Knit has recently rolled out one of its most anticipated features: User Management.

With the User Management feature you can now add multiple users with different capabilities to your Knit account based on their roles. 

In this article, we will discuss how to get started with the User Management feature and maximize its benefits.

What is User Management?

The User Management feature allows you to add multiple users to your organization’s Knit account and also assign them roles and permissions . It means multiple users can login and have access to your organization’s integrated accounts and various other features as a part of integration management. 

Knit currently serves 3 categories of possible roles for any organization. 

1. Admin

Admins have full access to all the features in the dashboard. They are in a way the primary users who have the right to add/edit/remove new users.  

2. Member

Members have access to only manage integrations and webhooks. Unlike Admins, they cannot add/update users or make changes to the organization’s account with Knit.

3. Billing Contact

Billing contact has access to only billing related options, like editing payment details, selecting plans etc.

For more information on setting up the User Management feature, take a look at this video. 

How to access the User Management page

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When you\ sign up to your Knit Dashboard, you will be logged in as an administrator of the organization you have just created. 

You can then access user management by going to the settings page.

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In the settings page you will have access to user management, among other settings.

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The User Management screen shows you all the users assigned to your organization, their emails, permissions and also gives you the option to see and edit their roles.

To invite a new user to your org, click on the Add User button on top right.

Here, you can enter the email ID of the person you’d like to invite to join your organization. You can also set their role. Invited users will receive an invite link on their respective email ID.

For detailed information about dashboard access for each role, be sure to check out the User Roles tab.

You can also edit the roles for a user, and resend the invitation to invited users.

What if we have already created multiple separate accounts and want to combine them?

If you have already created multiple separate accounts (by signing up separately with your individual email IDs), we can help you combine them into a single account. 

In the process, we will also combine your integrated accounts, and organizations from multiple accounts.

However, it would not be possible to transfer pre-existing syncs, logs and issues. As a result, once the integrated accounts are transferred, you’ll have to restart the sync for them.

Note: If you have created multiple accounts for testing and production, we recommend that you do not to merge them as the User Management feature does not provide for segregation of environments. 

Thus, it is best to have a separate account for production and for testing in that case.

Let’s get started

Please reach out to kunal@getknit.dev with the list of email addresses (along with their respective roles) that you would like to combine and we’d be happy to help you through it! 

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Marketing automation tools are like superchargers for marketers, propelling their campaigns to new heights. Yet, there's a secret ingredient that can take this power to the next level: the right audience data. 

What better than an organization’s CRM to power it? 

The good news is that many marketing automation tools are embracing CRM API integrations to drive greater adoption and results. However, with the increasing number of CRM systems underplay, building and managing CRM integrations is becoming a huge challenge. 

Fortunately, the rise of unified CRM APIs is bridging this gap, making CRM integration seamless for marketing automation tools. But, before delving into how marketing automation tools can power integrations with unified CRM APIs, let’s explore the business benefits of CRM APIs. 

10 ways marketing automation tools can maximize results with CRM API integration

Here’s a quick snapshot of how CRM APIs can bring out the best of marketing automation tools, making the most of the audience data for customers. 

1. Customer segmentation and content personalization  

Research shows that 72% of customers will only engage with personalized messaging. CRM integration with marketing automation tools can enable the users to create personalized messaging based on customer segmentation. 

Users can segment customers based on their likelihood of conversion and personalize content for each campaign. Slicing and dicing of customer data, including demographics, preferences, interactions, etc. can further help in customizing content with higher chances of consumption and engagement. Customer segmentation powered by CRM API data can help create content that customers resonate with. 

2. Enhanced lead nurturing for higher conversion 

CRM integration provides the marketing automation tool with every tiny detail of every lead to adjust and customize communication and campaigns that facilitate better nurturing. At the same time, real time conversation updates from CRM can help in timely marketing follow-ups for better chances of closure. 

2. Churn prediction and customer retention

As customer data from CRM and marketing automation tools is synched in real time, any early signs of churn like reduced engagement or changed consumer behavior can be captured. 

Real time alerts can also be automatically updated in the CRM for sales action. At the same time, marketing automation tools can leverage CRM data to predict which customers are more likely to churn and create specific campaigns to facilitate retention. 

3. Upsell and cross-sell campaigns

Users can leverage customer preferences from the CRM data to design campaigns with specific recommendations and even identify opportunities for upselling and cross-selling. 

For instance, customers with high engagement might be interested in upgrading their relationships and the marketing automation tools can use this information and CRM details on their historical trends to propose best options for upselling. 

Similarly, when details of customer transactions are captured in the CRM, they can be used to identify opportunities for complementary selling with dedicated campaigns. This leads to a clear increased revenue line. 

4. Automated campaign workflow to reduce operational overheads

In most marketing campaigns as the status of a lead changes, a new set of communication and campaign takes over. With CRM API integration, marketing automation tools can easily automate the campaign workflow in real time as soon as there is a status change in the CRM. This ensures greater engagement with the lead when their status changes. 

5. Event triggered campaigns for faster TAT

Marketing communication after events is an extremely important aspect of sales. With CRM integration in marketing automation tools, automated post-event communication or campaigns can be triggered based on lead status for attendance and participation in the event. 

This facilitates a faster turnaround time for engaging the customers just after the event, without any delays due to manual follow ups. 

6. Lead source automation

The integration can help automatically map the source of the lead from different marketing activities like webinars, social media posts, newsletters, etc. in your CRM to understand where your target audience engagement is higher. 

At the same time, it can facilitate tagging of leads to the right teams or personnels for follow ups and closures. With automated lead source tracking, users can track the ROI of different marketing activities. 

7. Tailored social media campaigns and multi-channel marketing

With CRM API integration, users can get access to customer preference insights to define their social media campaigns and audience. At the same time, they can customize scheduling based on customer’s geographical locations from CRM to facilitate maximum efficiency. 

8. Data enrichment for enhancing lead profiles

With bi-directional sync, CRM API integration with marketing automation tools can lead to enhancement of lead profiles. With more and more lead data coming in across both the platforms, users can have a rich and comprehensive profile of their customers, updates in real time across the CRM and marketing tools. 

9. Lifecycle marketing automation

Overall, integrating CRM API with marketing automation tools can help in automating the entire marketing lifecycle. It starts with getting a full customer view to stage-based automated marketing campaigns to personalized nurturing and lead scoring, predictive analytics and much more. Most of the aspects of marketing based on the sales journey of the customer can be automated and triggered in real time with CRM changes. 

10. Customer reporting and analytics for decision making

Data insights from CRM API integrated with those from marketing automation tools can greatly help in creating reports to analyze and track customer behavior. 

