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With the rise of data-driven recruitment, it is imperative for each recruitment tool, including candidate sourcing and screening tools, to integrate with Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) for enabling centralized data management for end users. 

However, there are hundreds of ATS applications available in the market today. To integrate with each one of these applications with different ATS APIs is next to impossible. 

That is why more and more recruitment tools are looking for a better (and faster) way to scale their ATS integrations. Unified ATS APIs are one such cost-effective solution that can cut down your integration building and maintenance time by 80%. 

Before moving on to how companies can leverage unified ATS API to streamline candidate sourcing and screening, let’s look at the workflow and how ATS API helps. 

Candidate sourcing and screening workflow

Here’s a quick snapshot of the candidate sourcing and screening workflow: 

1) Job posting/ data entry from job boards

Posting job requirements/ details about open positions to create widespread outreach about the roles you are hiring for. 

2) Candidate sourcing from different platforms/ referrals

Collecting and fetching candidate profiles/ resumes from different platforms—job sites, social media, referrals—to create a pool of potential candidates for the open positions.

3) Resume parsing 

Taking out all relevant data—skills, relevant experience, expected salary, etc. —from a candidate’s resume and updating it based on the company’s requirement in a specific format.

4) Profile screening

Eliminating profiles which are not relevant for the role by mapping profiles to the job requirements.  

5) Background checks 

Conducting a preliminary check to ensure there are no immediate red flags. 

6) Assessment, testing, interviews

Setting up and administering assessments, setting up interviews to ensure role suitability and collating evaluation for final decision making. 

7) Selection 

Sharing feedback and evaluation, communicating decisions to the candidates and continuing the process in case the position doesn’t close. 

How ATS API helps streamline candidate sourcing and screening

Here are some of the top use cases of how ATS API can help streamline candidate sourcing and screening.

Centralized data management and communication

All candidate details from all job boards and portals can be automatically collected and stored at one centralized place for communication and processing and future leverage. 

Automated profile import

ATS APIs ensure real time, automated candidate profile import, reducing manual data entry errors and risk of duplication. 

Customize screening workflows 

ATS APIs can help automate screening workflows by automating resume parsing and screening as well as ensuring that once a step like background checks is complete, assessments and then interview set up are triggered automatically. 

Automated candidate updates within the ATS in real time

ATS APIs facilitate real time data sync and event-based triggers between different applications to ensure that all candidate information available with the company is always up to date and all application updates are captured ASAP.  

Candidate engagement data, insights and patterns using ATS data

ATS APIs help analyze and draw insights from ATS engagement data — like application rate, response to job postings, interview scheduling — to finetune future screening.

Integrations with assessment, interview scheduling and onboarding applications

ATS API can further integrate with other assessment, interview scheduling and onboarding applications enabling faster movement of candidates across different  recruitment stages. 

Personalized outreach based on historical ATS data

ATS API integrations can help companies with automated, personalized and targeted outreach and candidate communication to improve candidate engagement, improve hiring efficiency and facilitate better employer branding. 

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Undoubtedly, using ATS API integration can effectively streamline the candidate sourcing and screening process by automating several parts of the way. However, there are several roadblocks to integrating ATS APIs at scale because of which companies refrain from leveraging the benefits that come along. Try our ROI calculator to see how much building integrations in-house can he.

In the next section we will discuss how to solve the common challenges for SaaS products trying to scale and accelerate their ATS integration strategy.

Addressing challenges of ATS API integration with Unified API

Let's discuss how the roadblocks can be removed with unified ATS API: just one API for all ATS integrations. Learn more about unified APIs here

Challenge 1: Loss of data during data transformation 

When data is being exchanged between different ATS applications and your system, it needs to be normalized and transformed. Since the same details from different applications can have different fields and nuances, chances are if not normalized well, you will end up losing critical data which may not be mapped to specific fields between systems. 

This will hamper centralized data storage, initiate duplication and require manual mapping not to mention screening workflow disruption. At the same time, normalizing each data field from each different API requires developers to understand the nuances of each API. This is a time and resource intensive process and can take months of developer time.

How unified ATS API solves this: One data model to prevent data loss

Unified APIs like Knit help companies normalize different ATS data by mapping different data schemas from different applications into a single, unified data model for all ATS APIs. Data normalization takes place in real time and is almost 10X faster, enabling companies to save tech bandwidth and skip the complex processes that might lead to data loss due to poor mapping.

Bonus: Knit also offers an custom data fields for data that is not included in the unified model, but you may need for your specific use case. It also allows you to to request data directly from the source app via its Passthrough Request feature. Learn more

Challenge 2: Delayed recruitment due to inability of real-time sync and bulk transfers

Second, some ATS API integration has a polling infrastructure which requires recruiters to manually request candidate data from time to time. This lack of automated data updation in real time can lead to delayed sourcing and screening of applicants, delaying the entire recruitment process. This can negatively impact the efficiency that is expected from ATS integration. 

Furthermore, Most ATS platforms receive 1000s of applications in a matter of a few minutes. The data load for transfer can be exceptionally high at times, especially when a new role is posted or there is any update.

As your number of integrated platforms increases, managing such bulk data transfers efficiently as well as eliminating delays becomes a huge challenge for engineering teams with limited bandwidth

How unified ATS API solves this: Sync data in real-time irrespective of data load/ volume

Knit as a unified ATS API ensures that you don’t lose out on even one candidate application or be delayed in receiving them. To achieve this, Knit works on a  webhooks based system with event-based triggers. As soon as an event happens, data syncs automatically via webhooks. 

Read: How webhooks work and how to register one?

Knit manages all the heavy lifting of polling data from ATS apps, dealing with different API calls, rate limits, formats etc. It automatically retrieves new applications from all connected ATS platforms, eliminating the need to make API calls or manual data syncs for candidate sourcing and screening. 

At the same time, Knit comes with retry and resiliency guarantees to ensure that no application is missed irrespective of the data load. Thus, handling data at scale. 

This ensures that recruiters get access to all candidate data in real time to fill positions faster with automated alerts as and when new applications are retrieved for screening. 

Challenge 3: Compliance and candidate privacy concerns

Since the ATS and other connected platforms have access to sensitive data, protecting candidate data from attacks, ensuring constant monitoring and right permission/ access is crucial yet challenging to put in practice.

How unified ATS API solves this: Secure candidate data effectively

Knit unified ATS API enables companies to effectively secure the sensitive candidate data they have access to in multiple ways. 

• First, all data is doubly encrypted, both at rest and in transit. At the same time, all PII and user credentials are encrypted with an additional layer of application security. 

• Second, having an events-driven webhooks architecture, Knit is the only unified ATS API which does not store any copy of the customer data in its server. Thus, reducing changes of data misuse further. 

• Third, Knit is GDPR, SOC II and ISO27001 compliant to make sure all industry security standards are met. So, there’s one less thing for you to worry about.

Challenge 4: Long deployment duration and resource intensive maintenance

Finally, ATS API integration can be a long drawn process. It can take 2 weeks to 3 months and thousands of dollars to build integration with  just a single ATS provider. 

With different end points, data models, nuances, documentation etc. ATS API integration can be a long deployment project, diverting away engineering resources from core functions.

It’s not uncommon for companies to lose valuable deals due to this delay in setting up customer requested ATS integrations. 

Furthermore, the maintenance, documentation, monitoring as well as error handling further drains engineering bandwidth and resources. This can be a major deterrent for smaller companies that need to scale their integration stack to remain competitive.  

How unified ATS API solves this: Instant scalability

A unified ATS API like Knit allows you to connect with 30+ ATS platforms in one go helping you expand your integration stack overnight. 

All you have to do is embed Knit’s UI component into your frontend once. All heavy lifting of auth, endpoints, credential management, verification, token generations, etc. is then taken care of by Knit. 

Other benefits of using a Unified ATS API

Fortunately, companies can easily address the challenges mentioned above and streamline their candidate sourcing and screening process with a unified ATS API. Here are some of the top benefits you get with a unified ATS API:

Effective monitoring and logging for all APIs

Once you have scaled your integrations, it can be difficult to monitor the health of each integration and stay on top of user data and security threats. Unified API like Knit provides a detailed Logs and Issues dashboard i.e. a one page overview of all your integrations, webhooks and API calls. With smart filtering options for Logs and Issues,  Knit helps you get a quick glimpse of the API's status, extract historical data and take necessary action as needed.

Extensive range of Read and Write APIs

Along with Read APIs, Knit also provides a range of Write APIs for ATS integrations so that you can not only fetch data from the apps, you can also update the changes — updating candidate’s stage, rejecting an application etc. — directly into the ATS application's system. See docs

Save countless developer hours and cost

For an average SaaS company, each new integration takes about 6 weeks to 3 months to build and deploy. For maintenance, it takes minimum of 10 developer hours per week. Thus, building each new integration in-house can cost a SaaS business ~USD 15,000. Imagine doing that for 30+ integrations or 200!

On the other hand, by building and maintaining integrations for you, Knit can bring down your annual cost of integrations by as much as 20X. Calculate ROI yourself

In short, an API aggregator is non negotiable if you want to scale your ATS integration stack without compromising valuable in-house engineering bandwidth.

How to improve your screening workflow with Knit unified ATS API

Get Job details from different job boards

Fetch job IDs from your users Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) using Knit’s job data models along with other necessary job information such as departments, offices, hiring managers etc.

Get applicant details

Use the job ID to fetch all and individual applicant details associated with the job posting. This would give you information about the candidate such as contact details, experience, links, location, experience, current stage etc. These data fields will help you screen the candidates in one easy step.

Complete screening activities

Next is where you take care of screening activities on your end after getting required candidate and job details. Based on your use case, you parse CVs, conduct background checks and/or administer assessment procedures.

Push back results into the ATS

Once you have your results, you can progmmatically push data back directly within the ATS system of your users using Knit’s write APIs to ensure a centralized, seamless user experience. For example, based on screening results, you can —

• Update candidate stage using <update stage> API See docs
• Match scores for CV parsing or add a quick tag to your applicant See docs
• Reject an application See docs and much more

Thus, Knit ensures that your entire screening process is smooth and requires minimum intervention.

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Get started with Unified ATS API

If you are looking to quickly connect with 30+ ATS applications — including Greenhouse, Lever, Jobvite and more — get your Knit API keys today.

You may talk to our one of our experts to help you build a customized solution for your ATS API use case. 

The best part? You can also make a specific ATS integration request. We would be happy to prioritize your request. 

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Today, recruitment without ATS applications seems almost impossible. From candidate sourcing and screening to communication and onboarding — every part of the recruitment workflow is tied to ATS apps. 

Research shows that 78% of recruiters using an ATS report that it has improved the quality of the candidates they hire. 

Hiring qualified talent for an organization can be a resource intensive and long drawn process. The entire recruitment workflow has multiple steps and layers, which when accomplished manually can be extremely time consuming. However, companies which leverage recruitment workflow automation by using ATS APIs can save 100s of hours spent in heavy lifting. 

Recruitment workflow and automation with ATS APIs

Let’s start with understanding the various stages of recruitment workflow and how automation with ATS APIs can help. 

Job requisition and posting

The first step involves creating job requisitions based on hiring needs across different teams. This is followed by creating appropriate job descriptions and posting on job boards to attract candidates. 

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With ATS APIs, this entire process can be automated. ATS APIs come with pre-defined templates to create job requisitions and job descriptions. They also have integrations with leading job boarding to facilitate automatic posting and role promotion of job boards. 

Candidate sourcing and screening

Next, most recruitment professionals focus on collecting data on candidate profiles from different job boards. Then, they engage in screening and shortlisting the resumes following a manual process, which takes a long time. 

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ATS APIs automate the collection of candidate data, resume and other basic information. It goes a step beyond with resume parsing to automate extraction of relevant candidate data from the resume and facilitate storage in a ready to use format for easy screening. 

Interview scheduling

Once the screening is complete, interview scheduling for the shortlisted candidates is the next step. Manually, the process requires a lot of back and forth with interviewers and interviewees, managing schedules, sending invitations and reminders, etc. 

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ATS APIs led automation takes care of all scheduling struggles and automates the process of sending invitations, reminders and other candidate communication in the process. 

Candidate assessment

Scheduling interviews/ tests is followed by conducted assessments to gauge the candidate's aptitude, skills, knowledge, personality and cognitive abilities for the role. 

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ATS APIs can easily automate test assessment via online proctored solutions and even record scores and present it to the decision makers in a streamlined and easy to understand format. 

Decision making

When it comes to decision making, ATS APIs can collate evaluation, assessment results and feedback of all candidates and even rank them based on comprehensive scores to help decision makers with data-driven insights on the best candidate for the role. 

Job offer and onboarding

Once a candidate has been selected, the ATS API can automatically send the offer letter based on pre-defined templates. Acceptance of the offer letter by the candidate can automatically trigger document signing digitally, thereby automating the entire onboarding process. Bi-directional data sync will ensure that all steps of employee onboarding are conducted automatically. 

Managing information

An ATS API also enables recruitment professionals to automatically capture, manage and update all the relevant information about the candidate, application and status in a common platform, which can be accessed as and when needed. 

Candidate communication

Throughout the recruitment workflow, there are several touchpoints with the candidate. ATS API: can help recruitment professionals with personalized communication templates for candidates based on their application status, interview performance, feedback, etc. 

Post-recruitment evaluation

Finally, the ATS API can provide recruitment professionals with key data points and metrics to gauge recruitment performance. Metrics like time to hire, source, open positions, candidate diversity, interview to hire ratio, can all be collated in one report by the ATS API and presented. 

Process of automating the recruitment workflow with ATS APIs 

With understanding of the recruitment workflow, let’s understand the process of automating the same with ATS API. 

Identify the recruitment stages to automate

To begin with, you need to understand the recruitment stages in your organization and identify the ones which require a lot of heavy lifting and can be automated. For instance, while conducting the interviews cannot be automated, scheduling them and compiling the feedback and evaluation can be. Thus, identify the stages to automate and what benefits you seek to achieve as a result of automation. 

Choose the ATS APIs 

There are multiple ATS APIs in the market today. While each one of them comes with multiple functionalities across the recruitment workflow, some are likely to be better over others for particular use cases. Therefore, to leverage automation with ATS API, choose the ones that best suit your industry and requirements. You might even choose multiple ATS APIs and integrate them to your system for different purposes, while also integrating one with another. 

Obtain the necessary API credentials from the ATS provider.

Once you have selected the ATS APIs, it’s time to get into the technical aspects of getting the integration in place. To integrate the ATS API, you need to get access to specific credentials and authentication from the ATS provider. These include API key, access tokens, client ID, client secret, endpoints, etc. Once you have these, only then can the integration process begin. Also, ensure you understand the authentication process well.  

Integrate with the ATS APIs

Once you have the necessary credentials, get started with the integration. This will require coding and engineering effort as you will be building the integration from scratch. Understand the data models, endpoints, authorization by going through the API documentation for each ATS API you choose. Simultaneously get started with data mapping, authentication, error handling, etc. followed by testing to gauge the effectiveness of your integration. Each integration can take anywhere between a few weeks to a few months. 

Monitor, manage and maintain your ATS APIs

Post integration, you need to keep track of your data exchange and transformation process. Ensure that data synchronization is happening as per your expectations. Your need to keep track of unstable APIs or any updates in the same, error logging challenges, expiry or deactivation of webhooks, management of large data volume, among others. At the same time, monitor any security threats or unauthorized access push. 

Optimize processes

Finally, optimize your ATS API integration process. Identify the major challenges from the maintenance and management standpoint and focus on fixing the issues to create a better integration experience for your teams. 

Limitations of using different ATS APIs for automating recruitment workflow  

While using multiple ATS APIs to power different functionalities is enticing, it can be challenging and a major burden on your engineering and other teams. Here are a few limitations that might face while trying to integrate different ATS API for recruitment workflow automation. 

Scale and optimization challenges 

Each ATS API comes with different data fields, documentation and processes that need to be followed for integration. Integrating each one requires a steep learning curve for the engineering team. From a resource standpoint, each ATS API integration can take an average of four weeks, costing ~USD 10K. As you scale, there is an exponential time and monetary cost that comes along, which is applicable to each API you add. After a certain time, chances are that the costs and efforts associated with integration scale will significantly surpass the savings and benefits from automation. 

