Manage companies with our API
Learn about creating and managing companies, their connections, and their data via API
Onboarding your users
Your users or customers are companies. To access their data you'll need to onboard them.
To onboard a new user or customer:
- Create a company
- Authorize access to sources of data
- Pull the data
You can either onboard users:
- When they first create an account with your service
- At the first point you want to retrieve their financial data
Create a company
To create a new company, use the POST /companies endpoint and provide a name you want to attribute to it in the request body. Parameter name is a required parameter to execute this request. You can also provide a description to store additional information about the company.
POST /companies
{
"name": "Platypus Properties",
"description": "Platypuses are venomous mammals"
}
{
"id": "8f74269c-6cbf-4c5e-9b93-599965a7fd49",
"name": "Platypus Properties",
"description": "Platypuses are venomous mammals",
"redirect": "https://link.codat.io/company/8f74269c-6cbf-4c5e-9b93-599965a7fd49",
"dataConnections": []
}
The id property that you receive in the response is the unique Codat identifier for this company. We recommend that you retain it for future reference.
The name of the company doesn't have to be unique. It's just there to help you identify the company in the portal. Make sure to avoid forbidden characters.
Authorize access to company data
Once you've created the company, they'll need to give you permission to pull their data from a given source, like their accounting platform. There are several approaches to doing this, but for simplicity we've just covered our out-of-the-box hosted link approach.
Send the user to the redirect URL returned in the previous step. They will be sent to Link where they can select their accounting software and complete the linking process.
Once the user has completed the Link flow, the Codat platform will redirect them to the redirect URL you have configured in the Settings > Auth flow > Link in the Codat Portal. This URL can include the Codat companyId as well as any other custom query parameters.
For more information on setting your redirect URL, refer to this document.
Once your user is redirected to the redirect URL page, they'll be able to authorize access to their data. Once this is successful, the linking process is complete and their data can be pulled.
Re-authorizing access
Occasionally the Data Connections of a Codat company will go into a deauthorized state. This indicates that Codat’s link to the platform is no longer valid, and you will not be able to queue any further data syncs for that connection. You will still be able to query data previously retrieved from the platform.
Data Connections can become deauthorized by the user revoking access within their accounting software or due to platform limitations such as Xero's limited access period for non-partner companies.
To enable you to refresh the company's data, you will need to ask the user to complete the auth flow in Link again.
Creating a new company may cause additional data to be pulled from the platform and is likely to incur additional usage costs.
Redirect the user to complete the auth flow
Get a redirect URL for the company by following the process here. Send the user to the redirect URL. They will be prompted to select their accounting software and complete the linking process using the Link flow.
Once the user finishes the Link flow, they will be redirected back to the Redirect URL, as described earlier in this guide. At this point the re-authorization process is complete and their data has begun synchronizing again.
Deleting companies
You can delete companies in the Portal in the table in Companies.
You've learned:
- How to create a company and authroize access to their data
- The basics of pulling data
- Managing companies