It can help ensure to understand consumer trends, identify the top marketing channels, improve customer segmentation and overall enhance the marketing strategy for more engagement. 

Real-world Struggles of CRM Integration in Marketing Automation

While the benefits of CRM API integration with marketing automation tools are many, there are also some roadblocks on the way. Since each CRM API is different and your customers might be using different CRM systems, building and maintaining a plethora of CRM APIs can be challenging due to:

Data transformation inconsistency and campaign blunders

When data is exchanged between two applications, it needs to undergo transformation to become normalized with data fields compatible across both. Since each CRM API has diverse data models, syntax and nuances, inconsistency during data transfer is a big challenge. 

If the data is not correctly normalized or transformed, chances are it might get corrupt or lost, leading to gaps in integration. At the same time, any inconsistency in data transformation and sync might lead to sending incorrect campaigns and triggers to customers, compromising on the experience. 

Delays in campaigns 

While inconsistency in data transformation is one challenge, a related concern comes in the form of delays or limited real-time sync capabilities. 

If the data sync between the CRM and the marketing automation tool is not happening in real time (across all CRMs being used), chances are that communication with end customers is being delayed, which can lead to loss of interest and lower engagement. 

Customer data privacy and security concerns

Any CRM is the beacon of sensitive customer data, often governed by GDPR and other compliances. However, integration and data transfer is always vulnerable to security threats like man in the middle attacks, DDoS, etc. which can lead to compromised privacy. This can lead to monetary and reputational risks. 

Scalability 

With the increasing number of CRM applications, scalability of integration becomes a huge challenge. Building new CRM integrations can be very time and resource consuming — building one integration from scratch can take up to 3 months or more — which either means compromising on the available CRM integrations or choking of engineering bandwidth. 

Moreover, as integrated CRM systems increase, the requirements for API calls and data exchange also grow exponentially, leading to delays in data sync and real time updates with increased data load. Invariably, scalability becomes a challenge.  

Integration management

Managing and maintaining integrations is a big challenge in itself. When end customers are using integrations, there are likely to be issues that require immediate action. 

At the same time, maintaining detailed logs, tracking API calls, API syncs manually can be very tedious. However, any lag in this can crumble the entire integration system. 

Vendor management

Finally, when integrating with different CRM APIs, managing the CRM vendors is a big challenge. Understanding API updates, managing different endpoints, ensuring zero downtime, error handling and coordinating with individual response teams is highly operational and time consuming. 

How Unified CRM API ensures maximum integration ROI

Don’t let the CRM API integration challenges prevent you from leveraging the multiple benefits mentioned above. A unified CRM API like the one offered by Knit, can help you access the benefits without breaking sweat over the challenges. 

If you want to know the technical details of how a unified API works, this will help

Integrate in minutes with multiple CRM APIs

A unified CRM API facilitates integration with marketing automation tools within minutes, not months, which is usually what it takes to build integrations. 

At the same time, it enables connecting with various CRM applications in one go. When it comes to Knit, marketing automation tools have to simply embed Knit’s UI component in their frontend to get access to Knit’s full catalog of CRM applications.

Consistent data transfer guaranteed with normalized data models

A unified CRM API can address all data transformation and normalization challenges easily. For instance, with Knit, different data models, nuances and schemas across CRM applications are mapped into a single and unified data model, facilitating data normalization in real time. 

At the same time, Knit allows users to map custom data fields to access non-standard data. 

Real time campaigns and data exchange

The right unified CRM API can help you sync data in real time, without any external polling requests. 

Take Knit for example, its webhooks and events driven architecture periodically polls data from all CRM applications, normalizing them and making them ready for use by the marketing automation tool. The latter doesn’t have to worry about the engineering intensive tasks of polling data, managing API calls, rate limits, data normalization, etc. 

Furthermore, this ensures that as soon as details about a customer are updated on the CRM, the associated campaigns or triggers are automatically set in motion for marketing success. 

Never miss a data update

There can be multiple CRM updates within a few minutes and as data load increases, a unified CRM API ensures guaranteed data sync in real time. As with Knit, its in-built retry mechanisms facilitate resilience and ensure that the marketing automation tools don’t miss out on any CRM updates, even at scale, as each lead is important. 

Moreover, as a user, you can set up sync frequency as per your convenience.

Scale as you go

With a unified CRM API, you only need to integrate once. As mentioned above, once you embed the UI component, every time you need to use a new CRM application or a new CRM API is added to Knit’s catalog, you can access it automatically with sync capabilities, without spending any engineering capabilities from your team. 

This ensures that you can scale in the most resource-lite and efficient manner, without diverting engineering productivity from your core product. From a data sync perspective as well, a unified CRM API ensures guaranteed scalability, irrespective of the data load. 

Security at scale

One of the biggest concerns of security and vulnerability to cyberattacks can be easily addressed with a unified CRM API across multiple facts. Let’s take the security provisions of Knit for example. 

• First, Knit ensures double encryption, i.e. it encrypts data at rest as well as when in transit for exchange. It also encrypts data with an additional layer of application security.
• Second, Knit is the only unified API that doesn’t store any copy of the data and acts as a pure passthrough proxy. Data is only processed in Knit’s server and is directly sent to the customer’s webhooks. Protection of end-user data like this helps you easily gain customer confidence during sales conversations.
• Third, Knit has wide ranging authorization capabilities, including, OAuth, API key or a username-password based authentication. Irrespective of what authorization protocol the vendor has, it can integrate with Knit.

Catch potential errors early on

Finally, integration management to ensure that all your CRM APIs are healthy is well taken care of by a unified CRM API. 

• A unified CRM API like Knit provides access to a detailed Logs, Issues, Integrated Accounts and Syncs page for all integrations to monitor and track them along with possible RCA and solutions. This empowers your CX team to solve customer issues immediately without involving the tech team.
• Furthermore, it enables you to track every API call, data sync, etc. as well as the status of webhooks registered for real time visibility in errors — ensuring that you are always on top of your data and minimizes the chances of any errors.  

Constant monitoring and on demand customer support

Finally, when you are using a unified API, you don’t have to deal with multiple vendors, endpoints, etc. Rather, the heavy lifting is done by the unified CRM API provider. 

For instance, with Knit, you can access 24/7 support to securely manage your integrations. It also provides detailed documentation, links and easy to understand product walkthroughs for your developers and end users to ensure a smooth integration process.

Get started with unified CRM API

If you are looking to integrate multiple CRM APIs with your product, get your Knit API keys and see unified API in action. (Getting started with Knit is completely free)

You can also talk to one of our experts to see how you can customize Knit to solve your specific integration challenges.