Data transformation challenges 

Each API, even within the same category of ATS will have different data models. For instance, the field of candidate name may be categorized as cand_name for one ATS API, while candidate_name for another one. To ensure that data from all APIs is consolidated for processing, you need to engage in data normalization and data transformation to process the data from different ATS APIs. 

Data synchronization challenges 

Next, data synchronization in real time can be a big challenge. If you are using a polling infrastructure, you will have to request data sync time and again, that too across multiple APIs. At the same time, data sync can be a challenge with scalability, when the data load becomes unmanageable. The inability to facilitate real time data synchronization can lead to delays in the entire recruitment process or exclusion of applications during a particular round. 

Monitoring and management 

Error handling, monitoring and management is extremely resource intensive. It is extremely important to maintain the health of your integrations, by constantly logging their performance. It is important to keep track of API calls, log errors, data sync requests, etc. This is required to catch any potential errors early on and manage integrations better. However, monitoring each API for every second is manually very burdensome. 

Compliance and security challenges

Compliance and security is a big challenge when it comes to integrations. Since you are dealing with a lot of personal data, you need to be on your toes when it comes to security. At the same time, each API will have a different authentication methodology as well as separate policies that you need to keep pace with.  

Custom workflows 

Finally, you might need custom workflows from your ATS APIs, especially during data exchange between them. Building these custom workflows can be an engineering nightmare, let alone maintaining and monitoring them. 

How unified API can help integrate with multiple ATS APIs for recruitment automation 

Don’t get apprehensive about using different ATS APIs for automating your recruitment workflows. A unified API like Knit can help you integrate different ATS APIs effortlessly and in less than half the time. Here are the top benefits of using a unified API.

Easy scalability

Unified API enables you to scale product integrations faster. You can easily add hundreds of ATS applications to your systems by just learning about the unified API. You no longer have to go through the API documentation of multiple applications or understand the nuances, processes, etc. It is highly time and cost effective from a scale and optimization lens.  

Seamless data transformation with custom fields

A unified API like Knit can provide you with a common data model. You can easily eliminate the data transformation nuances and complex processes for different APIs. It enables you to map different data schemas from different ATS applications into a single, unified data model as normalized data. In addition, you can also incorporate custom data fields i.e. you can access any non-standard data you need, which may not be included in the common ATS data model.

Real time data sync

Following a webhooks based event driven architecture, unified APIs like Knit ensure real time data sync. Without the need for any polling infrastructure or request, Knit facilitates assured real time data sync, irrespective of the data load. Furthermore, it also sends automatic notifications and alerts when new data has been updated. 

High security

Knit, as a unified API, helps companies leveraging ATS integration ensure high levels of security. It is the only unified API which doesn’t store a copy of the customer data. Furthermore, being 100% webhook-based architecture, it facilitates greater security. You don’t have to navigate through different security policies for different APIs and can access OAuth, API key or a username-password based authentication. Finally, all data with our unified API is doubly encrypted, when in rest and when in transit. 

Easy integration management

With a unified API like Knit, integration management also becomes seamless. It enables you to monitor and manage all ATS integrations using a detailed Logs, Issues, Integrated Accounts and Syncs page. ‍Furthermore, the fully searchable Logs keep track of API calls, data syncs and requests and status of each webhook registered. This effectively streamlines integration management and error resolution 5x faster. 

TL:DR

Recruitment professionals and leaders involved in different stages of the recruitment lifecycle can leverage ATS integrations to automate their workflows. With the right ATS API, each stage of the recruitment workflow can be automated to a certain extent to save time and effort. However, building and maintaining different ATS API can be challenging with issues of scale, data transformation, synchronization, etc. Fortunately, with a unified API, companies can address these issues for seamless scalability, data transformation with a unified data model supported by custom data fields, high security with double encryption, webhook architecture for real time data sync, irrespective of workload and easy integration management with detailed logs, issues, etc.  Get started with a unified API to integrate all your preferred ATS applications to automate and streamline your recruitment workflows.

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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.

In the world of APIs, it's not enough to implement security measures and then sit back, hoping everything stays safe. The digital landscape is dynamic, and threats are ever-evolving. 

Why do you need to monitor your APIs regularly

Real-time monitoring provides an extra layer of protection by actively watching API traffic for any anomalies or suspicious patterns.

For instance - 

• It can spot a sudden surge in requests from a single IP address, which could be a sign of a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. 
• It can also detect multiple failed login attempts in quick succession, indicating a potential brute-force attack. 

In both cases, real-time monitoring can trigger alerts or automated responses, helping you take immediate action to safeguard your API and data.

API Logging

Now, on similar lines, imagine having a detailed diary of every interaction and event within your home, from visitors to when and how they entered. Logging mechanisms in API security serve a similar purpose - they provide a detailed record of API activities, serving as a digital trail of events.

Logging is not just about compliance; it's about visibility and accountability. By implementing logging, you create a historical archive of who accessed your API, what they did, and when they did it. This not only helps you trace back and investigate incidents but also aids in understanding usage patterns and identifying potential vulnerabilities.

To ensure robust API security, your logging mechanisms should capture a wide range of information, including request and response data, user identities, IP addresses, timestamps, and error messages. This data can be invaluable for forensic analysis and incident response. 

API monitoring

Combining logging with real-time monitoring amplifies your security posture. When unusual or suspicious activities are detected in real-time, the corresponding log entries provide context and a historical perspective, making it easier to determine the extent and impact of a security breach.

Based on factors like performance monitoring, security, scalability, ease of use, and budget constraints, you can choose a suitable API monitoring and logging tool for your application.

Access Logs and Issues in one page

This is exactly what Knit does. Along with allowing you access to data from 50+ APIs with a single unified API, it also completely takes care of API logging and monitoring. 

It offers a detailed Logs and Issues page that gives you a one page historical overview of all your webhooks and integrated accounts. It includes a number of API calls and provides necessary filters to choose your criterion. This helps you to always stay on top of user data and effectively manage your APIs.

Ready to build?

Get your API keys to try these API monitoring best practices for real

If you are looking to unlock 40+ HRIS and ATS integrations with a single API key, check out Knit API. If not, keep reading

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Note: This is our master guide on API Pagination where we solve common developer queries in detail with common examples and code snippets. Feel free to visit the smaller guides linked later in this article on topics such as page size, error handling, pagination stability, caching strategies and more.

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In the modern application development and data integration world, APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) serve as the backbone for connecting various systems and enabling seamless data exchange. 

However, when working with APIs that return large datasets, efficient data retrieval becomes crucial for optimal performance and a smooth user experience. This is where API pagination comes into play.

In this article, we will discuss the best practices for implementing API pagination, ensuring that developers can handle large datasets effectively and deliver data in a manageable and efficient manner. (We have linked bite sized how-to guides on all API pagination FAQs you can think of in this article. Keep reading!)

But before we jump into the best practices, let’s go over what is API pagination and the standard pagination techniques used in the present day.

What is API Pagination

API pagination refers to a technique used in API design and development to retrieve large data sets in a structured and manageable manner. When an API endpoint returns a large amount of data, pagination allows the data to be divided into smaller, more manageable chunks or pages. 

Each page contains a limited number of records or entries. The API consumer or client can then request subsequent pages to retrieve additional data until the entire dataset has been retrieved.
Pagination typically involves the use of parameters, such as offset and limit or cursor-based tokens, to control the size and position of the data subset to be retrieved. 

These parameters determine the starting point and the number of records to include on each page.

Advantages of API Pagination

By implementing API pagination, developers as well as consumers can have the following advantages - 

1. Improved Performance

Retrieving and processing smaller chunks of data reduces the response time and improves the overall efficiency of API calls. It minimizes the load on servers, network bandwidth, and client-side applications.

2. Reduced Resource Usage 

Since pagination retrieves data in smaller subsets, it reduces the amount of memory, processing power, and bandwidth required on both the server and the client side. This efficient resource utilization can lead to cost savings and improved scalability.

3. Enhanced User Experience

Paginated APIs provide a better user experience by delivering data in manageable portions. Users can navigate through the data incrementally, accessing specific pages or requesting more data as needed. This approach enables smoother interactions, faster rendering of results, and easier navigation through large datasets.

4. Efficient Data Transfer

With pagination, only the necessary data is transferred over the network, reducing the amount of data transferred and improving network efficiency.

5. Scalability and Flexibility

Pagination allows APIs to handle large datasets without overwhelming system resources. It provides a scalable solution for working with ever-growing data volumes and enables efficient data retrieval across different use cases and devices.

6. Error Handling

With pagination, error handling becomes more manageable. If an error occurs during data retrieval, only the affected page needs to be reloaded or processed, rather than reloading the entire dataset. This helps isolate and address errors more effectively, ensuring smoother error recovery and system stability.

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Common examples of paginated APIs 

Some of the most common, practical examples of API pagination are: 

• Platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram often employ paginated APIs to retrieve posts, comments, or user profiles. 
• Online marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, and Etsy utilize paginated APIs to retrieve product listings, search results, or user reviews.
• Banking or payment service providers often provide paginated APIs for retrieving transaction history, account statements, or customer data.
• Job search platforms like Indeed or LinkedIn Jobs offer paginated APIs for retrieving job listings based on various criteria such as location, industry, or keywords.

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API pagination techniques

There are several common API pagination techniques that developers employ to implement efficient data retrieval. Here are a few useful ones you must know:

1. Offset and limit pagination
2. Cursor-based pagination
3. Page-based pagination
4. Time-based pagination
5. Keyset pagination

Read: Common API Pagination Techniques to learn more about each technique

Best practices for API pagination

When implementing API pagination in Python, there are several best practices to follow. For example,  

1. Use a common naming convention for pagination parameters

Adopt a consistent naming convention for pagination parameters, such as "offset" and "limit" or "page" and "size." This makes it easier for API consumers to understand and use your pagination system.

2. Always include pagination metadata in API responses

Provide metadata in the API responses to convey additional information about the pagination. 

This can include the total number of records, the current page, the number of pages, and links to the next and previous pages. This metadata helps API consumers navigate through the paginated data more effectively.

For example, here’s how the response of a paginated API should look like -

        
{
 "data": [
   {
     "id": 1,
     "title": "Post 1",
     "content": "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.",
     "category": "Technology"
   },
   {
     "id": 2,
     "title": "Post 2",
     "content": "Praesent fermentum orci in ipsum.",
     "category": "Sports"
   },
   {
     "id": 3,
     "title": "Post 3",
     "content": "Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus.",
     "category": "Fashion"
   }
 ],
 "pagination": {
   "total_records": 100,
   "current_page": 1,
   "total_pages": 10,
   "next_page": 2,
   "prev_page": null
 }
}
        
    

3. Determine an appropriate page size

Select an optimal page size that balances the amount of data returned per page. 

A smaller page size reduces the response payload and improves performance, while a larger page size reduces the number of requests required.

Determining an appropriate page size for a paginated API involves considering various factors, such as the nature of the data, performance considerations, and user experience. 

Here are some guidelines to help you determine the optimal page size.

Read: How to determine the appropriate page size for a paginated API 

4. Implement sorting and filtering options

Provide sorting and filtering parameters to allow API consumers to specify the order and subset of data they require. This enhances flexibility and enables users to retrieve targeted results efficiently. Here's an example of how you can implement sorting and filtering options in a paginated API using Python:

        
# Dummy data
products = [
    {"id": 1, "name": "Product A", "price": 10.0, "category": "Electronics"},
    {"id": 2, "name": "Product B", "price": 20.0, "category": "Clothing"},
    {"id": 3, "name": "Product C", "price": 15.0, "category": "Electronics"},
    {"id": 4, "name": "Product D", "price": 5.0, "category": "Clothing"},
    # Add more products as needed
]


@app.route('/products', methods=['GET'])
def get_products():
    # Pagination parameters
    page = int(request.args.get('page', 1))
    per_page = int(request.args.get('per_page', 10))


    # Sorting options
    sort_by = request.args.get('sort_by', 'id')
    sort_order = request.args.get('sort_order', 'asc')


    # Filtering options
    category = request.args.get('category')
    min_price = float(request.args.get('min_price', 0))
    max_price = float(request.args.get('max_price', float('inf')))


    # Apply filters
    filtered_products = filter(lambda p: p['price'] >= min_price and p['price'] <= max_price, products)
    if category:
        filtered_products = filter(lambda p: p['category'] == category, filtered_products)


    # Apply sorting
    sorted_products = sorted(filtered_products, key=lambda p: p[sort_by], reverse=sort_order.lower() == 'desc')


    # Paginate the results
    start_index = (page - 1) * per_page
    end_index = start_index + per_page
    paginated_products = sorted_products[start_index:end_index]


    return jsonify(paginated_products)

        
    

5. Preserve pagination stability

Ensure that the pagination remains stable and consistent between requests. Newly added or deleted records should not affect the order or positioning of existing records during pagination. This ensures that users can navigate through the data without encountering unexpected changes.

Read: 5 ways to preserve API pagination stability

6. Handle edge cases and error conditions

Account for edge cases such as reaching the end of the dataset, handling invalid or out-of-range page requests, and gracefully handling errors. 

Provide informative error messages and proper HTTP status codes to guide API consumers in handling pagination-related issues.

Read: 7 ways to handle common errors and invalid requests in API pagination

7. Consider caching strategies

Implement caching mechanisms to store paginated data or metadata that does not frequently change. 

Caching can help improve performance by reducing the load on the server and reducing the response time for subsequent requests.

Here are some caching strategies you can consider: 

1. Page level caching

Cache the entire paginated response for each page. This means caching the data along with the pagination metadata. This strategy is suitable when the data is relatively static and doesn't change frequently.

2. Result set caching

Cache the result set of a specific query or combination of query parameters. This is useful when the same query parameters are frequently used, and the result set remains relatively stable for a certain period. You can cache the result set and serve it directly for subsequent requests with the same parameters.

3. Time-based caching

Set an expiration time for the cache based on the expected freshness of the data. For example, cache the paginated response for a certain duration, such as 5 minutes or 1 hour. Subsequent requests within the cache duration can be served directly from the cache without hitting the server.

4. Conditional caching

Use conditional caching mechanisms like HTTP ETag or Last-Modified headers. The server can respond with a 304 Not Modified status if the client's cached version is still valid. This reduces bandwidth consumption and improves response time when the data has not changed.

5. Reverse proxy caching

Implement a reverse proxy server like Nginx or Varnish in front of your API server to handle caching. 

Reverse proxies can cache the API responses and serve them directly without forwarding the request to the backend API server. 

This offloads the caching responsibility from the application server and improves performance.

Simplify API pagination 

In conclusion, implementing effective API pagination is essential for providing efficient and user-friendly access to large datasets. But it isn’t easy, especially when you are dealing with a large number of API integrations.

Using a unified API solution like Knit ensures that your API pagination requirements is handled without you requiring to do anything anything other than embedding Knit’s UI component on your end. 

Once you have integrated with Knit for a specific software category such as HRIS, ATS or CRM, it automatically connects you with all the APIs within that category and ensures that you are ready to sync data with your desired app. 

In this process, Knit also fully takes care of API authorization, authentication, pagination, rate limiting and day-to-day maintenance of the integrations so that you can focus on what’s truly important to you i.e. building your core product.

By incorporating these best practices into the design and implementation of paginated APIs, Knit creates highly performant, scalable, and user-friendly interfaces for accessing large datasets. This further helps you to empower your end users to efficiently navigate and retrieve the data they need, ultimately enhancing the overall API experience.

Sign up for free trial today or talk to our sales team

If you are looking to unlock 40+ HRIS and ATS integrations with a single API key, check out Knit API. If not, keep reading

‍

Note: This is a part of our series on API Pagination where we solve common developer queries in detail with common examples and code snippets. Please read the full guide here where we discuss page size, error handling, pagination stability, caching strategies and more.

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Ensure that the pagination remains stable and consistent between requests. Newly added or deleted records should not affect the order or positioning of existing records during pagination. This ensures that users can navigate through the data without encountering unexpected changes.

5 ways for pagination stability

To ensure that API pagination remains stable and consistent between requests, follow these guidelines:

1. Use a stable sorting mechanism

If you're implementing sorting in your pagination, ensure that the sorting mechanism remains stable. 

