, please contact your Monite Customer Success Manager.

Upon successful authorization, the platform field will contain the entity’s chosen accounting platform and the value of the status field in the accounting connection object will be connected. You can confirm this by calling GET /accounting_connections/{id}.

What’s next

Assign ledger accounts to products, line items, and payment records so that they can be successfully pushed.
Learn how invoices are pushed.

Troubleshooting

If you experience any issues and need further assistance with the integration, please feel free to contact our Support Team at any time.

1	curl -X POST 'https://api.sandbox.monite.com/v1/auth/token' \
2	-H 'X-Monite-Version: 2024-05-25' \
3	-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
4	-d '{
5	"grant_type": "client_credentials",
6	"client_id": "YOUR_PARTNER_CLIENT_ID",
7	"client_secret": "YOUR_PARTNER_CLIENT_SECRET"
8	}'

1	{
2	"access_token": "eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhb...",
3	"token_type": "Bearer",
4	"expires_in": 1800
5	}

1	curl -X POST 'https://api.sandbox.monite.com/v1/accounting_connections' \
2	-H 'X-Monite-Version: 2024-05-25' \
3	-H 'X-Monite-Entity-Id: ENTITY_ID' \
4	-H 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_PARTNER_TOKEN' \

1	{
2	"id": "cd16c05b-bd05-45c8-822c-a5aa4a6b1e78",
3	"created_at": "2024-06-08T19:52:22.557280+00:00",
4	"updated_at": "2024-06-08T19:52:22.557291+00:00",
5	"connection_url": "https://sites.railz.ai/ste-bac47d52-c7f3-452c-83d3-de55d6193924",
6	"errors": null,
7	"last_pull": "2024-06-08T19:52:22.557307+00:00",
8	"platform": null,
9	"status": "pending_auth"
10	}