Interview scheduling companies play an integral role in helping their partner organizations hire the right talent by streamlining the candidate communication and end-to-end interview process. 

The first step towards smooth interviews is getting a pool of candidates to choose from. Here, most companies rely on ATS or Application Tracking Systems to pull in candidate and job data. 

While building and maintaining all the ATS integrations is a tedious and resource-intensive process, it can be made simpler and faster with unified ATS APIs. We will get to that, first let’s look at all the use cases you can enable with ATS integrations.

ATS integration in interview scheduling workflow

Let’s quickly look at how ATS APIs can streamline the interview scheduling workflow. 

Step I: Integration setup

Essentially, the first step is to get the ATS integration in place leveraging popular ATS APIs. As an interview scheduling company, you can choose the appropriate approach to ATS integration via in-house integration building, embedded iPaaS, unified API or workflow automation tools. 

Read: Build vs Buy: Best way to build product integrations

Step II: Data synchronization

Once the integration setup is complete, data synchronization regarding the job requisition, interview schedule, candidate information can be commenced. 

This will ensure that whenever data from a new candidate is entered in the ATS, the interview scheduling company gets an automated alert to initiate the next steps to set up the interview and following processes. 

The right ATS integration approach will ensure that the interview scheduling company receives new candidate alerts automatically, without pushing for updates. 

Step III: Calendar and interview slot coordination

ATS APIs can help interview scheduling companies with real-time calendar and interview slot coordination. Once the applicant profile screening is complete and the profile has been shortlisted in the ATS, the interview scheduling company can automatically capture this update directly from the ATS app and identify potential slots for the interview based on the calendar availability for the candidate and the interviewer. 

Step IV: Candidate communication 

Once the interview slot has been decided, the interview scheduling company can extract ATS API data to automate interview invitations and reminders and even personalize candidate communication as per the role, position and context. 

The same information about the communication will be automatically updated in the ATS to ensure that the hiring organization using the API has a clear picture of the candidate status. 

Step V: Real time candidate status update

As soon as the interview is complete, the ATS API enables the interview scheduling company to update candidate status in real time. 

For instance, Knit WRITE APIs enable you to update candidate status about whether or not the candidate appeared for the interview, status in the interview process (selected, rejected, moved to next round, add notes etc.). See docs

This information is then reflected in real time in the ATS to help the HR and hiring managers understand where they stand for that particular position and whether they need to source more applications. 

Step VI: Interview feedback and evaluation

In addition to the status update, the ATS integration also enables the interview scheduling company to provide a detailed feedback and evaluation of the interview which can be captured directly in the ATS. 

In case the hiring organization prefers, they can share it with the candidate or keep it in their ATS records for future reference. 

Step VII: HR analytics 

Finally, the ATS integration can help interview scheduling companies  capture key hiring metrics and facilitate HR analytics. 

For instance, the integration can help capture the metrics including Application-to-Interview Conversion Rate, Interview Scheduling Efficiency, Interview-to-Hire Ratio, Time-to-Fill (TTF), Time-to-Hire (TTH), Offer Acceptance Rate, etc. 

Data from these metrics can help identify the gaps in the hiring process and facilitate better outcomes. 

ATS integration challenges

While scaling ATS integrations is crucial for any interview scheduling companies to close more deals, building and maintaining ATS integrations is not easy. Here’s why most companies struggle with scaling their integration efforts:

1. Data compatibility issues 

First, different ATS applications use different data fields, models and nuances, which may or may not be compatible with other ATS or even with the data models being used by the interview scheduling company. 

This can lead to data compatibility issues leading to larger bandwidth requirements to understand and use different ATS APIs, with the danger of data corruption as well. 

2. Candidate data sensitivity during transfer

Second, since both sides of the data transfer contain sensitive candidate information, the ATS integration must have robust security measures for authorization and authentication as well as others like rate limiting etc. to prevent unauthorized access or DDoS attacks, among others. 

With policies like GDPR and most recently the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) law (in India), any data misuse can lead to serious repercussions, especially because ATS and hiring processes use a lot of personal candidate data. 

3. Engineering and maintenance costs with increasing number of ATS being used

Third, as you scale and onboard more customers, you will be bound to further ATS integrations to their preferred ATS application. 

The engineering and maintenance costs associated with adding more ATS applications can be huge and difficult to maintain in-house. Each integration can cost an average 10K USD or 3 months of developer time just to build and deploy.

This can dilute your engineering team’s bandwidth from focusing on the core product. Scalability with the growing number of ATS applications to be added can pose a resource and cost challenge. 

4. Vendor (ATS) coordination and cooperation

In addition to the engineering costs, scaling ATS integrations also comes with additional coordination and cooperation with the ATS vendors. 

When you are building and managing ATS integrations in-house you have to take care of coordinating with every ATS vendor in case of any error or challenge in data transfer, security, etc. This can be highly time consuming and counter productive. 

5. Limited real time update capabilities

Next, if you use a polling infrastructure to power your ATS integration, you will need to take care of the heavy lifting of polling data from ATS applications, dealing with different API calls and rate limits. 

Invariably, this will prevent you from accessing data in real time as soon as there is any update in candidate information or a new candidate is onboarded to the system. This can lead to delays in interview scheduling and missed opportunities. 

How  interview scheduling companies can 10X their growth with unified ATS API

While there are certain operational challenges to using ATS integrations, unified APIs like Knit, can help address all such challenges and even achieve 10X growth. 

Centralized data management with one data model 

Knit periodically pulls data from all connected ATS platforms and processes the data coming from different platforms in different formats to convert them to one unified data model. 

The heavy lifting of pulling data from various ATS apps, dealing with different API calls, rate limits, formats etc are completely taken care of by Knit. 

Real-time data sync for higher productivity

Depending on the infrastructure used, your data sync frequencies can be set. A webhook driven architecture will facilitate real time data sync without requiring you to initiate polling. 

For instance, Knit, having a 100% event-driven webhook architecture, refreshes data in real time by periodically pulling data from all connected ATS platforms and processes the data coming from different platforms in different formats to convert them to our unified model. As a result, you won’t have to manage any polling infrastructure on your end or worry about missing any critical data update.

Faster time to market with quick deployment

Adding an ATS integration can take anywhere from a few weeks to several months. But, with a unified API, you can add multiple ATS integrations in as little as one day. 

This quick deployment ensures that you are able to leverage the benefits of ATS integration faster. 

Easy scalability to integrate with multiple ATS APIs in one go

Not only is deployment faster with unified API, it also supports accelerated and unlimited scalability. You can connect with various ATS applications in one go. 