This means that when multiple records have the same value for the sorting field, their relative order should not change between requests. 

For example, if you sort by the "date" field, make sure that records with the same date always appear in the same order.

2. Avoid changing data order

Avoid making any changes to the order or positioning of records during pagination, unless explicitly requested by the API consumer. 

If new records are added or existing records are modified, they should not disrupt the pagination order or cause existing records to shift unexpectedly.

3. Use unique and immutable identifiers

It's good practice to use unique and immutable identifiers for the records being paginated. T

This ensures that even if the data changes, the identifiers remain constant, allowing consistent pagination. It can be a primary key or a unique identifier associated with each record.

4. Handle record deletions gracefully

If a record is deleted between paginated requests, it should not affect the pagination order or cause missing records. 

Ensure that the deletion of a record does not leave a gap in the pagination sequence.

For example, if record X is deleted, subsequent requests should not suddenly skip to record Y without any explanation.

5. Use deterministic pagination techniques

Employ pagination techniques that offer deterministic results. Techniques like cursor-based pagination or keyset pagination, where the pagination is based on specific attributes like timestamps or unique identifiers, provide stability and consistency between requests.

Also Read: 5 caching strategies to improve API pagination performance

HRIS or Human Resources Information Systems have become commonplace for organizations to simplify the way they manage and use employee information. For most organizations, information stored and updated in the HRIS becomes the backbone for provisioning other applications and systems in use. HRIS enables companies to seamlessly onboard employees, set them up for success and even manage their payroll and other functions to create an exemplary employee experience.

However, integration of HRIS APIs with other applications under use is essential to facilitate workflow automation. Essentially, HRIS API integration can help businesses connect diverse applications with the HRIS to ensure seamless flow of information between the connected applications. HRIS API integrations can either be internal or customer-facing. In internal HRIS integrations, businesses connect their HRIS with other applications they use, like ATS, Payroll, etc. to automate the flow of information between the same. On the other hand, with customer-facing HRIS integrations, businesses can connect their application or product with the end customer’s HR applications for data exchange. 

This article seeks to serve as a comprehensive repository on HRIS API integration, covering the benefits, best practices, challenges and how to address them, use cases, data models, troubleshooting and security risks, among others. 

Benefits of HRIS API integration

Here are some of the top reasons why businesses need HRIS API integration, highlighting the benefits they bring along:

• Higher employee productivity: HRIS API integration ensures that all data exchange between HRIS and other applications is automated and doesn’t require any human intervention. This considerably reduces the time and effort spent on manually updating all platforms with HR related data. This ensures that employees are able to focus more on value add tasks, leading to increased productivity and an improved employee experience.

• Reduced errors: Manual data entry is prone to errors. For instance, if during payroll updation, the compensation of an employee is entered incorrectly and differently from HRIS data, the employee will receive incorrect compensation, leading to regulatory/ financial discrepancies and employee displeasure. 

• End customer satisfaction: This is specifically for customer-facing HRIS integrations. By facilitating integration with your end customer’s HRIS applications and your product, you can foster automated data sync between the applications, eliminating the need for the customer to manually give you access to the data needed. This considerably augments customer experience and satisfaction.

• Expanded customer base: The ability to offer integrations with associated applications like payroll, attendance, etc. is something that most HR professionals seek. Therefore, when an application offers integrations with a wide range of HRIS, the total addressable market or TAM, significantly increases, augmenting the overall reach and potential customers. 

HRIS API Data Models Explained

The different HRIS tools you use are bound to come with different data models or fields which will capture data for exchange between applications. It is important for HR professionals and those building and managing these integrations to understand these data models, especially to ensure normalization and transformation of data when it moves from one application to another. 

Employees/ Employee Profiles

This includes details of all employees whether full time or contractual, including first and last name, contact details, date of birth, email ID, etc. At the same time, it covers other details on demographics and employment history including status, start date, marital status, gender, etc. In case of a former employee, this field also captures termination date. 

Employee Contact Details

This includes personal details of the employee, including personal phone number, address, etc. which can be used to contact employees beyond work contact information. 

Employee Profile Picture

Employee profile picture object or data model captures the profile picture of the employees that can be used across employee records and purposes. 

Employment Type

The next data model in discussion focuses on the type or the nature of employment. An organization can hire full time employees, contractual workers, gig workers, volunteers, etc. This distinction in employment type helps differentiate between payroll specifications, taxation rules, benefits, etc. 

Location

Location object or data model refers to the geographical area for the employee. Here, both the work location as well as the residential or native/ home location of the employee is captured. This field captures address, country, zip code, etc. 

Leave Request

Leave request data model focuses on capturing all the time off or leave of absence entries made by the employee. It includes detailing the nature of leave, time period, status, reason, etc.

Leave Balance

Each employee, based on their nature of employment, is entitled to certain time off in a year. The leave balance object helps organizations keep a track of the remaining balance of leave of absence left with the employee. With this, organizations can ensure accurate payroll, benefits and compensation. 

Attendance 

This data model captures the attendance of employees, including fields like time in, time out, number of working hours, shift timing, status, break time, etc. 

Organizational Structure

Each organization has a hierarchical structure or layers which depict an employee’s position in the whole scheme of things. The organizational structure object helps understand an employee’s designation, department, manager (s), direct reportees, etc. 

Bank Details

This data model focuses on capturing the bank details of the employee, along with other financial details like a linked account for transfer of salary and other benefits that the employee is entitled to. In addition, it captures routing information like Swift Code, IFSC Code, Branch Code, etc. 

Dependents

Dependents object focuses on the family members of an employee or individuals who the employee has confirmed as dependents for purposes of insurance, family details, etc. This also includes details of employees’ dependents including their date of birth, relation to the employee, among others. 

KYC

This includes the background verification and other details about an employee with some identification proof and KYC (know your customer) documents. This is essential for companies to ensure their employees are well meaning citizens of the country meeting all compliances to work in that location. It captures details like Aadhar Number, PAN Number or unique identification number for the KYC document. 

Compensation

This data model captures all details related to compensation for an employee, including total compensation/ cost to company, compensation split, salary in hand, etc. It also includes details on fixed compensation, variable pay as well as stock options. Compensation object also captures the frequency of salary payment, pay period, etc. 

HRIS API Integration Best Practices for Developers

To help you leverage the benefits of HRIS API integrations, here are a few best practices that developers and teams that are managing integrations can adopt:

Prioritize which HRIS integrations are needed for efficient resource allocation

This is extremely important if you are building integrations in-house or wish to connect with HRIS APIs in a 1:1 model. Building each HRIS integration or connecting with each HR application in-house can take four weeks on an average, with an associated cost of ~$10K. Therefore, it is essential to prioritize which HRIS integrations are pivotal for the short term versus which ones can be pushed to a later period. If developers focus all their energy in building all HRIS integrations at once, it may lead to delays in other product features. 

Understand the HRIS API before integrating with it

Developers should spend sufficient time in researching and understanding each individual HRIS API they are integrating with, especially in a 1:1 case. For instance, REST vs SOAP APIs have different protocols and thus, must be navigated in different ways. Similarly, the API data model, URL and the way the HRIS API receives and sends data will be distinct across each application. Developers must understand the different URLs and API endpoints for staging and live environments, identify how the HRIS API reports errors and how to respond to them, the supported data formats (JSON/ XML), etc.  

Stay up to date with API versioning

As HRIS vendors add new features, functionalities and update the applications, the APIs keep changing. Thus, as a best practice, developers must support API versioning to ensure that any changes can be updated without impacting the integration workflow and compatibility. To ensure conducive API versioning, developers must regularly update to the latest version of the API to prevent any disruption when the old version is removed. Furthermore, developers should eliminate the reliance on or usage of deprecated features, endpoints or parameters and facilitate the use of fallbacks or system alter notifications for unprecedented changes. 

Set appropriate rate limits and review them regularly

When building and managing integrations in-house, developers must be conscious and cautious about rate limiting. Overstepping the rate limit can prevent API access, leading to integration workflow disruption. To facilitate this, developers should collaboratively work with the API provider to set realistic rate limits based on the actual usage. At the same time, it is important to constantly review rate limits against the usage and preemptively upgrade the same in case of anticipated exhaustion. Also, developers should consider scenarios and brainstorm with those who use the integration processes the maximum to identify ways to optimize API usage.

Document HR integration process for each HRIS

Documenting the integration process for each HRIS is extremely important. It ensures there is a clear record of everything about that integration in case a developer leaves the organization, fostering integration continuity and seamless error handling. Furthermore, it enhances the long-term maintainability of the HRIS API integration. A comprehensive document generally captures the needs and objectives of the integration, authentication methods, rate limits, API types and protocols, testing environments, safety net in case the API is discontinued, common troubleshooting errors and handling procedures, etc. At the same time this documentation should be stored in a centralized repository which is easily accessible. 

Test HRIS integrations across different scenarios

HRIS integration is only complete once it is tested across different settings and they continue to deliver consistent performance. Testing is also an ongoing process, because everytime there is an update in the API of the third-party application, testing is needed, and so is the case whenever there is an update in one’s own application. To facilitate robust testing, automation is the key. Additionally, developers can set up test pipelines and focus on monitoring and logging of issues. It is also important to check for backward compatibility, evaluate error handling implementation and boundary values and keep the tests updated. 

Guides to popular HRIS APIs

Each HRIS API in the market will have distinct documentation highlighting its endpoints, authentication methods, etc. To make HRIS API integration for developers simpler, we have created a repository of different HR application directories, detailing how to navigate integrations with them:

• Workday API Integration Guide
• ADP API Integration Guide
• greytHR API Guide
• Zoho People API Guide
• Ceridian Dayforce API Directory
• Oracle HCM API Directory
• Gusto API Directory
• Zenefits API Directory
• Freshteam API Directory
• Keka API Directory
• Greenhouse API Directory
• Darwinbox API Directory
• SuccessFactors API Directory
• Namely API Directory

Common HRIS API Integration Challenges 

While there are several benefits of HRIS API integration, the process is fraught with obstacles and challenges, including:

Diversity of HRIS API providers

Today, there are 1000s of HR applications in the market which organizations use. This leads to a huge diversity of HRIS API providers. Within the HRIS category, the API endpoints, type of API (REST vs SOAP), data models, syntax, authentication measures and standards, etc. can vary significantly. This poses a significant challenge for developers who have to individually study and understand each HRIS API before integration. At the same time, the diversity also contributes to making the integration process time consuming and resource intensive.

Lack of public APIs and robust documentation

The next challenge comes from the fact that not all HRIS APIs are publicly available. This means that these gated APIs require organizations to get into partnership agreements with them in order to access API key, documentation and other resources. Furthermore, the process of partnering is not always straightforward either. It ranges from background and security checks to lengthy negotiations, and at times come at a premium cost associated. At the same time, even when APIs are public, their documentation is often poor, incomplete and difficult to understand, adding another layer of complexity to building and maintaining HRIS API integrations. 

Difficulty in testing across environments

As mentioned in one of the sections above, testing is an integral part of HRIS API integration. However, it poses a significant challenge for many developers. On the one hand, not every API provider offers testing environments to build against, pushing developers to use real customer data. On the other hand, even if the testing environment is available, running integrations against the same, requires thorough understanding and a steep learning curve for SaaS product developers. Overall, testing becomes a major roadblock, slowing down the process of building and maintaining integrations. 

Maintaining data quality and standardization

When it comes to HRIS API integration, there are several data related challenges that developers face across the way. To begin with, different HR providers are likely to share the same information in different formats, fields and names. Furthermore, data may also not come in a simple format, forcing developers to collect and calculate the data to decipher some values out of it. Data quality adds another layer of challenges. SInce standardizing and transforming data into a unified format is difficult, ensuring its accuracy, timeliness, and consistency is a big obstacle for developers.  

Scaling HRIS integrations

Scaling HRIS API integrations can be a daunting task, especially when integrations have to be built 1:1, in-house. Since building each integration requires developers to understand the API documentation, decipher data complexities, create custom codes and manage authentication, the process is difficult to scale. While building a couple of integrations for internal use might be feasible, scaling customer-facing integrations leads to a high level of inefficient resource use and developer fatigue. 

Post integration maintenance

Keeping up with third-party APIs and integration maintenance is another challenge that developers face. To begin with as the API versions update and change, HRIS API integration must reflect those changes to ensure usability and compatibility. However API documentation seldom reflects these changes, making it a cumbersome task for developers to keep pace with the changes. And, the inability to update API versioning can lead to broken integrations, endpoints and consistency issues. Furthermore, monitoring and logging, necessary to monitor the health of integrations can be a big challenge, with an additional resource allocation towards checking logs and addressing errors promptly. Managing rate limiting and throttling are some of the other post integration maintenance challenges that developers tend to face. 

Building Your First HRIS Integration with Knit: Step-by-Step Guide

Building Your First E-Signature Integration with Knit

Knit provides a unified HRIS API that streamlines the integration of HRIS solutions. Instead of connecting directly with multiple HRIS APIs, Knit allows you to connect with top providers like Workday, Successfactors, BambooHr, and many others through a single integration.

Learn more about the benefits of using a unified API.

Getting started with Knit is simple. In just 5 steps, you can embed multiple HRIS integrations into your APP.

Steps Overview:

1. Create a Knit Account: Sign up for Knit to get started with their unified API. You will be taken through a getting started flow.
2. Select Category: Select HRIS from the list of available option on the Knit dashboard
3. Register Webhook: Since one of the use cases of HRIS integrations is to sync data at frequent intervals, Knit supports scheduled data syncs for this category. Knit operates on a push based sync model, i.e. it reads data from the source system and pushes it to you over a webhook, so you don’t have to maintain a polling infrastructure at your end. In this step, Knit expects you to tell us the webhook over which it needs to push the source data.
4. Set up Knit UI to start integrating with APPs: In this step you get your API key and integrate with the HRIS APP of your choice from the frontend.
5. Fetch data and make API calls: That’s it! It’s time to start syncing data and making API calls and take advantage of Knit unified APIs and its data models. 

For detailed integration steps with the unified HRIS APIt, visit:

• Getting started with Knit

Security Considerations for HRIS API Integrations

Security happens to be one of the main tenets of HRIS API integration, determining its success and effectiveness. As HRIS API integration facilitates transmission, exchange and storage of sensitive employee data and related information, security is of utmost importance. 

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HRIS API endpoints are highly vulnerable to unauthorized access attempts. The lack of robust security protocols, these vulnerabilities can be exploited and attackers can gain access to sensitive HR information. On the one hand, this can lead to data breaches and public exposure of confidential employee data. On the other hand, it can disrupt the existing systems and create havoc. Here are the top security considerations and best practices to keep in mind for HRIS API integration. 

Broken authentication tokens and unauthorized access

Authentication is the first step to ensure HRIS API security. It seeks to verify or validate the identity of a user who is trying to gain access to an API, and ensures that the one requesting the access is who they claim to be. The top authentication protocols include:

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• OAuth: It is commonly used to grant third-party applications limited access to user data from other services without exposing user credentials with the third party. It uses access tokens, which are temporary and short lived. 
• Bearer tokens: They are stateless, time-bound access tokens which are simple for one time use, but need to be protected as anyone with access to them can access the API. 
• API keys: Facilitating server-to-server communication, these long-lived secret keys are ideal for trusted parties or internal use. 
• JSON Web Tokens: A token-based authentication method with a self-contained nature, facilitates scalable and secure access. 
• Basic Auth: Involves sending a username and password in the API request header in the form of Base64-encoded credentials.

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Most authentication methods rely on API tokens. However, when they are not securely generated, stored, or transmitted, they become vulnerable to attacks. Broken authentication can grant access to attackers, which can cause session hijacking, giving the attackers complete control over the API session. Hence, securing API tokens and authentication protocols is imperative. Practices like limiting the lifespan of your tokens/API keys, via time-based or event-based expiration as well as securing credentials in secret vault services can. 

Data exposure during transmission

As mentioned, HRIS API integration involves transmission and exchange of sensitive and confidential employee information. However, if the data is not encrypted during transmission it is vulnerable to attacker interception. This can happen when APIs use insecure protocols (HTTP instead of HTTPS), data is transmitted as plain text without encryption, there is insufficient data masking and validation. 

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To facilitate secure data transmission, it is important to use HTTPS, which uses Transport Layer Security (TLS) or its predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), to encrypt data and can only be decrypted when it reaches the intended recipient. 

Input validation failure

Input validation failures can increase the incidence of injection attacks in HRIS API integrations. These attacks, primarily SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS), manipulate input data or untrusted data is injected into the database queries. This enables attackers to execute unauthorized database operations, potentially accessing or modifying sensitive information.

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Practices like input validation, output encoding, and the principle of least privilege, can help safeguard against injection vulnerabilities. Similarly, for database queries, using parameterized statements instead of injecting user inputs directly into SQL queries, can help mitigate the threat. 

Denial of service attacks and rate limiting

HRIS APIs are extremely vulnerable to denial of service (DoS) attacks where attackers flood your systems with excessive requests which it is not able to process, leading to disruption and temporarily restricts its functionality. Human errors, misconfigurations or even compromised third party applications can lead to this particular security challenge. 

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Rate limiting and throttling are effective measures that help prevent the incidence of DoS attacks, protecting APIs against excessive or abusive use and facilitating equitable request distribution between customers. While rate limiting restricts the number of requests or API calls that can be made in a specified time period, throttling slows down the processing of requests, instead of restricting them. Together, these act as robust measures to prevent excessive use attacks by perpetrators, and even protects against brute-force attacks. 

Third party security risks and ongoing threats

Third party security concerns i.e. how secure or vulnerable the third-party applications which you are integrating with, have a direct impact on the security posture of your HRIS API integration. Furthermore, threats and vulnerabilities come in without any prompt, making them unwanted guests. 

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To address the security concerns of third-party applications, it is important to thoroughly review the credibility and security posture of the software you integrate with. Furthermore, be cautious of the level of access you grant, sticking to the minimum requirement. It is equally important to monitor security updates and patch management along with a prepared contingency plan to mitigate the risk of security breaches and downtime in case the third-party application suffers a breach. 

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Furthermore, API monitoring and logging are critical security considerations for HRIS API integration. While monitoring involves continuous tracking of API traffic, logging entails maintaining detailed historical records of all API interactions. Together they are invaluable for troubleshooting, debugging, fostering trigger alerts in case security thresholds have been breached. In addition, regular security audits and penetration testing are extremely important. While security audits ensure the review of an API's design, architecture, and implementation to identify security weaknesses, misconfigurations, and best practice violations, penetration testing simulates cyberattacks to identify vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and potential entry points that malicious actors could exploit. These practices help mitigate ongoing security threats and facilitate API trustworthiness. 

Security with Knit’s HRIS API

When dealing with a large number of HRIS API integrations, security considerations and challenges increase exponentially. In such a situation, a unified API like Knit can help address all concerns effectively. Knit’s HRIS API ensures safe and high quality data access by:

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• Complying with industry best practices and security standards with SOC2, GDPR and ISO27001 certifications. 
• Monitoring Knit's infrastructure continuously with the finest intrusion detection systems. 
• Being the only unified API in the market that does not store any of your end user’s data in its servers.
• Encrypting all data doubly, when in transit and when at rest.
• Facilitating an additional layer of application security for encrypting PII and user credentials.
• Using a detailed Logs, Issues, Integrated Accounts and Syncs page to monitor and manage all integrations and keep track of every API request, call or data sync. 

HRIS API Use Cases: Real-World Examples

Here’s a quick snapshot of how HRIS integration can be used across different scenarios.

HRIS integration for ATS tools

ATS or applicant tracking system can leverage HRIS integration to ensure that all important and relevant details about new employees, including name, contact information, demographic and educational backgrounds, etc. are automatically updated into the customer’s preferred HRIS tool without the need to manually entering data, which can lead to inaccuracies and is operationally taxing. ATS tools leverage the write HRIS API and provide data to the HR tools in use.   

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Examples: Greenhouse Software, Workable, BambooHR, Lever, Zoho

HRIS integration for payroll software

Payroll software plays an integral role in any company’s HR processes. It focuses on ensuring that everything related to payroll and compensation for employees is accurate and up to date. HRIS integration with payroll software enables the latter to get automated and real time access to employee data including time off, work schedule, shifts undertaken, payments made on behalf of the company, etc. 

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At the same time, it gets access to employee data on bank details, tax slabs, etc. Together, this enables the payroll software to deliver accurate payslips to its customers, regarding the latter’s employees. With automated integration, data sync can be prone to errors, which can lead to faulty compensation disbursal and many compliance challenges. HRIS integration, when done right, can alert the payroll software with any new addition to the employee database in real time to ensure setting up of their payroll immediately. At the same time, once payslips are made and salaries are disbursed, payroll software can leverage HRIS integration to write back this data into the HR software for records. 

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‍Examples: Gusto, RUN Powered by ADP, Paylocity, Rippling

HRIS integration for employee onboarding/ offboarding software

Employee onboarding software uses HRIS integration to ensure a smooth onboarding process, free of administrative challenges. Onboarding tools leverage the read HRIS APIs to get access to all the data for new employees to set up their accounts across different platforms, set up payroll, get access to bank details, benefits, etc.

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With HRIS integrations, employee onboarding software can provide their clients with automated onboarding support without the need to manually retrieve data for each new joiner to set up their systems and accounts. Furthermore, HRIS integration also ensures that when an employee leaves an organization, the update is automatically communicated to the onboarding software to push deprovisioning of the systems, and services. This also ensures that access to any tools, files, or any other confidential access is terminated. Manually deprovisioning access can lead to some manual errors, and even cause delays in exit formalities. 

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Examples: Deel, Savvy, Sappling

Ease of communication and announcements

With the right HRIS integration, HR teams can integrate all relevant data and send out communication and key announcements in a centralized manner. HRIS integrations ensure that the announcements reach all employees on the correct contact information without the need for HR teams to individually communicate the needful. 

HRIS integration for LMS tools

LMS tools leverage both the read and write HRIS APIs. On the one hand, they read or get access to all relevant employee data including roles, organizational structure, skills demand, competencies, etc. from the HRIS tool being used. Based on this data, they curate personalized learning and training modules for employees for effective upskilling. Once the training is administered, the LMS tools again leverage HRIS integrations to write data back into the HRIS platform with the status of the training, including whether or not the employee has completed the same, how did they perform, updating new certifications, etc. Such integration ensures that all learning modules align well with employee data and profiles, as well as all training are captured to enhance the employee’s portfolio. 

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Example: TalentLMS, 360Learning, Docebo, Google Classroom

HRIS integration for workforce management and scheduling tools 

Similar to LMS, workforce management and scheduling tools utilize both read and write HRIS APIs. The consolidated data and employee profile, detailing their competencies and training undertaken can help workforce management tools suggest the best delegation of work for companies, leading to resource optimization. On the other hand, scheduling tools can feed data automatically with HRIS integration into HR tools about the number of hours employees have worked, their time off, free bandwidth for allocation, shift schedules etc. HRIS integration can help easily sync employee work schedules and roster data to get a clear picture of each employee’s schedule and contribution. 

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Examples: QuickBooks Time, When I Work

HRIS integration for benefits administration tools

HRIS integration for benefits administration tools ensures that employees are provided with the benefits accurately, customized to their contribution and set parameters in the organization. Benefits administration tools can automatically connect with the employee data and records of their customers to understand the benefits they are eligible for based on the organizational structure, employment type, etc. They can read employee data to determine the benefits that employees are entitled to. Furthermore, based on employee data, they feed relevant information back into the HR software, which can further be leveraged by payroll software used by the customers to ensure accurate payslip creation. 

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‍Examples: TriNet Zenefits, Rippling, PeopleKeep, Ceridian Dayforce

HRIS integration for workforce planning tools

Workforce planning tools essentially help companies identify the gap in their talent pipeline to create strategic recruitment plans. They help understand the current capabilities to determine future hiring needs. HRIS integration with such tools can help automatically sync the current employee data, with a focus on organizational structure, key competencies, training offered, etc. Such insights can help workforce planning tools accurately manage talent demands for any organization. At the same time, real time sync with data from HR tools ensures that workforce planning can be updated in real time. 

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HRIS API Integration Error Handling

There are several reasons why HRIS API integrations fail, highlighting that there can be a variety of errors. Invariably, teams need to be equipped to efficiently handle any integration errors, ensuring error resolution in a timely manner, with minimal downtime. Here are a few points to facilitate effective HRIS API integration error handling. 

Understand the types of errors

Start with understanding the types of errors or response codes that come in return of an API call. Some of the common error codes include:

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• 404 Not Found: The requested resource doesn’t exist or isn’t available
• 429 Too Many Requests: API call request rate limit has been reached or exceeded
• 401 Unauthorized: Lack of authorization or privileges to access the particular resource
• 500 Internal Server Error: Issue found at the server’s end

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While these are some, there are other error codes which are common in nature and, thus, proactive resolution should be available. 

Configure the monitoring system to incorporate all error details

All errors are generally captured in the monitoring system the business uses for tracking issues. For effective HRIS API error handling, it is imperative that the monitoring system be configured in such a way that it not only captures the error code but also any other relevant details that may be displayed along with it. These can include a longer descriptive message detailing the error, a timestamp, suggestion to address the error, etc. Capturing these can help developers with troubleshooting the challenge and resolve the issues faster. 

Use exponential back-offs to increase API call intervals

This error handling technique is specifically beneficial for rate limit errors or whenever you exceed your request quota. Exponential backoffs allow users to retry specific API calls at an increasing interval to retrieve any missed information. The request may be retrieved in the subsequent window. This is helpful as it gives the system time to recover and reduces the number of failed requests due to rate limits and even saves the costs associated with these unnecessary API calls. 

Test, document and review error handling process

It is very important to test the error handling processes by running sandbox experiments and simulated environment testing. Ideally, all potential errors should be tested for, to ensure maximum efficiency. However, in case of time and resource constraints, the common errors mentioned above, including HTTP status code errors, like 404 Not Found, 401 Unauthorized, and 503 Service Unavailable, must be tested for. 

In addition to robust testing, every step of the error handling process must be documented. Documentation ensures that even in case of engineering turnover, your HRIS API integrations are not left to be poorly maintained with new teams unable to handle errors or taking longer than needed. At the same time, having comprehensive error handling documentation can make any knowledge transfer to new developers faster. Ensure that the documentation not only lists the common errors, but also details each step to address the issues with case studies and provides a contingency plan for immediate business continuity. 

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Furthermore, reviewing and refining the error handling process is imperative. As APIs undergo changes, it is normal for initial error handling processes to fail and not perform as expected. Therefore, error handling processes must be consistently reviewed and upgraded to ensure relevance and performance. 

API error handling with Knit

Knit’s HRIS API simplifies the error handling process to a great extent. As a unified API, it helps businesses automatically detect and resolve HRIS API integration issues or provide the customer-facing teams with quick resolutions. Businesses do not have to allocate resources and time to identify issues and then figure out remedial steps. For instance, Knit’s retry and delay mechanisms take care of any API errors arising due to rate limits. 

TL:DR

It is evident that HRIS API integration is no longer a good to have, but an imperative for businesses to manage all employee related operations. Be it integrating HRIS and other applications internally or offering customer facing integrations, there are several benefits that HRIS API integration brings along, ranging from reduced human error to greater productivity, customer satisfaction, etc. When it comes to offering customer-facing integrations, ATS, payroll, employee onboarding/ offboarding, LMS tools are a few among the many providers that see value with real world use cases. 

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However, HRIS API integration is fraught with challenges due to the diversity of HR providers and the different protocols, syntax, authentication models, etc. they use. Scalining integrations, testing across different environments, security considerations, data normalization, all create multidimensional challenges for businesses. Invariably, businesses are now going the unified API way to build and manage their HRIS API integration. Knit’s unified HRIS API ensures:

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• One unified API to connect with all HRIS tools you need
• Single unified data model for seamless data normalization and exchange
• Compliance to the highest security standards like SOC2, GDPR, ISO27001, HIPAA
• Option to authenticate the way you want, including, OAuth, API key or a username-password based authentication
• 100% webhooks architecture that send out notification whenever updated data is available
• Guaranteed scalability and delivery of HR data irrespective of data load
• High level of security as Knit doesn’t store a copy of your data
• Option to read and write data from any app from any HRIS category
• Option to limit data sync and API calls to only what you need
• Double encryption when in transit and when at rest with addition PII layer
• Detailed Logs, Issues, Integrated Accounts and Syncs page to easily monitor HRIS integrations
• Custom fields to manage any non-standard HRIS data

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Knit’s HRIS API ensures a high ROI for companies with a single type of authentication, pagination, rate limiting, and automated issue detection making the HRIS API integration process simple.

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Top 5 Alternatives to tryfinch

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TL:DR:

Finch is a leading unified API player, particularly popular for its connectors in the employment systems space, enabling SaaS companies to build 1: many integrations with applications specific to employment operations. This translates to the ease for customers to easily leverage Finch’s unified connector to integrate with multiple applications in HRIS and payroll categories in one go. Invariably, owing to Finch, companies find connecting with their preferred employment applications (HRIS and payroll) seamless, cost-effective, time-efficient, and overall an optimized process. While Finch has the most exhaustive coverage for employment systems, it's not without its downsides - most prominent being the fact that a majority of the connectors offered are what Finch calls “assisted” integrations. Assisted essentially means a human-in-the-loop integration where a person has admin access to your user's data and is manually downloading and uploading the data as and when needed.

Pros and cons of Finch

Why chose Finch (Pros)

● Ability to scale HRIS and payroll integrations quickly

● In-depth data standardization and write-back capabilities

● Simplified onboarding experience within a few steps

However, some of the challenges include(Cons):

● Most integrations are human-assisted instead of being true API integrations

● Integrations only available for employment systems

● Limited flexibility for frontend auth component

● Requires users to take the onus for integration management

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Pricing: Starts at $35/connection per month for read only apis; Write APIs for employees, payroll and deductions are available on their scale plan for which you’d have to get in touch with their sales team.

Now let's look at a few alternatives you can consider alongside finch for scaling your integrations

Finch alternative #1: Knit

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Knit is a leading alternative to Finch, providing unified APIs across many integration categories, allowing companies to use a single connector to integrate with multiple applications. Here’s a list of features that make Knit a credible alternative to Finch to help you ship and scale your integration journey with its 1:many integration connector:

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Pricing: Starts at $2400 Annually

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Here’s when you should choose Knit over Finch:

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● Wide horizontal and deep vertical coverage: Knit not only provides a deep vertical coverage within the application categories it supports, like Finch, however, it also supports a wider horizontal coverage of applications, higher than that of Finch. In addition to applications within the employment systems category, Knit also supports a unified API for ATS, CRM, e-Signature, Accounting, Communication and more. This means that users can leverage Knit to connect with a wider ecosystem of SaaS applications.

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● Events-driven webhook architecture for data sync: Knit has built a 100% events-driven webhook architecture, which ensures data sync in real time. This cannot be accomplished using data sync approaches that require a polling infrastructure. Knit ensures that as soon as data updates happen, they are dispatched to the organization’s data servers, without the need to pull data periodically. In addition, Knit ensures guaranteed scalability and delivery, irrespective of the data load, offering a 99.99% SLA. Thus, it ensures security, scale and resilience for event driven stream processing, with near real time data delivery.

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● Data security: Knit is the only unified API provider in the market today that doesn’t store any copy of the customer data at its end. This has been accomplished by ensuring that all data requests that come are pass through in nature, and are not stored in Knit’s servers. This extends security and privacy to the next level, since no data is stored in Knit’s servers, the data is not vulnerable to unauthorized access to any third party. This makes convincing customers about the security potential of the application easier and faster.

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● Custom data models: While Knit provides a unified and standardized model for building and managing integrations, it comes with various customization capabilities as well. First, it supports custom data models. This ensures that users are able to map custom data fields, which may not be supported by unified data models. Users can access and map all data fields and manage them directly from the dashboard without writing a single line of code. These DIY dashboards for non-standard data fields can easily be managed by frontline CX teams and don’t require engineering expertise.  

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● Sync when needed: Knit allows users to limit data sync and API calls as per the need. Users can set filters to sync only targeted data which is needed, instead of syncing all updated data, saving network and storage costs. At the same time, they can control the sync frequency to start, pause or stop sync as per the need.