For example, as an interview scheduling company, you can simply embed the Knit’s UI component in your frontend to get access to the  full catalog of 20+ ATS applications, regardless of the auth type, credentials, nuances for the application. 

All credential management, verification, token generations become the responsibility of Knit in this case.

Not only that, each time a new app is integrated to the Knit’s ATS API category, you get immediate access and sync capabilities with the new app without writing a single line of code. Get your Knit unified ATS API key now! (Start for free)

Better reporting and analytics to manage integrations seamlessly

Reporting and analytics with a unified API like Knit can help facilitate high customer satisfaction. 

For instance, Knit allows interview scheduling companies to monitor and manage the health of all ATS  integrations for each connected customer using a detailed Logs, Issues, Integrated Accounts and Syncs page. 

Companies can keep track of all API calls, data syncs and requests made by users as well as status of each webhook registered on a single dashboard. 

Enhanced security 

A unified API helps interview scheduling companies facilitate better security and data privacy. 

For instance, Knit fosters double encryption for data—when it is at rest as well as when it is in transit.

At the same time, most unified APIs comply with the key security protocols such as HIPAA, SOC2, GDPR etc and ensure constant monitoring with top intrusion detection systems. A unified API generally supports all forms of authentication like OAuth, API key or a username-password based authentication. 

Note: As a unified API, Knit goes a step further to promote end user security. Knit is the only unified API which considers your data sacrosanct and doesn’t store a copy of your data. The syncs happen over a 100% webhook-based architecture for enhanced data security. Furthermore, an additional layer of application security protects and prevents all PII from any security vulnerabilities. Learn more

Expand market reach and serve more customers

By providing instant ATS integration with multiple ATS applications, interview scheduling companies can leverage unified APIs to expand their market reach and acquire new customers.

They no longer have to worry about missed opportunities or make their prospects wait till they are able to build new ATS integrations. 

This allows interview scheduling companies to close deals faster and serve a higher number of customers, leading to increased revenue and greater profitability. 

What else do you get with Knit Unified API?

Interview scheduling companies using Knit as their unified API for ATS integration automatically retrieve new applications from all connected ATS platforms. 

Knit pulls the data and sends the relevant data to the interview scheduling tool, reducing the need for making API calls or manually starting data syncs. Owing to the webhooks architecture, Knit ensures high scalability and delivery, irrespective of the data load. 

You control when data syncs happen

While Knit supports real time data sync, it also allows users to control when syncs happen, which can be set by the CX team directly from the dashboard, without involving engineering resources. 

Furthermore, filters can be set on the information being retrieved from the source system to only consume the relevant data to save network cost and storage cost.

Get started with ATS APIs

Staying on top of ATS integrations can be overwhelming and time consuming due to the sheer number of the ATS APIs available in the market today. 

Knit helps you integrate with 30+ ATS and HR applications with a single unified API. Plus, we have built Knit with a developer friendly setup which requires minimal coding and maximum onboarding support. 

If you want to know more about Knit, talk to one of our experts or try our unified ATS API yourself, today. (Getting started is completely free)

August was eventful for us. We added some cool new features, updated some old ones and integrated with more apps. Here's a sneak peek at what's new at Knit:

1. Go beyond the common data model

Common data models can sometimes be limiting. Whenever you are looking to get specific data that is not included in Knit’s common data model, you can use our new feature: Passthrough Requests.

It enables you to make API calls directly to any of the apps supported by Knit. These API calls are directly sent to the integration’s API. And the best part? All the authentication and authorization processes are taken care of by Knit.

Learn more  

2. Fetch Raw Values of source data

Along with fetching data beyond common data models, now, after each sync, you will also get data in its source format i.e. data in each integration’s specific API format instead of Knit’s unified format. 

If your integrated apps allow setting custom values for specific types of data, this feature will help you capture that raw data value.

Learn more

3. Program your ad-hoc syncs

We have now added a new API to Knit that enables you to start ad-hoc data syncs programmatically instead of having to do it manually every time.

If you have a lot of integrated accounts, this simple automation will significantly reduce your integration maintenance time.

See Docs

4. New HRIS integrations

We have recently added two new HRIS apps to our catalog: UKG Pro and Sage HRIS. With that, our HR integration portfolio (HRIS, Payroll, Directory and ATS) is now 30 apps strong.

Check full catalog

Have any specific integration requests? Please reach out to us here. We would be happy to  prioritize your needs. 

5. Get advanced employee data

We have updated our employee data models for HRIS with new additions. Now, for each employee, you can fetch identification data along with profile pictures and complete bank account details (e.g. IFSC and branch code etc.)

See more

What’s Next?

The Knit team is working super hard to bring you some cool new features to further streamline your integration processes. Data filters and multiple user management  are the two of the much awaited updates. Stay tuned for our next email for more info on this.

Meanwhile, got any query or request about Knit? Please feel free to contact us

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In today's SaaS business landscape, to remain competitive, a product must have seamless integration capabilities with the rest of the tech stack of the customer. 

In fact, limited integration capabilities is known as one of the leading causes of customer churn. 

However, building integrations from scratch is a time-consuming and resource-intensive process for a SaaS business. It often takes focus away from the core product.

As a result, SaaS leaders are always on the lookout for the most effective integration approach. With the emergence of off-the-shelf tools and solutions, businesses can now automate integrations and scale their integration strategy with minimum effort.

In this article, we will discuss the pros and cons of two most popular integration approaches: Unified APIs and Workflow Automation tools and provide you with clear instructions to choose the approach that suits your specific product integration strategy. (We also have a checklist for you to quickly assess your need for the perfect integration approach in this article. Keep reading)

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We will get to the comparison in a bit, but first let’s assess your integration needs. 

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Types of product integrations

In order to effectively address customer-facing integration needs, it is crucial to consider the various types of product integrations available. These types can vary in terms of scope and maintenance required, depending on specific integration requirements. 

To gain a comprehensive understanding of product integrations, it is important to focus on two key aspects. 

• Firstly, identifying the applications that need to be integrated to determine the scope of the integration. 
• Secondly, considering the number of integrations that will need to be regularly managed as time progresses.

Based on these considerations, you can gauge whether or not you will be able to take care of your integration needs in-house. 

Read: To Build or To Buy: The practical answer to your product integration questions

1) Internal integrations

When working on any product, it is often beneficial to connect it with an internal system or third-party software to simplify your work processes. This requires integrating two platforms exclusively for internal use. 

For example, you may want to integrate a project management tool with your product to accelerate the development lifecycle and ensure automatic updates in the PM tool to reflect changes and progress.