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● Ongoing integration management: Knit’s integration dashboard provides comprehensive capabilities. In addition to offering RCA and resolution, Knit plays a proactive role in identifying and fixing integration issues before a customer can report it. Knit ensures complete visibility into the integration activity, including the ability to identify which records were synced, ability to rerun syncs etc.

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As an alternative to Finch, Knit ensures:

● No-Human in the loop integrations

● No need for maintaining any additional polling infrastructure

● Real time data sync, irrespective of data load, with guaranteed scalability and delivery

● Complete visibility into integration activity and proactive issue identification and resolution

● No storage of customer data on Knit’s servers

● Custom data models, sync frequency, and auth component for greater flexibility

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Finch alternative #2: Merge

Another leading contender in the Finch alternative for API integration is Merge. One of the key reasons customers choose Merge over Finch is the diversity of integration categories it supports.

Pricing: Starts at $7800/ year and goes up to $55K

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Why you should consider Merge to ship SaaS integrations:

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● Higher number of unified API categories; Merge supports 7 unified API categories, whereas Finch only offers integrations for employment systems

● Supports API-based integrations and doesn’t focus only on assisted integrations (as is the case for Finch), as the latter can compromise customer’s PII data

● Facilitates data sync at a higher frequency as compared to Finch; Merge ensures daily if not hourly syncs, whereas Finch can take as much as 2 weeks for data sync

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However, you may want to consider the following gaps before choosing Merge:

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● Requires a polling infrastructure that the user needs to manage for data syncs

● Limited flexibility in case of auth component to customize customer frontend to make it similar to the overall application experience

● Webhooks based data sync doesn’t guarantee scale and data delivery

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Finch alternative #3: Workato

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Workato is considered another alternative to Finch, albeit in the traditional and embedded iPaaS category.

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Pricing: Pricing is available on request based on workspace requirement; Demo and free trial available

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Why you should consider Workato to ship SaaS integrations:

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● Supports 1200+ pre-built connectors, across CRM, HRIS, ticketing and machine learning models, facilitating companies to scale integrations extremely fast and in a resource efficient manner

● Helps build internal integrations, API endpoints and workflow applications, in addition to customer-facing integrations; co-pilot can help build workflow automation better

● Facilitates building interactive workflow automations with Slack, Microsoft Teams, with its customizable platform bot, Workbot

However, there are some points you should consider before going with Workato:

● Lacks an intuitive or robust tool to help identify, diagnose and resolve issues with customer-facing integrations themselves i.e., error tracing and remediation is difficult

● Doesn’t offer sandboxing for building and testing integrations

● Limited ability to handle large, complex enterprise integrations

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Finch alternative #4: Paragon

Paragon is another embedded iPaaS that companies have been using to power their integrations as an alternative to Finch.

Pricing: Pricing is available on request based on workspace requirement;

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Why you should consider Paragon to ship SaaS integrations:

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● Significant reduction in production time and resources required for building integrations, leading to faster time to market

● Fully managed authentication, set under full sets of penetration and testing to secure customers’ data and credentials; managed on-premise deployment to support strictest security requirements

● Provides a fully white-labeled and native-modal UI, in-app integration catalog and headless SDK to support custom UI

However, a few points need to be paid attention to, before making a final choice for Paragon:

● Requires technical knowledge and engineering involvement to custom-code solutions or custom logic to catch and debug errors

● Requires building one integration at a time, and requires engineering to build each integration, reducing the pace of integration, hindering scalability

● Limited UI/UI customization capabilities

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Finch alternative #5: Tray.io

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Tray.io provides integration and automation capabilities, in addition to being an embedded iPaaS to support API integration.

Pricing: Supports unlimited workflows and usage-based pricing across different tiers starting from 3 workspaces; pricing is based on the plan, usage and add-ons

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Why you should consider Tary.io to ship SaaS integrations:

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● Supports multiple pre-built integrations and automation templates for different use cases

● Helps build and manage API endpoints and support internal integration use cases in addition to product integrations

● Provides Merlin AI which is an autonomous agent to build automations via chat interface, without the need to write code

However, Tray.io has a few limitations that users need to be aware of:

● Difficult to scale at speed as it requires building one integration at a time and even requires technical expertise

● Data normalization capabilities are rather limited, with additional resources needed for data mapping and transformation

● Limited backend visibility with no access to third-party sandboxes

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TL:DR

We have talked about the different providers through which companies can build and ship API integrations, including, unified API, embedded iPaaS, etc. These are all credible alternatives to Finch with diverse strengths, suitable for different use cases. Undoubtedly, the number of integrations supported within employment systems by Finch is quite large, there are other gaps which these alternatives seek to bridge:

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● Knit: Providing unified apis for different categories, supporting both read and write use cases. A great alternative which doesn’t require a polling infrastructure for data sync (as it has a 100% webhooks based architecture), and also supports in-depth integration management with the ability to rerun syncs and track when records were synced.

● Merge: Provides a greater coverage for different integration categories and supports data sync at a higher frequency than Finch, but still requires maintaining a polling infrastructure and limited auth customization.

● Workato: Supports a rich catalog of pre-built connectors and can also be used for building and maintaining internal integrations. However, it lacks intuitive error tracing and remediation.

● Paragon: Fully managed authentication and fully white labeled UI, but requires technical knowledge and engineering involvement to write custom codes.

● Tray.io: Supports multiple pre-built integrations and automation templates and even helps in building and managing API endpoints. But, requires building one integration at a time with limited data normalization capabilities.

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Thus, consider the following while choosing a Finch alternative for your SaaS integrations:

● Support for both read and write use-cases

● Security both in terms of data storage and access to data to team members

● Pricing framework, i.e., if it supports usage-based, API call-based, user based, etc.

● Features needed and the speed and scope to scale (1:many and number of integrations supported)

Depending on your requirements, you can choose an alternative which offers a greater number of API categories, higher security measurements, data sync (almost in real time) and normalization, but with customization capabilities.

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As hiring needs for organizations become more complex, assessing candidates in a holistic and comprehensive manner is more critical than ever. Fortunately, multiple assessment software have surfaced in the recent past, enabling organizations to carry out assessments in the most effective and efficient manner. Leveraging technology, gamification and other advances, such tools are able to help organizations ensure that a candidate is a perfect fit for the role, skills, company culture and all other parameters. 

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However, to make the best use of assessment software, it is important to integrate data and information from them across other platforms being used for operational efficiency and faster turnaround in recruitment and onboarding. Here, assessment API integration plays a major role. 

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When organizations integrate data from the assessment API with other applications, including ATS, HRIS, interview scheduling, etc., they are able to optimize their recruitment workflow with a high degree of automation. 

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In this article, we will discuss the different aspects of assessment API, its integration use cases, key data models and the different ways in which you can accomplish seamless integration. 

Assessment API Data Models

To ensure that you understand the different assessment APIs well, it is important to comprehend the data models or fields that are commonly used. One of the major reasons that the knowledge of data models is imperative is to facilitate data transformation and normalization during data sync. Here are the common data models for assessment APIs:

Candidate name

This data model focuses on the name of the candidate to whom a particular assessment will be administered and all records pertaining to the candidate will be stored. It can also be associated with a unique candidate ID to prevent any confusion in case of duplication of names. 

Candidate profile

The next data model captures the profile of the candidate. From an assessment software perspective, the focus is on a candidate’s professional profile, prior work experience, qualifications, certifications, competencies, etc. Such details help in determining the right assessments for each candidate based on their experience and the role for which they are being assessed.  

Candidate contact information

This data field keeps the details or contact information for all candidates, including phone number, email address, etc. The contact information ensures that the candidate’s can be easily informed about their assessment schedule, any changes in the schedule, results, status, etc. it facilitates smooth communication between the assessment software and the candidate. 

Candidate profile picture

Most assessment software capture candidate pictures to ensure authenticity during assessments or training. Candidate profile pictures in assessment software databases help the latter to prevent proxy attendance during interviews or assessments and address any potential foul play. 

Job type

The next data model captures the nature of employment or the type of job. Today, in addition to full-time employees, organizations are increasingly hiring consultants, gig workers and even contractual employees. The assessment requirements for each one of them can be varied. Thus, the assessment software has a data model to capture the job type to ensure appropriate assessments. 

Job information

Assessment API captures job information or job details as an important data model. Put simply, this model has all details about the role being assessed for, the requirements, skills, competencies, and other aspects which need to be assessed. As a data model or field, job information contains all aspects of the job that need to be matched when candidates are assessed. 

Job department and managers

Next in line is the data model which focuses on the job department and managers. This particular field captures the department for which the candidate has applied for and the hiring managers. The details of hiring managers are important because the results of the assessment tests have to be sent to them. 

Assessment stages

Most assessment software have a few stages that a candidate undergoes. It can start from a normal personality test and go on to psychometric evaluations, coding tests, to personal interviews. As a data model, assessment stages help hiring managers understand where the candidates stand in the hiring pipeline and how close or far they are from closing a particular role at hand. 

Assessment list

The next data model captures all the types of assessments that are available as a part of the assessment software. This field has a repository of different assessments that can be administered. 

Scorecard

Once the assessment is administered, an important data model is the scorecard. This captures how the candidate performed for a particular assessment. The scorecard format or type can be different and unique for each assessment type. In some, it can be an absolute and objective score, while some others might give a more subjective outcome, determining the suitability of the candidate for the role. 

Assessment result

The assessment result as a data model captures the final verdict for the candidate. More often than not, hiring managers can update the result as selected, rejected or any other based on the scorecard and other evaluations undertaken, post which the data can be integrated into the next workflow software. 

Assessment attachment

This data field or data model captures any attachments that come along with a particular assessment test. Some tests might require candidates to submit their assessments as an attachment or external document. This field contains all such attachments which can be consulted during final hiring decisions. 

Assessment status

The assessment status data model captures the status of the assessment test for a particular candidate. It captures if the test has been provided to the candidate, whether or not they have completed the same, etc. 

Top Assessment Applications

Now that there is a clear understanding of the different assessment software data models, let’s quickly look at some of the top assessment applications available in the market today, which can be integrated with different software like ATS, HRIS, LMS, etc. 

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Assessment API Integration: Top Use Cases

Assessment software is a part of the larger ecosystem of software that companies today use to manage their people's operations. Invariably, there are several other tools and software in the market today, which when integrated with assessment APIs can lead to operational efficiency and smooth HR and related processes. There are several categories of tools out there which either feed data into assessment APIs (write APIs) or get access to data from assessment APIs (read APIs). Integration ensures that such data syncs are automated and do not require any manual interview, which can be prone to errors, time consuming and operationally taxing. Here are some of the top use cases for assessment API integration across different software. 

Assessment API integration for ATS tools

Assessment API integration is very critical for ATS or applicant tracking systems. ATS tools and platforms have all the required information about candidates, including their name, profile, pictures, contact information, etc. Assessment API integration with ATS tools ensures that the assessment read API can get access to all these details automatically without any manual intervention. At the same time, integration also facilitates real-time information updation in assessment tools, which can set up assessments for new applicants almost immediately. This leads to faster turnaround. Furthermore, the assessment write APIs can feed information back to the ATS tools with the assessment results and scorecards to help update the candidate’s status in the recruitment flow. 

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Examples: Greenhouse Software, Workable, BambooHR, Lever, Zoho

Assessment API integration for candidate screening tools

Candidate screening tools help organizations determine whether or not a candidate is ideal or right for the role in question. Integration with assessment software ensures that data about a candidate’s performance in an assessment test is automatically synced for screening managers to assess the skills, competencies and abilities of the candidate and its relevance to the open position. Furthermore, assessment API integration with candidate screening tools ensures that the latter have real time access to candidate assessment results for immediate hiring decision making, based on evidence backed data for smart hiring. 

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Examples: 

Assessment API integration for HRIS tools

Assessment API integration with HRIS tools is a no brainer. Once a candidate clears the assessments and is offered a job at an organization, it is essential to capture the results from the assessments in the HRIS platform. Here, the assessment write APIs play an important role. They help HR teams get access to all the relevant information about an employee based on different personality, psychometric, behavioral, cognitive tests to help them capture employee records which are robust and comprehensive. Automated integration of data from assessment tools to HRIS platforms ensures that no human error or bias crawls in when assessment data is being entered into HRIS portals. Furthermore, since many parts of an assessment test can be sensitive, such integration ensures that data exchange is confidential and on a need to know basis only. 

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Examples: BambooHR, Namely, SAP SuccessFactors, Gusto

Assessment API integration for interview scheduling tools

Most companies today leverage interview scheduling tools to automate their entire interview processes, including blocking calendars, managing schedules, etc. For interview scheduling tools, integration with assessment APIs is important to ensure that all interviews with candidates can be scheduled effectively, keeping in my mind both interviewer and interviewee schedules. Interview scheduling tools can leverage assessment read APIs to understand the assessment availability and dates to schedule the interview. Furthermore, once the interview is scheduled, assessment write APIs can help provide updates on whether or not the candidate attended the interview, status, next steps to help interview scheduling tools effectively conduct interactions with candidates as needed. 

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Examples: Calendly, Sense, GliderAI, YouCanBookMe, Paradox

Assessment API integration for LMS tools 

While most assessment software have use cases in the pre-employment stages, their utility can also transcend into post employment phases as well. The LMS tools can easily leverage assessment read APIs to understand the type of assessment tests available which can be used for internal training purposes. Furthermore, candidate performance in pre-employment assessment tests can be used as a baseline to define the types of training required and areas for upskilling. Overall, this integration can help identify the learning needs for the organization and clarify the assessments available for further investigation. At the same time, once the assessments are administered, the assessment write API can automatically sync the relevant data and results for post employment assessment on whether or not employees participated in the assessments, results, gaps, etc. to the LMS tools for better decision making on employee training and development. 

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Example: TalentLMS, 360Learning, Docebo, Google Classroom 

Assessment API integration for talent management tools

Talent management and workforce planning tools are integral when it comes to succession planning for any organization. Assessments conducted, both pre and post employment can greatly help in determining the talent needs for any organization. Talent management tools can leverage assessment read APIs to understand how their existing or potential talent is performing along areas critical to the organization. Any gaps in the talent or consistent poor performance in a particular area of assessment can then be identified to adopt corrective measures. Assessment API integration can help talent management tools effectively understand the talent profile in their organization, which can further help in better succession planning and talent analytics. 

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Examples: ClearCompany, Deel, ActivTrak

Unified Assessment API Integration: All You Need to Know

There are several ways companies can achieve assessment API integration to suit their use cases. Right from building integrations in-house for each assessment tool to practices like workflow automation tools, there are several ways to integrate. However, as the number of customers and integration needs increase exponentially, going for a unified assessment API for integration is the best move. Here are a few instances when choosing a unified API for assessment software integration makes sense. Use unified assessment API when you:

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• Wish to integrate with multiple assessment software based on your customer needs and developing point to point integration with each one is not viable
• Have a large customer base and their integration requests for new assessment software is increasing
• Need to deliver integrations in a short span of time and you lack dedicated engineering bandwidth in-house
• Want to achieve assessment API integration at a lower cost with faster time to market
• Don’t want to take the burden of ongoing maintenance and management of each integration
• Want to skip the effort that goes into reading through API documentation for each integration
• Want to normalize data across assessment platforms and ensure that this transformation process is 10X faster than you internal processes
• Want to ensure complete security, especially due to the nature of sensitive information in question
• Seek real-time sync and exchange of data for immediate action or the flexibility to customize syncs as per your needs
• Want to skip the process of learning about different authentication keys, rate limits, etc. for different APIs

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Now that you know a unified assessment API is the best and the most effective for you to build integrations with assessment software, go through the following questions to choose the best unified assessment API for your organization. 

What are the data models?

The ideal unified API normalizes and syncs data into a unified data model and facilitates data transformation 10x faster. While most fields are common and a unified model works, choose a unified assessment API which also gives you the flexibility to add some custom data models which may not align with the standard data models available. 

What are the rate limits?

Each unified API will offer rate limits, which is the number of API requests or data sync requests you can make in a given period of time. Having an optimum rate limit is extremely important. Having a very high rate limit, in which many requests can be made can lead to potential DDoS attacks and other vulnerabilities. Whereas, having a very low rate limit, where only a handful API requests can be made, might lead to inefficiencies and data inaccuracies. Therefore, gauge the rate limits offered to check if they align with your needs or if they can be customized for you. 