In this scenario, the use case is highly specific and limited to internal execution within your team. Typically, your in-house engineering team will focus on building this integration, which can be further enhanced by other teams who reap its benefits. Overall, internal integrations are highly distinct and customizable to cater to individual organizational needs.

2) Occasional customer-facing integrations

Another type of integrations that organizations encounter are occasional customer-facing integrations, which are not implemented at scale. Occasional customer-facing integrations are typically infrequent and arise as specific requests from customers.

In these cases, customers may have specific software applications that they regularly use and require integration with your platform for a seamless flow of data and automated syncing. For example, a particular customer may request integration of Jira with your product, with highly specific requirements and needs.

In these situations, the integration can be facilitated by the customer's engineering team, third-party vendors, or other external platforms. The resulting integration output is highly tailored and may vary for each organization, even if the demand for the same integration exists. This customization ensures that the integration reflects the structures and workflows unique to each customer's organizational needs. 

3) Scalable customer-facing integrations

Finally, there will be certain integrations that all your customers will need. These are essential functionalities required to power their organizational operation. 

Instead of being use case or platform specific, scalable or standardized customer facing integrations are more generic in nature. For instance, you want all your customers to be able to connect the HRMS platform of their choice to your product for seamless HR management. 

These integrations need to be built and maintained by your team, i.e. essentially, fall under your purview. You can either offer these integrations as a part of the subscription cost that your customers pay for your software or as add-ons at an extra cost. Offering such integrations is important to gain a competitive edge and even explore a new monetization model for your platform. 

Standardizing the most common integrations is extremely helpful to provide your customers with a seamless experience. 

Different approach to integrations

While companies can always build integrations in-house, it’s not always the most efficient way. That’s where plug-and-play platforms like unified APIs can help. Let’s look at the top approaches to leveraging integrations. 

1) In-house integration development and maintenance

Undoubtedly, the most obvious way of integrating products with your software is to build integrations in-house. Put simply, here your engineering team builds, manages and maintains the integrations. 

Building integrations in-house comes with a lot of control and power to customize how the integration should operate, feel and overall create a seamless experience. However, this do-it-yourself approach is extremely resource intensive, both in terms of budgets and engineering bandwidth. 

Building just integration can take a couple of months of tech bandwidth and $10-15k worth of resources. Integration building from scratch offers high customization, but at a great cost, putting scalability into question. 

2) Workflow automation 

Workflow automation tools, as the name suggests, facilitate product integration by automating workflow with specific triggers. These are mostly low code tools which can be connected with specific products by engineering teams for integration with third party software or platforms. 

A classic example is connecting a particular CRM with your product to be used by the end user. Here, the CRM of their choice can be integrated with your product following an event driven workflow architecture. 

Data transfer, marketing automation, HR, sales and operations, etc. are some of the top use cases where workflow automation tools can help companies with product integrations, without having to build these integrations from scratch. 

3) Unified API / API Aggregators

Finally, the third approach to building and maintaining product integrations is to leverage a Unified API. Any product that you wish to integrate with comes with an API which facilitates connection and data sync. 

A unified API normalizes data from different applications within a software category and transfers it to your application in real time. Here, data from all applications from a specific category like CRM, HRMS, Payroll, ATS, etc. is normalized into a common data model which your product understands and can offer to your end customers. To learn more about how unified APIs work, read this

By allowing companies to integrate with hundreds of integrations overnight (instead of months), a unified API enables them to scale integration offerings within a category faster and in a seamless manner. 

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Now that you have an understanding of the different types of integrations and approaches, let’s understand which approach is best for you, depending on your scope and needs. 

When to use Unified API

If you want scalable and standardized integrations, choosing a unified API is a sensible option. Here are the top reasons why unified API is ideal for standardized customer-facing integrations: 

• They cover almost all integrations within a particular category or type. This suggests that you can integrate with all CRM platforms, including Salesforce, Zoho, etc using just one unified CRM API for example. (Check out Knit’s integration catalog across ATS, HRIS, Payroll. CRM and Accounting software)
• Integration code is universal. You just need to integrate the unified API code into your application for a particular category once. Even when new apps are added within the unified API category, you automatically get access to and start syncing data with the new app without writing any additional line of code. This means that you build once and scale perpetually. 
• It is extremely developer friendly and doesn’t require a lot of technical expertise or engineering bandwidth to understand and execute. 
• You can retain a great degree of control. The integration backend can be managed by your engineering team, keeping control of transfer logic and also facilitating high levels of security. 
• The data you receive into your product is normalized and can be directly synched without the need for any processing or transformation. (Moreover, unified APIs like Knit also allow you to map any custom data field from a specific integration that’s not included in the standardized model. Learn more)
• Most unified APIs completely take care of integration maintenance once it is built. It means, your tech team need not worry about addressing ongoing customer issues at all. 

However, if you want only one-off integrations, with a very high level of customization, using a unified API might not be the ideal choice. 

Therefore, choose a unified API if you want:

• To create standardized customer-facing integrations
• High levels of data normalization and standardization
• Scalable integrations that can be replicated across customers
• Ability to add more integrations with minimal resource requirements
• To control the backend code and drive customizations to a certain extent 
• A native integration experience and feel and adherence to your brand guidelines

When to use Workflow Automation

Depending on the nature of your organization and product offerings, you might need integrations which are simple, external and needed to enable specific workflows triggered by some predetermined events. 

In such a case, workflow automation tools are quite useful as an integration approach. Some of the top benefits of using workflow automation to power your integration journey are as follows. 

• Negligible engineering expertise needed. Workflow automation tools are created in a drag and drop manner, facilitating low-code or no- code functionalities. Event triggers are all you need to facilitate data sync from integrations. 
• They come with pre-built connectors. This means that you can easily get started with pre-established workflows and integration patterns between different applications. 
• You can easily outsource integration or hand it over to teams beyond your core engineering team as integration using workflow automation doesn't require knowledge about your core product, etc. 

However, the low-code functionality comes with a disadvantage of lack of developer friendliness and incidence of errors. At the same time, data normalization is a big challenge for applications even within the same category. 

The presence of different APIs across applications necessitates the need to develop customized workflows. Invariably, this custom workflow need adds to the cost of using workflow automation when scaling integration. As API requests increase, workflow automation integration turns out to be extremely expensive. 

Therefore, choose workflow automation if you want:

• A low code integration solution
• One-off customer facing integration or integrations for internal use
• Limited functionalities for data normalization
• Off-the rack workflows and integration syncs

How to choose the right tool for your integration strategy?

In the previous section, we explored different scenarios for building product integrations and discussed the recommended approaches for each. However, selecting the appropriate approach requires careful consideration of various factors. 

In this section, we will provide you with a list of key factors to consider and essential questions to ask in order to make an informed choice between workflow automation tools and unified APIs.

1) Integration complexity

You need to gauge how complex the integration will be. Generally, standardized integrations which are customer facing and need to be scaled, will be more complex. Whereas, internal or one-off customer facing integrations will be less complex. 

Try to answer the following questions:

• How complex is your integration need?
• Do you want to connect with multiple applications within a category or only one?
• How much tech bandwidth do you need to spend on complex data transformation or normalization?

Depending on the nature and scope of complexity, you can choose your integration approach. More complex integrations, which need scale and volume, should be achieved through a unified API approach. 

2) Customization requirements

Next, you must gauge the level of customizations you need. Depending on the expectations of your customers, your integrations might be standardized, or require a high amount of customizations. 

If you need an internal integration, chances are high that you will need a great degree of customization. You may want to check on:

• What is the level of customization you need for your integrations?
• Do your customers need unique workflows in integrations? 

If you need to customize your integrations for specific workflows tailored to your individual customers, workflow automation tools will be a better choice.

Note: At Knit, we are working on customized cases with our unified API partners every day. If you have a niche use case or special integration need, feel free to contact us. Get in touch

3) Scalability and growth

It is extremely important to understand your current and expected integration needs. 

Internally, you might need a limited number of integrations, or if you have a very limited number of customers, you will only need one-off customer facing integrations. 

However, if you wish to scale the use of your product and stay ahead of competition, you will need to offer more integrations as you grow. Even within a category, you will have to offer multiple integrations. 

For instance, some of your customers might use Salesforce as CRM, but others might be using Zoho CRM. Invariably, you need to integrate both the CRM with your product. Thus, you must gauge:

• How many integrations do you need currently and what is the scale of growth expected?
• Do you need more than a few integrations or applications within the same category?
• How integral is integration scalability to your business or product growth?

If scaling integrations faster is your priority, unified APIs are the best choice for you.

4)Technical expertise available

Your choice of the right integration approach will also depend on the technical expertise available. 

You need to make sure that all of your engineering bandwidth is not spent only on building and maintaining integrations. At the same time, the integrations should be developer friendly and resilient to errors. 

Try to check:

• How much bandwidth does your engineering team have to dedicate to integrations, without diverting focus from core product? 
• Has your team worked with a particular integration approach in the past?
• Will your team need additional training to align well with the chosen integration approach?

It is important that not all your technical expertise is spent on integrations. An ideal integration approach will ensure that other team members beyond core engineering are also able to take care of a few action items. 

5) Turnaround time and budgets

You need to gauge how much budget you have to ensure that you don’t overshoot and stay cost effective. At the same time, you might want to explore different integration approaches depending on the time criticality. 

Time and budget critical integrations can be accomplished via unified API or workflow automation. It is important to take a stock of:

• What is the available budget you have for integration building and maintenance?
• How many integrations do you seek to accomplish with those budgets?
• What are the expected timelines for the integrations to be implemented?

It is important to undertake a cost benefit analysis based on the cost and number of integrations. 

For instance, a unified API might not be an ideal choice if you only need one integration. However, if you plan to scale the number of integrations, especially in the same category, then this approach will turn out to be most cost effective. The same is also true from a time investment perspective. 

6) Ecosystem support

When you go for an external integration approach like workflow automation or unified APIs, beyond in-house development or DIY, it is important to understand the ecosystem support available. 

If you only get initial set up support from your integration provider/ vendor, you will find your engineering team extremely stretched for maintenance and management. 

At the same time, lack of adequate resources and documentation will prevent your teams from learning about the integration to provide the right support. Therefore, it is ideal to get an understanding of:

• What is the support being offered by your integration partner?
• What are the capabilities available within your team to facilitate the integration process?
• Will the integration partner provide comprehensive documentation and resources for knowledge sharing?
• What is the quality of pre-built connectors/ API that are being provided?

7) Future outlook and considerations

Finally, integrations are generally an ongoing relationship and not a one-off engagement. The bigger your business grows, the higher will be your integration needs both to close more deals as well as to reduce customer churn.

Therefore, you need to focus on the future considerations and outlook. The future considerations need to take into account your scale up plan, potential lock-in, changing needs, etc. Overall, some of the questions you can consider are:

• How well will your integration approach support your scale up plan?
• Will the integration approach seamlessly adapt to the changing integration landscape?
• Are there lock-ins or commitments that come along with any particular approach?

Understanding these nuances will help you create a long-term plan for your integrations. 

Wrapping up: TL:DR

When building integrations, it is best to understand your use case or type of integrations that you seek to implement before choosing the ideal product integration approach. While there are numerous considerations you must keep in mind, here are a few quick hacks.

• Choose workflow automation for one-off customer facing integrations where you need a low-code editor with pre-built connectors. 
• On the other hand, go for a unified API approach if you want to create standardized customer-facing integrations which you can scale.

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Knit unified API helps you connect with multiple applications within the CRM, HRIS, ATS, Accounting, category in one go with just one API. Talk to one of our experts to explore your use case options or try our API for free

Any company that undertakes financial data keeping and transactions relies on accounting software to prevent inaccuracies, facilitate automation and overall streamline all aspects of the financial ecosystem. Research shows that 58% of businesses used accounting software to meet the needs of their clients. 

In this article, we will uncover how SaaS providers can easily integrate with different accounting APIs along with key accounting concepts that developers must know to work with accounting data fields. 

What are accounting APIs?

Different accounting functions like payroll, reimbursements, payments, expense/ invoice management, etc. have different software for businesses to use. Each of these accounting software comes with an API, what is collectively called accounting APIs. 

Essentially, accounting APIs help companies integrate different accounting software with their systems of function to ensure smooth transfer of data from one application to the other.

Accounting APIs facilitate a great degree of automation when it comes to financial operations and help companies with informed decision making.      

Types if accounting APIs

Based on different financial functions, there are different accounting APIs that companies use. Each accounting API seeks to address specific needs and functionalities. 

1. General ledger APIs

As the name suggests, general ledger APIs provide all encompassing financial functionalities to companies. They help companies consolidate all financial data about income, expenses, liabilities, assets, etc. in one place. 

Overall, with general ledger APIs, companies can get a macro view of their financial health and make decisions accordingly. General ledger APIs tend to provide users with very granular information.  

Top general ledger APIs: QuickBooks API, Xero API, Sage Intacct API

2. Invoice and billing APIs

Invoicing and billing APIs take care of the payments side of the accounting APIs. For any company, there are a plethora of invoices that are received and need to be processed. There are almost an equal or maybe more volume of bills which are sent. 