How secure is the integration process?

Next, any unified assessment API you choose should be high on security. On the one hand, check for compliance with all certifications and global standards. On the other hand, look out for comprehensive data encryption, which involves encrypting data at rest and in transit. When looking at security, do check the level of authentication and authorization available.  

What kind of post integration support is available?

Building integrations is followed by the operationally and technically draining tasks of managing integrations. Integration maintenance and management can take anywhere between 5-10 hours of your engineering bandwidth. Therefore, choose a unified assessment API provider which provides you with maintenance support. You should be able to manage the health of all your integrations with a robust track of all API calls, requests, etc. 

What is the sync frequency?

As data sync is the most important part of assessment API integration, check the sync frequency offered by the unified API. While real-time sync, powered by a webhook architecture which ensures real-time data transfer, without any polling infrastructure is ideal. It is equally important to have something which can be customized and allows you to set the sync frequency as per your needs. 

How easy is it to scale?

The key purpose of a unified assessment API is to scale as fast as possible and ensure all customer assessment tools are integrated with. Therefore, you must check the breadth of assessment API integrations being offered. At the same time, explore how open and forthcoming the unified API provider is to custom integrations for you if needed. This also needs to be weighted against the time taken for each new integration and any cost associated with the same. 

Can it take a high data load?

Finally, as you add more assessment API integrations and the number of customers using the same increase, the data load for sync will experience an exponential rise. Thus, your unified assessment API must facilitate guaranteed scalability with quality sync, irrespective of the data load. Without the same, there are chances of data corruption. 

Knit: Unified Assessment API

As a leading unified assessment API, Knit has the right tick mark for all the considerations mentioned above and much more. Here’s why you should consider Knit for your assessment API integration needs:

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• Unified data model which normalizes data with option to customize some fields
• Double encryption of data with encryption for PII and user credentials
• Compliance with  SOC2, GDPR, ISO27001
• No storage of a copy of any data that passes through Knit
• Webhook architecture for real time data sync irrespective of data load
• Option to customize sync frequency whenever needed
• Availability of OAuth, API key or a username-password based authentication
• Bi-directional data sync to read and write from any assessment software
• Detailed Logs, Issues, Integrated Accounts and Syncs page for integration management

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Book a demo today to learn about the other ways in which Knit can be your ideal unified assessment API partner, how it works and anything else you need to know!

Wrapping up: TL:DR

Integrating with assessment APIs can help different companies and platforms unlock value to better streamline their operations. Assessment API integration can facilitate bi-directional sync of data between assessment tools and other applications. While there are several ways to achieve such integration, a unified API is one of the top contenders as it facilitates data normalization, high levels of security, guaranteed scalability, seamless maintenance and management and real time data syncs. 

If you are looking to integrate multiple HRIS and ATS apps with a single API , check out Knit API. If you are looking to learn more about key ATS API concepts, data models and use cases, keep reading.

Hiring the right talent is crucial to building a high-performing organization, yet the dynamic nature of recruitment has made this process increasingly complex. To keep up with these challenges, companies now rely on various applications to streamline and automate the hiring journey.

Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) have become the backbone of this evolving hiring ecosystem, encompassing everything from sending job requisitions to final offer acceptance and onboarding. In fact, 78% of recruiters using ATS report improved efficiency in their hiring process. To further optimize these systems, organizations are increasingly adopting ATS API integrations, enabling seamless data exchange between applications and enhancing the overall recruitment experience.

Read more: What is API integration? (The Complete Guide)

ATS integrations enable smooth communication between various tools—onboarding platforms, job boards, scheduling software, assessment applications, HRIS, payroll systems, and more. Below are a few key examples:

ATS integrations for internal use: Integrating ATS software with assessment software to accelerate candidate testing

For technical roles, companies often require candidates to complete coding or technical assessments via third-party platforms. By integrating the ATS with an assessment portal, any status update in the ATS that triggers an assessment can automatically notify the candidate. This eliminates manual data entry, with results automatically fed back into the ATS, speeding up the next step of the recruitment cycle.

E-signature company building integration with their customer’s ATS platform for smooth onboarding

Companies increasingly use e-signature platforms to send offer letters and manage regulatory formalities. E-signature providers now offer integration with ATS platforms for their customers to automatically receive candidate data once an offer is made, ensuring a smooth onboarding process without the need for manual information transfers.

ATS API integrations are transforming recruitment by simplifying and automating workflows for internal operations and customer facing processes alike. In this article, we’ll explore the different aspects of ATS integration, including key concepts, use cases, data models, best practices, and challenges, to understand how ATS APIs are reshaping the future of hiring.

Benefits of ATS API Integration

ATS API integration offers significant advantages for both internal teams and external partners. By streamlining the recruitment process, it enhances efficiency, accelerates hiring timelines, and minimizes resource expenditure. Below are the top benefits of implementing ATS API integrations:

Reduce recruitment time

One of the key benefits of ATS API integration with other recruitment tools is the reduction in recruitment time. By eliminating the need to manually update information across portals, organizations can accelerate the pace at which candidates move to the next stage. This ensures that the positions get filled faster. The time to hire becomes shorter, minimizing delays, and ensuring open positions are filled faster while reducing the risk of losing top talent due to slow processes.

Accelerate onboarding and new employee provisioning

Beyond recruitment, ATS API integration speeds up onboarding and provisioning for new hires. By connecting ATS with onboarding platforms such as e-signature tools or document verification systems, companies can expedite the process of getting employees operational. Additionally, API integration automates provisioning tasks, such as assigning software access, permissions, and licenses based on role and department, ensuring new hires are equipped to start contributing sooner. Invariably, this helps companies ensure that their new employees are productive from day one. 

Prevent human errors which can disrupt hiring lifecycle

Even minor mistakes in recruitment can have significant consequences, potentially derailing the entire hiring process. For example, a single-digit error in a salary offer can not only frustrate candidates but also impact the company’s financial stability. By automating data transfers and reducing the need for manual entry, ATS API integration significantly lowers the risk of these costly errors. This automation ensures accuracy throughout the hiring process, safeguarding the organization from both financial losses and reputational damage.

Simplify reporting of hiring data trends 

ATS API integration allows companies to generate comprehensive reports on hiring patterns and workforce dynamics by connecting ATS with other HR and recruitment platforms. This integration provides real-time access to data, making it easier to track key metrics like time-to-hire, cost-per-hire, and candidate conversion rates. For instance, integrating ATS with a Learning Management System (LMS) helps identify skills gaps in new hires. Similarly, the integration of ATS with Employee Resource Planning (ERP) systems can provide insights into long-term workforce needs to make more informed decisions about resource allocation and recruitment priorities. 

Improve candidate and recruiter experience

ATS API integration improves the experience for both candidates and recruiters by streamlining processes and reducing manual tasks. Candidates benefit from a smoother, more standardized hiring journey with faster feedback, thanks to automated workflows. For recruiters, integration eliminates the need for manual data entry and allows quick access to candidate information across platforms. This lets them focus on hiring top talent and closing more positions in less time, boosting both productivity and job satisfaction.

By leveraging ATS API integration, organizations can optimize their recruitment processes, drive efficiency, and ensure smoother hiring and onboarding experiences for all stakeholders.

ATS API Data Models Explained

The first step to facilitate ATS integration is to understand the different ATS concepts that can help you familiarize yourself with the right terminology. 

1. Job requisition

Even before an organization starts receiving and processing applications, a key concept to understand is job requisition. Essentially, a job requisition is a template or a form which contains all the details about the job for which applicants are being sought. This includes details on the requirements as well as the process of closing the positions, like assessments, interviews, etc. It may also include details of the hiring manager and other relevant information. Different apps can have different ways of assigning job requisitions.  

2. Sourcing and mapping

Sourcing and mapping starts once the job requirements become clear. The HR or the recruitment manager generally navigates through different platforms and candidate pools to identify the right candidates and map them to different openings within the organization. Sourcing is when the hiring manager proactively reaches out to qualified candidates for a specific job opening. 

3. Candidates, attachments and applications

These three are integral concepts for any ATS API. While the terminology might change slightly for different applications, you will find all of these in some essence. 

• Candidates refers to the individuals who apply for different roles and this category contains all details about them including name, location, skills, qualifications, etc. While most of the information is public, some information about disability, caste, religion, may be sensitive and stored privately.  

• Next key ATS integration concept is that of attachments. Each candidate brings forth a set of documents that are relevant for the job they are applying to. These generally include the resume, cover letters, previous work samples, portfolios, etc. Together, these documents are referred to as attachments. 

• Finally, a candidate may apply to one or more roles. Thus, they can have different applications. The application generally has information regarding when the application was started, current status, active or archive, etc. 

4. Interviews, activities and offers

Another set of concepts come into play when the communication with a candidate begins. 

• The first of them is the ATS API concept of interviews. This object generally has information about the interview like the location, date and time, whether or not it happened, etc. 

• Activities as a data object for ATS API refers to different communications that happen with a candidate. It includes details on emails, comments, and other aspects focusing on the subject, activity body, etc. 

• Finally, after all communication and interviews, offers are rolled out to candidates. The offer object stores data such as the date the offer has been extended, till when it is valid, when the offer is to be accepted, job start date, etc. 

Most ATS apps have specific data models which they use to streamline workflow and dataflow. As a unified API for ATS integration, Knit focuses on the following data models for ATS API:

Application info

Contains all applicant details like job ID, status, owner, credited to (who receives credit for the application), applied at, updated at, etc. It also contains information about the candidate, location, links and documents attached, among others. 

Application stage

The stage at which the applicant is currently at, ranging from applied to selected or rejected with a stage ID and stage name. 

Application interview

Keeps all the information regarding a candidate's interview, when it is scheduled for, start time, end time, status, list of interviewers, location, etc. 

Application rejection

Contains data and information about any rejected application or candidate, including job ID, reason for rejection, rejected at which stage, etc. 

Application offers

All the offers extended to an application. It contains the details about the offer as well as the status to define whether the offer has been extended, signed, declined. It also keeps data on when the offer was extended, when it was closed, etc.

Application resume

Application resume or attachments refers to all the documents (such as resume, cover letter etc) which are associated with a particular candidate or application. They are present in the form of downloadable links and when it was created. 

Along with these application data models, Knit also offers several key job data models. For more details, check our documentation 

ATS API Integration Best Practices for Developers

Successful ATS integration requires a clear grasp of key concepts and the adoption of best practices throughout the development and maintenance phases. Here are essential practices for developers to consider:

Conduct thorough ATS API research

Start with an in-depth understanding of the ATS API you plan to integrate with. This involves not only grasping communication protocols and authentication methods but also performing market research on its penetration, security measures, reliability, and performance history. Access to comprehensive, up-to-date API documentation is critical for understanding functionality, endpoints, rate limits, and troubleshooting potential errors. High-quality documentation, which is clear and easy to understand, is the foundation for building and maintaining seamless integrations.

Plan the integration process with clear timelines

Once developers have a clear understanding of the APIs they want to integrate with, creating a comprehensive integration plan is critical. Prioritize which ATS integrations to tackle first and adopt a phased approach for rolling out each integration. Clearly define timelines to help allocate resources effectively and mitigate conflicts with core product development. Ensuring stakeholder alignment and securing buy-in is essential for smooth execution.

Test ATS API integration for performance and reliability

While building integrations is the first step, it is important to ensure rigorous testing in different environments and across diverse use cases. This helps prevent API errors which can lead to significant downtime and even compromise the performance of your applications. While the ATS may have its own testing protocols, however, it is ideal to conduct internal testing to ensure smooth performance and address issues proactively. In addition to ensuring smooth and error free functioning, your testing should also include capturing remediation steps in case errors crop up. Implement continuous monitoring and logging to catch and rectify errors over time, ensuring your integration remains stable and reliable.

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Read more: API Monitoring and Logging

Considering scalability from the beginning

Scalability should be an integral consideration from the beginning of ATS API integration. As your business grows, so will the need to not only support more ATS systems but also to expand the scope and functionality of existing integrations. This can include adding new features, supporting larger volumes of data, or connecting to more complex workflows as the requirements of your customers evolve. To achieve scalability, it's crucial to design your API integrations with flexibility and extensibility in mind. This may involve modularizing your codebase so that adding new ATS systems or features doesn’t require overhauling the entire integration. Your system should be able to handle an increasing number of API calls and larger datasets without compromising response time or stability. 

Develop robust error handling mechanisms

Despite the best efforts in testing, certain errors are likely to crop up from time to time. While it is critical to continually invest in increasing the testing coverage, it is equally important to develop and educate your internal and external stakeholders about handling common errors. Develop error-handling mechanisms that are not only effective but also simple enough to understand and can be executed by non-technical and customer facing teams as well. This will help reduce the burden of all error handling on developers, enabling them to focus on core product functionalities. This requires thorough documentation which not only captures the remediation steps  but also explanations of their root causes. Continuous logging and monitoring of errors will help identify and address recurring issues over time.

Considering alternatives to in-house ATS API integration development

It is also important for developers to weigh in all engineering priorities to decide whether to build and maintain ATS API integrations in-house or to outsource them. Today, there are several external integration tools that are available to help building and maintaining ATS integrations. While iPaaS or workflow automation tools can help with internal integrations, embedded iPaaS and unified APIs are ideal for customer facing integrations. Increasingly, developers are inclining towards ‘buying’ integrations as tools like unified APIs can help connect with most ATS applications with a single connector, enabling speed to scale, while taking care of all authentication, communication protocols, management and everything else. 

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Read more: Whitepaper: The Unified API Approach to Building Product Integrations

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By following these best practices, developers can create robust, scalable, and efficient ATS API integrations that deliver lasting value.

Popular ATS APIs

By now you understand that there are several layers to the ATS integration with different types of applications. Here are the top ATS APIs which you should consider connecting with to make hiring smooth and streamlined for your organization. 

1. Job posting APIs

The first set of ATS integration you should look out for is the one which can help you with job posting. This involves ensuring that your company profile and job openings are visible to potential candidates to generate interest and leads. 

Top job posting ATS API: Indeed, Monster, Naukri, The Muse

2. Candidate/ Lead sourcing APIs

Once the job has been posted, the next step is to build a pipeline of potential candidates. ATS applications for candidate and lead sourcing help extract important candidate data for profile matching, referrals, etc. 

Top candidate sourcing ATS API: Zoho, Freshteam, LinkedIn  

3. Resume parsing APIs

The next step after candidate sourcing is resuming sorting. Here resume parsing applications make sense for your ATS integration. These help with automated collection, storage and filtering of resumes. Resume parsing ATS APIs can help extract relevant information from resumes like skills, expected salary, previous experience, etc. to help align candidate profiles with job requirements. 

Top resume parsing ATS API: Zoho Recruit, HireAbility, CVViz

4. Interview management APIs

Resume screening needs to be followed by interviews to identify a role-fit for the candidates. However, interview management can be extremely complicated. ATS APIs for interviews help address all challenges, including assessments to gauge technical skills, scheduling, managing interview related travel information, etc. 

Top interview management ATS API: Calendly, HireVue, HackerRank, Qualified.io, Talview

5. Candidate communication APIs

Communicating effectively with the candidates is extremely important during the whole hiring process. ATS APIs for candidate communication can help automate email, text and other messages and keep track of all interactions in a streamlined manner. 

Top candidate communication ATS API: Grayscale, Paradox

6. Offer extension and acceptance APIs

Finally, once you decide to onboard a particular candidate, you need relevant ATS integration for extending the offer where the candidate can accept the same and share any document(s) that you might need for onboarding. Offer acceptance applications facilitate electronic signatures, and other formalities in a seamless manner. 

Top offer extension and acceptance ATS API: DocuSign, AdobeSign, DropBox Sign 

To check out Knit’s entire ATS and HRIS API catalog click here

7. Background verification APIs

When you are extending an offer, it is very important to ensure background verification or check for your potential employees. While you may have performed initial reference checks when you received the application, while hiring someone, you need to get a more comprehensive understanding of their profile. Doing this manually can be extremely time and resource extensive. 

Here, ATS integrations for background verification can help you run a check based on your required parameters on the candidate profile and flag any concerns if they appear. This way, you can be rest assured that the employees who come on board don’t have any form of ethical or legal or any other baggage. 

Top background verification ATS API: Certn, Hireology, HireRight, GoodHire

8. Analytics and reporting APIs

Now that your hiring is complete, you should analyze the entire process to gauge where you stand in terms of open positions, the DEI status for your organization, overall headcount, etc. ATS integration for analytics and reporting can help you get dashboard with all such information

Top analytics and reporting ATS API: LucidChart, ChartHop

Read more: How to Automate Recruitment Workflows with ATS APIs and Hire Smarter

ATS API Use Cases: Real-World Examples

One of the biggest benefits of ATS integration is that organizations are easily able to integrate a lot of data about the candidate and terms of hiring with significant new use cases. 

On one hand, organizations can internally use this data for better decision making and ensure effective human resources distribution. On the other hand, this data can become the foundation for other companies to facilitate seamless business continuity across industries. 

In this section, we will discuss the top ATS API use cases that SaaS companies are applying today.

I) Seamless onboarding

The first major use case for data from ATS APIs revolves around onboarding and building of HRIS data. With ATS integrations, important data about the candidate like demographic information, qualifications, documents, attachments, identity proofs etc. which are collected during the course of applicant tracking can be automatically transported to the HRMS or HRIS. Furthermore, the salary details and other terms of employment as shared during offer extension can also be communicated to the payroll APIs. 

This brings along twin benefits. 

• First, the candidate doesn’t have to share the same information multiple times, making onboarding smooth for them. 
• Second, your HR managers also don’t have to invest manual bandwidth and efforts in replicating the data for their records. 

II) Compensation management 

As mentioned, ATS API integrations can ensure that all details about the candidate compensation are shared with the payroll application to facilitate correct salary calculation and on-time disbursement. This is specifically useful if you are on a mass hiring mode and don’t want to delay your payroll. 

Furthermore, compensation data from your ATS, not only for the selected candidates but also the salary expectations and other details can help you ensure fair and equitable compensation management. This data can help you understand what the market expectations are and how you are able to address the same. Similarly, data from ATS API can help gauge discrepancies or differences that might crop up across gender, experiences, level of seniority. Invariably, this data can help you facilitate fair pay based on market standards to attract the best talent. 

At the same time, third party companies which are experts in compensation management and consulting can integrate this data with their findings to help you with the best practices.  

III) Diversity and inclusion

An essential part that you need to focus on during hiring and afterwards is the diversity and inclusion aspect of your workforce. The ATS API data can help you understand the diversity of the candidate pool vis-a-vis the final hiring and closing of positions. Based on this data, your internal DEI team or external experts can help you understand if there is a leakage of diversity along the way. 

Invariably this will encourage you to understand if some part of your hiring process is biased or if you are using ATS applications which are not inclusive enough. You can identify the positions or roles where your diversity ratio is specifically low to understand the concerns. Simultaneously, you can make conscious efforts to bridge this lack of diversity. 

IV) Automated job posting

ATS API data will be incredibly helpful in automating the job posting process. For instance, data from interviews and other applications can indicate the pipeline of candidates and their status. In case the pipeline for a particular role is getting extremely weak with a lot of rejections during interviews or offer acceptances, your ATS application for job boards can be triggered for job posting followed by candidate sourcing and resume parsing. 

Here, the idea is to reduce manual time that goes into identifying which roles are still open and doubling down efforts on sourcing candidates for the same. This will only be possible when you can get real time data with continuous sync from your ATS APIs about the status of different candidates and applications. 

Read more: How Interview Scheduling Companies Can Scale ATS Integrations 10X Faster 

Common ATS API Integration Challenges 

While ATS API integrations offer numerous benefits, developers and teams often encounter significant challenges. These include:

Loss of incompatible candidate and other recruitment data

One of the major challenges in ATS API integration is managing incompatible data formats between different systems. Various applications may use different syntax or naming conventions for the same data fields, such as candidate_ID in one system versus cand_ID in another. Without proper data normalization, these discrepancies can lead to critical issues like data duplication, loss, or inconsistency during transfers. For example, some fields might not match up correctly, causing crucial recruitment data to go missing or become corrupted. Developers are often forced to spend a significant amount of time transforming data to ensure it aligns across different systems. Even with diligent normalization efforts, some data might still be lost or altered in transit, which can have far-reaching impacts on the recruitment process. Missing or incomplete candidate profiles can result in recruitment delays and even the loss of qualified candidates, making data management a critical issue.

Recruitment delays due to delayed and inconsistent data sync

Data sync is critical for ensuring timely recruitment processes, but ATS API integrations often face delays due to rate limiting, throttling, or inefficient retry mechanisms. These factors can slow down syncing of candidate data between systems, especially when handling large volumes of information. Inconsistent data syncs may lead to applications being partially transferred or, worse, lost during the recruitment process. For example, if the ATS doesn't sync with internal HR systems in near real-time, recruiters may not have access to the latest candidate information when it matters most. This can cause delays in shortlisting, interviewing, and onboarding, which ultimately slows down the entire recruitment lifecycle. Furthermore, inconsistent data sync can lead to missing key candidate applications, especially for in-demand roles, which could result in losing high-quality talent to competitors who have more efficient systems in place.

Long duration of deployment and high associated costs

Developing ATS API integrations in-house or partnering with less-experienced vendors can significantly extend both time and cost. On average, building a single API integration can cost over $10K, which includes developer salaries, quality assurance testing, and management oversight. The process often takes around four weeks, meaning core product development is frequently delayed or paused entirely to accommodate the integration efforts. This becomes especially problematic as businesses grow and need multiple ATS integrations to keep pace with client demand. As a result, companies quickly find that the time and financial burden of managing integrations in-house becomes unsustainable. Each additional integration compounds the problem, consuming more resources and further delaying essential product features. Over time, these prolonged development cycles and escalating costs make it increasingly difficult to maintain product scalability and remain competitive in the recruitment software market. 

User interface and integration issues

Maintaining a consistent user experience across integrated systems is another challenge with ATS API integration. When users move from the core platform to an integrated ATS system, discrepancies in design, navigation, and functionality can create a disjointed experience. For example, while the core product might have a sleek, modern design, the ATS interface could feel outdated or difficult to navigate, frustrating both internal users and external customers. This lack of consistency can lower user satisfaction and may result in lower engagement rates with the integrated system. Creating a seamless UX across these systems often requires additional time and effort, such as custom branding and interface adjustments for each new integration. The more complex these systems become, the higher the cost and time investment, making ATS integrations not only challenging to implement but also costly to maintain in-house, especially for scaling companies.

Limited ATS API vendor support 

Another major hurdle in ATS API integration is the lack of adequate support from ATS vendors. Many ATS platforms offer incomplete or outdated API documentation, which makes it difficult for developers to implement and maintain integrations efficiently. Even when documentation is provided, it often lacks details on newer software versions or critical integration processes, leaving developers to rely on guesswork. Furthermore, real-time support from vendors during integration failures or technical issues is rare. Without immediate assistance, developers are left troubleshooting on their own, which can delay the integration process and disrupt user experience. This lack of support can lead to prolonged downtime or data sync errors, negatively impacting both recruitment teams and candidates. For customer-facing integrations, these disruptions can result in poor product performance, a compromised user journey, and even a potential loss of business if issues remain unresolved for too long. 

Building Your First ATS Integration with Knit: Step-by-Step Guide

Knit provides a unified ATS API that streamlines the integration of ATS solutions. Instead of connecting directly with multiple ATS APIs, Knit allows you to connect with top providers like  Keka ATS, ADP Workforce Now ATS, BambooHR ATS, Bullhorn, Greenhouse, Darwinbox ATS, Workday ATS API and many others through a single integration.

Learn more about the benefits of using a unified API.

Getting started with Knit is simple. In just 5 steps, you can embed multiple ATS integrations into your App.

Steps Overview:

1. Create a Knit Account: Sign up for Knit to get started with their unified API. You will be taken through a getting started flow.
2. Select Category: Select ATS from the list of available option on the Knit dashboard
3. Register Webhook: Since one of the use cases of ATS integrations is to sync data at frequent intervals, Knit supports scheduled data syncs for this category. Knit operates on a push based sync model, i.e. it reads data from the source system and pushes it to you over a webhook, so you don’t have to maintain a polling infrastructure at your end. In this step, Knit expects you to tell us the webhook over which it needs to push the source data.
4. Set up Knit UI to start integrating with APPs: In this step you get your API key and integrate with the ATS APP of your choice from the frontend.
5. Fetch data and make API calls: That’s it! It’s time to start syncing data and making API calls and take advantage of Knit unified APIs and its data models. 

For detailed integration steps with the unified ATS API, visit:

• Getting started with Knit

Knit's ATS API vs. Direct Connector APIs: A Comparison

As mentioned in one of the preceding sections, developers can choose from different alternative approaches to build and management ATS API integrations. Especially, from a customer facing integrations perspective, developer’s can either use direct connectors i.e. build integrations in-house or leverage a unified API like Knit’s ATS API to connect with the preferred ATS applications. Here is a detailed comparison to help you choose between these. 

The number of ATS API integrations

Start by analyzing the number of ATS tools you wish to connect with. Depending on the volume of integrations needed as well as their functionalities and scope, the choice between Knit’s unified API versus direct connector API will become easier. 

Use Knit’s ATS API: Need to connect with a wide variety of ATS applications, which have different use cases, data syntax, communication protocols and authentication models

Use Direct connector API: Need to connect with only a select few ATS tools where you have complete access to API documentation and wish to retain complete control over the code

Domain expertise among developers

Next, building and maintaining ATS API integrations requires a high level of domain expertise for ATS. There are several terminologies, concepts and nuances that developers need to understand to ensure integration with different ATS tools and their own product. 

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Use Knit’s ATS API: When developer’s have limited ATS domain expertise and don’t understand the concepts well; When developer’s don’t have the bandwidth to upskill themselves with ATS concepts and knowledge

Use Direct connector API: When developer’s have deep expertise and understanding of ATS related concepts and are able to keep pace with new developments in the field

Urgency and scalability plan

The decision between using a unified ATS API versus a direct connector will also depend on how urgent the integration requirement is and whether or not there is a need to scale over time as well as the proposed timelines for scalability

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Use Knit’s ATS API: When you wish to go live with ATS API integration within a few days and don’t have enough resources at hand to manage the integration process; When you wish to connect with multiple ATS applications with a single connector, unlocking scale at an accelerated pace, i.e. when connecting with multiple integrations fast is imperative

Use Direct connector API: When you have sufficient time in hand to roll out integrations (each integration can take ~4 weeks to build) and the integration requirement is restricted to a few, i.e. you don’t wish to add many new ATS integrations to your offerings in a short span of time

Costs and resources involved

Costs and resources that are required for building and maintaining integrations can be a key deciding factor when it comes to choosing the right integration approach. Depending on the availability of budgets as well as the availability of human resources, developer’s can choose which way to go. 

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Use Knit’s ATS API: When you don’t want to spend a huge amount for each integration you build; When you don’t have free engineering bandwidth to invest in projects other than core product functionalities, or you don’t want to dilute the core tech roadmap

Use Direct connector API: When you have enough budgets to build and manage integrations (each integration costs ~$10K); When you have enough engineering bandwidth to accommodate integration development without diluting the core tech roadmap and priorities

Data normalization and transformation

To ensure consistency in data sync with high quality integration performance, normalizing and transforming data across different data models is extremely important. Furthermore, the choice you make should also ensure guaranteed scalability in data sync, irrespective of data load, without compromising on the quality of the sync. 

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Use Knit’s ATS API: When you want all data normalized at 10x speed across all ATS applications without investing any developer bandwidth; When you want to ensure webhook based architecture and eliminate the need to maintain a polling architecture; When you want to leverage automatic retry mechanism at regular intervals when rate limits kick in

Use Direct connector API: When you have enough developer bandwidth to normalize data from each ATS application under use; When you can manage retries in data sync, without exploiting the integration in-house

Communication and authentication protocols

ATS applications use different protocols, like REST, SOAP, GraphQL, etc. and the same holds true for authentication methods, including OAuth, API keys, Passwords, etc.  Managing diverse communication and authentication protocols can be a deciding factor between unified APIs versus in-house development. 

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Use Knit’s ATS API: When you want to outsource the headache of managing different communication and authentication protocols and wish to only expose your developer’s to one unified model for all ATS applications

Use Direct connector API: When you have the bandwidth and the expertise to build integrations corresponding to different protocols, which not only requires time, but also significant domain knowledge

Security and privacy

Security is a big concern when it comes to managing integrations. Managing the secure transmission of candidate data is critical to ensure legal compliance as well as candidate delight. 

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Use Knit’s ATS API: When you want to encrypt your data when in transit as well as when at rest, without any additional engineering efforts from your end; When you want to use a third-party tool, but without the risk of any data being stored in its servers

Use Direct connector API: When you can manage complete encryption and data security in-house with the right expertise, tools and can ensure elimination of human errors which become major causes of security breaches. 

Ongoing maintenance and management 

How you intend to maintain and manage your integrations will also define your decision to buy vs build ATS API integration. 

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Use Knit’s ATS API: When you want to ensure automated and effective monitoring and logging for all APIs and get access to a detailed Logs and Issues dashboard i.e. a one page overview of all your integrations, webhooks and API calls

Use Direct connector API: Have enough resources with technical knowledge to not only log errors, but to also offer real time guidance to to your end customers for troubleshooting and resolution

Read more: How Candidate Screening Tools Can Build 30+ ATS Integrations in Two Days

Security Considerations for ATS API Integrations

As mentioned above, security is one of the major concerns when it comes to ATS API integration development and management. Here is a quick list of the top security concerns and some of the best practices to mitigate the same.

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Read more: Quick Guide to API Lifecycle Management and Decommissioning

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Knit’s approach to security:

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• Only unified API in the market that does NOT store a copy of your end user data in its servers or share it with any third party
• All data syncs are via webhooks, eliminating the possibility of data exposure during sync
• Secure data transmission with dual encryption, when in transit and when it rest, along with an additional security layer for PII
• SOC2, GDPR and ISO27001 certified
• Continuous infrastructure monitoring with the finest intrusion detection systems

TL:DR

The evolving and dynamic nature of the recruitment landscape is pushing companies to build integrations with ATS tools, be it for internal use or to position it as a customer-facing offering. ATS API integration accelerates the entire recruitment process, helps create a delightful experience for candidates and recruiters and ensures that new employees can be productive from day one. Whether it is connecting job boards with ATS API to accelerate candidate sourcing or integrating onboarding tools with ATS applications to automate the process of employee provisioning, there are several use cases for ATS API integration. 

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However, these benefits are accompanied by a set of challenges in terms of data sync inconsistency, data transformation, interface issues, data incompatibility, limited vendor support, etc. Invariably, companies are looking for alternate options to building ATS API integrations in-house and are adopting unified APIs like Knit to outsource the same. Knit’s ATS API helps companies to:

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• Integrate once and connect with all major ATS applications
• Ensure the highest level of security during data transmission, when at rest, without any data storage in servers
• Normalize data across ATS applications to ensure compatibility for use
• Monitor integration performance and log all errors in detail with a single dashboard access for all API calls, requests
• Eliminate the need for a polling architecture with webhooks based data sync
• Access any non-standard data you need, but are not included in the common data model
• Leverage automatic retry mechanism to address rate limiting challenges

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Connect with one of our experts to discover how Knit’s ATS API can serve your ATS integration needs.

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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. 

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However, the true value of accounting applications can only be unleashed when they can seamlessly integrate and communicate with other applications used by an organization. The connection can be internal, where companies integrate their accounting applications with other tools they use like CRM, ERP, Marketing, etc. At the same time, companies may leverage customer-facing or external integrations to connect their product or give their product the ability to read and write data from the accounting applications their customers use. Let’s look at a few examples for greater understanding:

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Internal accounting API integration: Integrating CRM and accounting software for accurate and accelerated invoicing and revenue realization

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By connecting the CRM and accounting software, companies can ensure that as soon as an opportunity status is updated as closed or won in the CRM, a new account gets created in the accounting software. All relevant details captured in the CRM are automatically updated in the accounting software, including the billing details, amount, etc. to ensure that the invoices are sent and payment is collected in a timely manner with accurate billing. 