Invoicing and billing APIs can help companies create, send and track invoices by automating a lot of functions in the way. They enable users to leverage API calls to carry out different functions associated with invoicing and billing. 

Top invoicing and billing APIs: FreshBooks API, QuickBooks Online Invoicing API, Xero Invoicing API, ZohoBooks API

3. Payroll APIs

This type of accounting APIs enable companies to seamlessly manage employee payrolls and ensure that their employees are paid on time, correctly. They integrate with payroll systems and automate a series of tasks associated with salary disbursement. 

Integration with payroll APIs can enable users to seamlessly get employee information from different company used software, create payroll for the month, manage deductions, based on contract and even create payslips. 

Top payroll APIs: ZohoPeople API, RazorpayX API, UKG Pro API, BambooHR API 

4. Expense management APIs

Each business has a set of expenses that are carried out on a regular basis. As the company scales, the expenses and the management for the same balloons up. Expense management APIs seek to automate the process of recording, tracking, categorizing expenses. 

Furthermore, they integrate all expense related data with other accounting APIs to facilitate smooth transactions. Such tools are especially important from a reimbursement tracking perspective as well. 

Top expense management APIs: Zoho Expense API, SAP Concur API, Quickbooks Online API

5. Reporting and analytics APIs

These APIs integrate with different accounting software to create customized and logic driven reports of financial accounts and provide insights based on the data captured. 

Their main objective is to help gauge the company's financial performance and map it against the goals set initially. 

Top reporting and analytics APIs: QuickBooks Online Reports API, Xero Reports API

6. Payment gateway APIs

Another set of accounting APIs are payment gateway APIs. These APIs help companies integrate different APIs in their applications, website or accounting systems for payment related functionalities. 

Payment gateway APIs are extremely important to manage online transactions and allow companies to accept payment from customers/ others via different payment methods including credit/ debit cards, netbanking, UPI, etc. 

Top payment gateway APIs: PayPal API, PayU API, Stripe API

7. Tax calculation APIs

Since businesses are bound by their local tax regimes, tax calculation APIs make the entire process more streamlined. They integrate with the company’s accounting software and help with calculating tax rates, provide calculation logic and automate various tax-related processes. 

Top tax calculation APIs: Avalara API, TaxJar API, Stripe API

Accounting API key concepts

When using accounting APIs, it is important for developers to understand some of the key concepts or data schemas that you will be using. Knowledge of these concepts will help you make the right API calls and ensure seamless access and exchange of data. 

Learn more about accounting data models here. 

Account

Essentially, each accounting system has different accounts associated with it. These can be expense accounts, payments accounts, bank accounts, etc. Important data or information related to each account includes a unique identifier, name of the account, type or categorization, balance, transaction model, etc. See docs

Journal Entry

Whenever you record any information in the accounting system, it is referred to as an entry. Each entry is generally associated with an account. An entry includes the entry ID, date, detailed description and line items to support the same. See docs 

Invoice

An invoice is a document which records details about a service provided or received by a company. It includes information about the invoice ID, invoice number (in case a sequential number is provided), customer details, line items in the invoice, total payable amount, taxes, discounts, issue date, due date, quantity, etc. See docs

Payment

Related to invoice is the payment which focuses on the monetary transaction following an invoice generation. This data schema contains information like payment ID, payment date, payment method, payment amount, related invoice ID, etc. See docs

Contact

This refers to an individual or organization that is associated with the accounting system, usually a customer or a vendor. The data carried here contains contact ID, address and contact details, billing address, payment terms and conditions, etc. See docs

Report

A financial report as a key data concept consolidates all data about the financial performance of the company. Key data schemas within the same include report ID, report date, account balances, time period, data metrics, etc. 

Transaction

A transaction is a key concept which records any transfer of money in the form of debit or credit. It contains data schemas like transaction ID, transaction date, value of transaction, type (debit or credit), description, etc. For most organizations, transaction details are included in the Entry / Journal Entry data schema.

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While these key concepts and data schemas are more generic in nature, each type of accounting API discussed above will have its own sets of data concepts associated with it, like (illustrative and non exhaustive):

Payroll API key concepts

• Employee with information like employee ID, name, contact details, employment status, pay rate, tax withholding information, and other relevant employee details
• Payroll run focused on payroll run ID, start date, end date, payroll adjustments or special considerations
• Paycheck with paycheck ID, employee details, payment amount, payment date, tax deductions, net pay, etc.
• Time and attendance with date, employee ID, hours worked, leave type, and any associated calculations or rules, etc. 

See our developer documentation for more details on payroll APIs

Expense management API key concepts

• Expense report with report ID, submitter details, submission date, status, and associated expenses.
• Expense category with data schemas on category ID, name, etc. 
• Expense item with item ID, expense date, amount, currency, vendor details, expense description, supporting documentation
• Receipt with fields like receipt ID, file attachments, etc. 

Use Cases of Accounting APIs

Data inputs and functionalities from accounting APIs can help businesses automate many financial tasks and facilitate greater efficiency across the spectrum. 

1. Cash flow management

With data from accounting APIs, companies can easily keep real time track of expenses and potential incomes to manage their cash flows better. Real time visibility into projected expenses and cash shortages can help prevent overspending and facilitate better cash management. 

This way businesses can ensure sufficient working capital in the bank and maintain liquidity, while managing investments and other liabilities and assets. 

For instance, healthcare companies can use accounting APIs to automate tracking of healthcare supplies and medicines and create projected expenses to fulfill inventory. 

2. Budgeting and forecasting

Data from accounting APIs can help companies predict spending and expense patterns to create accurate and realistic budgets and financial forecasting for subsequent years. Historical data can enable companies to better optimize expenses and allocate greater budgets to revenue generating areas. 

3. Regulatory compliances

Any company that operates under any law is likely to undergo financial audits from time to time. Accounting APIs ensures that companies have structured and accurate data on their financial health in real time. 

This helps track all financial transactions and be prepared for any audit/ generate audit trails seamlessly. Invariably, accounting APIs, thus, help businesses adhere to regulatory compliances and facilitate transparency and accountability. 

For instance, non profit organizations can use accounting APIs to manage their grants and donations and adhere to the local compliances, promote transparency and prevent any regulatory challenges. 

4. Integration with third party applications 

Accounting APIs can help businesses integrate their accounting software with other applications they use including CRM, ERP, etc. This can automate and facilitate multiple processes without the need for manual data entry. 

For instance, companies can integrate accounting APIs with their HRMS platform for easy information transfer on payslips and payroll updates. Similarly, manufacturing companies can integrate their accounting APIs with ERP and procurement systems for automated invoice processing, payments, etc. 

5. Timely invoicing and payments

Accounting APIs can help companies send automated invoices to customers on a timely basis and integration with payment gateway APIs can enable seamless and faster transactions. Especially, when it comes to subscription based services, accounting APIs can facilitate accurate calculation of recurring billing. 

Most subscription based companies can leverage accounting APIs to predict future revenues and integrate with other applications to handle subscription upgrades and downgrades, which can be automatically captured in subsequent billings. 

6. Vendor and supplier management

A major part of accurate accounting is managing vendors and suppliers. With accounting APIs, companies can easily integrate their procurement systems to automate recording of vendor invoices, track expenses, facilitate timely payments, etc. 

Furthermore, they can be integrated into the enterprise workflow for approval mechanisms, communication and payment scheduling. 

Challenges with Accounting API integration

Undoubtedly, there are several ways in which accounting API integration can help power high levels of efficiency and automation for companies. However, there are a few challenges and risks that can make accounting API integration overwhelming for developers.

Data security and privacy

Accounting applications carry sensitive financial information and are prone to hacking/ unauthorized access during transfer by threats like man in the middle attacks. A key challenge with accounting API integration is to ensure encryption and authentication. 

At the same time, even within the organization, not everyone needs access to all financial information, thus, adding a layer of authorization is important, which can be challenging.

Note: If you are looking for a secure way to scale your accounting integrations, check our Security page to see how Knit is emerging as the most secure unified API platform available in the market today

Data mapping

With different accounting APIs in the market for different functionalities, chances are that fields across the applications are diverse. In such a situation, mapping data for transfer becomes difficult. Inaccurate data mapping can lead to loss of critical financial information during transfer, leading to monetary losses.

API updates and maintenance

Accounting APIs undergo several changes as new features are added and older ones become irrelevant. There can be changes in endpoints, API versions, etc. which require constant monitoring and updating to keep the API working properly. 

At the same time, there can be deprecated features which are not removed, which adds to security challenges. Thus, accounting API maintenance can be a challenge for companies that don’t have large in-house engineering teams or don’t want to spend a lot on API management. 

Legacy system challenges

Most accounting information currently is stored in legacy systems for companies. The new-age accounting APIs differ in data formats, schemas, etc. This can lead to compatibility issues. 

Most legacy systems don’t have APIs and may require additional coding to be integrated with the new accounting APIs. 

Error handling and data consistency

As mentioned, errors in financial data transfer, which is the main objective of using accounting APIs, can lead to heavy financial losses for companies. Thus, constant monitoring, logging and real time error resolution is a challenge that comes with accounting API management and scalability. 

At the same time, as the volume of accounting requests increases, implementing practices like rate limiting and throttle can be challenging if accounting APIs are managed in-house.  

Limited technical knowledge

If you are building and managing your accounting API integration in-house, you will need comprehensive knowledge of different financial concepts, tax knowledge, local compliances, etc. Limited technical knowledge is, thus, another challenge that comes along with accounting APIs. 

At the same time, accounting API integration and transfer of financial data requires adherence of GDPR, GAAS and other regulatory laws, any breach of which can lead to legal repercussions. 

Unified Accounting API: Way Forward

While there might be roadblocks on the way, it is safe to say that accounting APIs have significant use cases across industries. Thus, their implementation and use cannot be negated.

Unified Accounting APIs help businesses connect with multiple accounting software in one go using just one API. Thus, reducing integration shipping time by as much as 80%. 

However, there are some questions you must consider while choosing the right unified accounting API provider for your company. 

Q1. What are the considerations for data privacy and security?

As mentioned, when it comes to accounting APIs, data privacy and security is of utmost importance. Having a safe way to integrate and sync data with accounting software can lead to gaining customer confidence and higher retention rates. 

Since most of the numbers are confidential, it is important that your unified API provider doesn’t access or store a copy of the data. 

In this case, choosing a unified API which has security embedded in the platform infrastructure can be beneficial. An events driven architecture ensures that the unified API doesn’t store a copy of your data, facilitating data privacy and security. 

Such unified API platforms work only with webhooks and the initial and delta data syncs are delivered via events, preventing the possibility of data storage. Learn more

Q2. Is data sync automatic?

A critical part of using APIs is data sync. When choosing a unified accounting API, you need to gauge whether data sync is automatic or needs an additional push. 

If you look closely, there are two types of unified APIs to choose from based on their architecture. Pull based APIs which need an additional polling infrastructure to make constant requests for data sync. 

On the other hand, there are Push based APIs which are events driven with webhooks. Put simply, you need to configure events that will trigger data sync and there will be data flow whenever the event occurs, without any additional push. 

A webhooks driven architecture without any polling infrastructure is definitely easier to maintain and leverage, and facilitate data sync in almost real time. 

Q3. What are the customization functionalities?

When you use a unified API, you want the look and interface feel to be as close as possible to your application. Irrespective of whether it is for internal or external use, interface familiarity leads to a better user experience, be it your end customers or internal employees. 

Thus, you need to check the auth component that is powering the unified API you choose and explore the degree of flexibility and customization it offers in terms of design and styling. 

Javascript SDK as the auth component generally offers greater flexibility and can ensure that your customers feel no friction of a different interface of design while using the unified API within your application. 

Q4. Does it support rate limiting?

Financial data transfer and accounting APIs are vulnerable to brute force attacks like DDoS. To prevent falling prey to such threats, it is important for the unified API to support robust rate limiting. 

Essentially, rate limiting restricts the number of API calls that can be made in a given time duration. Quotas and throttling are two key ways of achieving rate limiting. To prevent attacks, you must choose a unified API which facilitates rate limiting. 

Q5. Does it take care of integration management?

Finally, managing and maintaining integrations can be a challenge and your unified API provider must offer support to take care of the same. Here functionalities like deep RCA and resolution are important to not only identify which accounts were synced, but to also rerun syncs if needed.

The idea is that your unified API should be able to identify and address integration issues on its own. 

This will empower your CX team to troubleshoot errors by themselves and allow your engineering teams to focus more on enhancing product features and functionalities, rather than spending time on maintaining integrations.

Get started with accounting APIs

Knit Unified Accounting API is built to ensure maximum level of data protection while transferring sensitive financial data. Knit also provides a no-polling, webhooks-driven architecture to facilitate data transfer in real time. 

Talk to one of our experts to see how Knit fits into your specific use case. You can also reach out to us with a specific accounting API request. We are always looking to expand our API catalog. 

Or if you are ready to try it yourself, you can get your Knit Accounting API key today. Getting started is completely free