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Customer-facing accounting API integration: Expense management companies can leverage accounting API integration to facilitate bi-directional sync of expenses 

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Companies that offer expense management services can connect with their customer’s accounting software via accounting API integration. This integration allows for seamless, bi-directional synchronization of expense data, ensuring that all expenses submitted on the expense management platform are automatically reflected in the customer's accounting system. Additionally, any updates or comments made by relevant stakeholders on the accounting software are captured and mirrored in the expense management platform, enabling efficient data flow and streamlined operations.

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Hence, accounting API integration can have a direct impact on a company’s profitability, customer success and much more. However, if not managed effectively, it can also lead to productivity loss and poor employee experience. Thus, selecting the right integration methodology is integral.

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Read more: 14 Best SaaS Integration Platforms - 2024

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This article aims to equip developers with a thorough understanding of the critical role accounting API integration plays in business. It covers the essentials of building and managing these integrations, explores common challenges, and offers best practices. Additionally, it provides valuable tips for enhancing security, troubleshooting errors, and more, all designed to accelerate your accounting API integration journey.

Benefits of Accounting API Integration

Let’s start with decoding some of the top benefits of using accounting API integration and the reasons why most organizations are consolidating their efforts towards building or adopting them:

Ensure accuracy in financial data exchange

Maintaining accuracy in financial data is crucial for ensuring that all accounting-related tasks are executed flawlessly. By integrating accounting software with other tools that generate financial data, organizations can eliminate the risk of manual errors. For example, a minor mistake like a misplaced decimal in a billing amount or an incorrect email address for invoice delivery can lead to significant financial losses, potentially costing millions. Accounting API integration mitigates these risks, ensuring that financial workflows are precise and free from human error.

Automate financial workflows for faster cash realization

Beyond accuracy, accounting API integration streamlines and automates financial processes, speeding up revenue realization. By automating the exchange of data across stakeholders—such as in billing, invoicing, and transaction updates—the integration reduces the time required for these tasks. This near real-time synchronization accelerates the entire financial workflow, leading to quicker cash flow and improved operational efficiency.

Accelerate customer closure and retention rates

For customer-facing businesses, offering accounting API integrations can be a game-changer. Today’s customers expect seamless connectivity between the various applications they use and often expect the vendors or product providers to take the onus of making it happen. Providing robust API integrations can set your product apart from competitors, helping you close deals faster. Additionally, once customers experience the convenience of automated data exchange between your product and the integrated accounting software, they’re more likely to renew contracts and become loyal, long-term users, boosting customer retention rates.

Expand product use cases

Accounting API integration also broadens your product’s applicability across different market segments. Companies of varying sizes, sectors, and needs often use different accounting software. By offering integrations with a wide range of accounting applications, you can expand your product’s use cases and appeal to a broader audience. This approach not only simplifies market penetration but also accelerates growth across diverse market segments.

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Read more: What is API integration? (The Complete Guide)

Accounting API Data Models Explained

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. 

Read more: Accounting Data Models

Learn more about accounting data models here. 

References

These include any accounts, contacts or items that are involved in an accounting transaction, to clarify who is selling, who is buying and the product that is being bought or sold. 

Items

Items refer to the goods that are involved in a transaction. An item can be a product or a service, depending on the company offering the same, and includes information on its price, along with details on the purchase account as well as the sales account. 

Purchase Order

A purchase order (PO) is a formal record of request for a particular product or a service between a seller and a buyer. POs are generally generated for bulk orders and contain information about the item and details about the seller and buyer accounts. A PO precedes the invoicing stage and is issued by a customer sharing the details of the intended purchase and the price specifications. Based on the PO and the final negotiations, the seller disburses the final invoice for payment. In addition to basic details, it contains more information on the item under consideration as well as the status. While an important document, it doesn’t impact the accounting ledger of a company, which is usually dependent on the invoice. See docs

Credit Notes

Credit notes are an accounts payable transaction. It is issued by the seller as a refund or credit to the customer and contains details about how the credit is owed. In addition to the amount owed, the note also contains description of the item that is owed, details of the customer and the account and the status. It is generally used as a means to rectify errors, returns, or overpayments for any sales transaction. This credit note can be used by customers against any future invoice to reduce the overall due amount. 

Vendor Credit

It is similar to a credit note, but is generated and placed with the customer, making it an accounts receivable transaction. Containing similar information as the credit note, it is held by customers and contains details about how much credit is owed to the customer, the vendor who owes the credit and the account. 

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

Bill

A bill contains the same information as the invoice, but is a document that is used on the customer side. It is a request for payment and is used when a customer owes money to a business for a product or service as a part of a transaction. 

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. 

Balance Sheets

Balance sheets form a part of the accounting reports that all companies are required to maintain. It generally captures the assets, liabilities and equity for a company, where assets are equal to the liabilities and equity. It is meant to capture and communicate the financial health and growth of the company from time to time. For each asset, liability and equity, a balance sheet captures the date on which the same was recorded, in addition to the value in local currency or dollar terms. 

Income Statement

Also known as profit and loss statements, these capture the total income for a company as well as the total expenses, including cost of sales, operating and other non-operating expenses. Based on these core values, the income statement also carries key fields like gross profit (total income-cost of sales), net income (gross profit-total expenses), net operating income (total income-operating expenses). 

Cash Flow Statement

A cash flow statement maintains the records of the business critical activities, including operating activities (cash generated from products or services offered), investing activities (cash generated from investments, asset transactions and loans) and financing activities (cost of debt, equity and dividends). A cash flow statement captures the value of cash (in local currency/ dollar value) at the beginning as well as at the end of the reporting period. 

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.

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. 

Accounting API Integration Best Practices for Developers

With a solid understanding of the benefits and data models associated with accounting API integration, it’s essential to delve into some best practices that developers can employ to streamline the integration process and optimize efficiency.

Adopt a scoring framework for Accounting API prioritization

Prioritizing which accounting APIs to integrate first is crucial, especially when the integration process is being managed in-house with limited engineering resources. To effectively prioritize, developers should implement a scoring framework that evaluates and ranks accounting APIs based on various criteria.

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The most critical factor in this framework is the internal or customer-facing demands, as these directly impact the business's operational efficiency and customer satisfaction. Accounting APIs that fulfill immediate business needs should naturally take precedence. Within those integrations which have  high demand, choose those which are demanded by a higher number of customers, especially those which are in the mid to large scale business size. However, beyond just the demand, several other factors should be considered:

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• Public API Availability: Prioritize APIs which have publicly available endpoints and are widely used, as these are likely to have robust support, frequent updates, and a larger community for troubleshooting.
• Ease of Documentation: APIs with comprehensive, well-organized documentation should be prioritized to minimize the learning curve and integration time. Clear documentation also facilitates smoother knowledge transfer among team members.
• Preferred API Format: Consider APIs that use the preferred data formats (e.g., JSON, XML) and communication protocols (e.g., REST, SOAP) that align with your existing infrastructure, as this can reduce the need for additional data transformation processes.
• Authentication Methodologies: Prioritize APIs with secure, industry-standard authentication methods (e.g., OAuth2, API keys), which are already understood by developers in-house and ensure the safety of your data and comply with regulatory requirements.

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By scoring and prioritizing APIs based on these criteria, developers can create a more organized and efficient integration roadmap, where the most critical and beneficial integrations are completed first, driving value for the business and its customers.

Explore all alternatives for building and maintaining Accounting API integrations

While traditionally, organizations have preferred to manage accounting API integrations in-house to maintain control over source code and customization, the growing complexity and scale of integrations require developers to consider alternative approaches. Before committing to a do-it-yourself (DIY) approach, it's crucial to explore other tools and solutions that can simplify and accelerate the integration process.

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For internal integrations, where the goal is to connect accounting software with other business tools like CRM systems, using an Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) or workflow automation tool can be highly effective. These platforms offer pre-built connectors and workflows, reducing the need for custom development and enabling quicker deployment.

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Read more: Unified API vs Workflow Automation: Which One Should You Choose?

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For customer-facing integrations, businesses can leverage embedded iPaaS or unified API solutions. Embedded iPaaS provides no-code or low-code options that allow companies to build and maintain integrations with minimal coding effort. Unified APIs, on the other hand, are gaining popularity due to their ability to manage integrations within a specific category at scale. These solutions offer a single API that can connect to multiple services, simplifying the integration process and providing a more scalable approach to managing multiple connections.

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Read more: What Should You Look For in A Unified API Platform?

Leverage automated testing

Testing is a critical component of building and managing accounting API integrations, and it must be a continuous process rather than a one-time effort. As API providers release new versions or updates, or as your application evolves, these changes can impact the integration workflow, consistency, and quality.

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To maintain the reliability and integrity of these integrations, developers should embrace automated testing. Automation not only reduces the burden on engineering teams but also enables regular, scheduled tests that can proactively catch issues before they escalate. Automated tests can be configured to run at specific intervals or triggered by events like code changes, ensuring that any potential problems are identified and addressed promptly.

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Developers can also utilize sandboxes and dedicated API test environments essential for simulating real-world scenarios without affecting production systems. These environments allow developers to experiment with new integrations, validate updates, and conduct thorough testing in a controlled setting. This approach helps in identifying potential issues early, reducing the risk of disruptions in live environments.

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In addition to automated testing, implementing robust monitoring and logging mechanisms is crucial. Real-time monitoring can detect anomalies or errors as they occur, providing immediate alerts to developers. Comprehensive logging captures detailed information about the system's behavior, enabling developers to diagnose and fix issues quickly. This proactive approach ensures that the integration remains stable and performance over time.

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Testing isn't just about identifying integration errors or mitigating failures. It's also about ensuring consistent performance over time. Developers must continuously track critical metrics such as latency, response time, availability, and API consumption. These metrics are vital indicators of the system's health and can reveal underlying issues that may not manifest as traditional failures. For instance, a gradual increase in response time might not cause an immediate failure, but it could degrade the user experience over time.

Create a robust GTM strategy for customer facing integrations

When offering accounting API integrations as part of a customer-facing product or service, developing a well-thought-out go-to-market (GTM) strategy is crucial for success. This strategy should encompass everything from pricing models to marketing efforts, ensuring that the integration is both attractive to customers and profitable for the business.

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The first step in your GTM plan is to establish a clear monetization or pricing strategy for your integration. You need to decide how the integration will be offered to your customers. Consider factors such as the perceived value of the integration, the competitive landscape, and your overall business goals when deciding the pricing. Some potential models include:

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• Premium Plan Add-On: Offer the integration as an exclusive feature available to customers who subscribe to a higher-tier plan. This can drive upgrades and increase overall revenue.
• Freemium Model: Provide basic integration features for free while charging for advanced functionalities. This approach can attract a broad user base while still monetizing through premium features.
• Standalone Paid Integration: Offer the integration as an additional service at a separate cost, allowing customers to purchase it as needed. This model is particularly effective if the integration provides significant value or if it's not essential for all users.

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Once the pricing strategy is established, it's vital to create comprehensive collateral and documentation to help customers make the most of the integration. Detailed self-service user guides, FAQs, and troubleshooting resources should be readily available to ensure a smooth onboarding process. Additionally, consider offering video tutorials or webinars to demonstrate the integration's capabilities and answer common questions.

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Marketing the integration you are offering effectively is another critical component of your GTM strategy. Develop targeted marketing collateral that highlights the unique benefits of your integration and how it can solve specific pain points for your customers. This could include case studies, white papers, and customer testimonials that showcase the real-world impact of the integration. In addition to creating content, plan and execute marketing campaigns to promote the integration. 

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Finally, ensure that your sales teams are well-equipped to sell the integration. This includes training them on the integration's features, benefits, and pricing, as well as how to effectively incorporate it into their sales pitches. Provide them with demo environments where they can showcase the integration in action, allowing potential customers to see the value firsthand.

Types of 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. 

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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.  

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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

Accounting API Use Cases: Real-World Examples

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. 

Common Accounting API Integration Challenges 

Accounting API integration offers numerous benefits and use cases for organizations. However, it also presents a unique set of challenges that developers and customer success teams must navigate. Here’s a closer look at some of the most significant challenges.

Difficulty in building partnership with each Accounting API

One of the primary challenges is gaining access to accounting APIs. Not all accounting software offers open or publicly available APIs. While some may have limited access, the general requirement involves establishing one-on-one partnerships with API providers. This process can be fraught with obstacles, such as extensive security checks, lengthy onboarding procedures, and highly technical NDAs. Some providers may offer integration support only once, without ongoing assistance, or attach a significant cost to access, which may escalate with each additional customer. Additionally, forming and maintaining partnerships with multiple API providers can become operationally burdensome and unsustainable over time.

Heavy engineering investment and poor developer experience

Developing, maintaining, and managing accounting API integrations is a resource-intensive endeavor that demands significant engineering investment. Developers may find themselves dedicating considerable time and effort to tasks that do not directly contribute to the product lifecycle. For example, creating each integration can take an average of four weeks and cost around $10,000. This repetitive work can lead to frustration, resulting in a poor developer experience, as it often fails to leverage their technical expertise effectively. Moreover, if developers lack the specific skills needed for integration, the process can become sluggish, leading to delays in go-to-market timelines.

Limited scope for scalability

Scalability is a significant concern, particularly when building one-on-one integrations, whether in-house or using an integration tool. With the number of accounting software options exceeding triple digits, each customer may use a different platform, requiring developers to create integrations for each one. The time and financial investment needed to achieve this level of integration raises questions about the overall scalability of the approach. Furthermore, with multiple competing priorities, accounting API integrations may be deprioritized, further hindering scalability.

Poor data sync frequency and integration quality

Maintaining consistent integration performance is a major challenge for many developers. Factors such as data sync frequency, the ability to handle large data loads, and latency all influence integration performance and user experience. Ensuring real-time data sync and reliable scalability, regardless of data load, demands substantial time, investment, and testing infrastructure—resources that are often in short supply.

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Read more: How to ensure guaranteed scalability in data sync

Hard to access and understand Accounting API documentation

Even after securing API partnerships and convincing engineering teams of the importance of integrations, API documentation remains a core challenge. Not all APIs offer easily accessible or publicly available documentation. When documentation is available, it is often difficult to understand, written in technical language that may not align with developers’ expertise, or outdated, failing to reflect recent updates or API versions. This makes it extremely difficult for developers to effectively utilize the documentation, which is essential for successful integration.

Changing API versions and backward compatibility

Like other software, accounting applications undergo regular updates, resulting in multiple API versions. While these updates aim to enhance performance and user experience, they can disrupt the integration landscape. If developers do not keep pace with changing API versions, it can lead to degraded integration performance or even complete failure in extreme cases. These issues can also negatively impact the performance of your application. Consequently, maintaining backward compatibility becomes a significant challenge for developers, requiring constant vigilance and adaptation.

Building Your First Accounting Integration with Knit: Step-by-Step Guide

Knit provides a unified Accounting API that streamlines the integration of Accounting solutions. Instead of connecting directly with multiple Accounting APIs, Knit allows you to connect with top providers like ClearBooks, Dynamic 365 Accounting, Freshbooks, Netsuite Accounting, Quickbooks, Workday Accounting API and many others through a single integration.

Learn more about the benefits of using a unified API.

Getting started with Knit is simple. In just 5 steps, you can embed multiple Accounting integrations into your App.

Steps Overview:

1. Create a Knit Account: Sign up for Knit to get started with their unified API. You will be taken through a getting started flow.
2. Select Category: Select Accounting from the list of available option on the Knit dashboard
3. Register Webhook: Since one of the use cases of Accounting integrations is to sync data at frequent intervals, Knit supports scheduled data syncs for this category. Knit operates on a push based sync model, i.e. it reads data from the source system and pushes it to you over a webhook, so you don’t have to maintain a polling infrastructure at your end. In this step, Knit expects you to tell us the webhook over which it needs to push the source data.
4. Set up Knit UI to start integrating with APPs: In this step you get your API key and integrate with the Accounting APP of your choice from the frontend.
5. Fetch data and make API calls: That’s it! It’s time to start syncing data and making API calls and take advantage of Knit unified APIs and its data models. 

For detailed integration steps with the unified Accounting API, visit:

• Getting started with Knit

Knit's Accounting API vs. Direct Connector APIs: A Comparison

Presenting below a detailed comparison of building and managing integrations following two alternative approaches, i.e. in-house using direct connector APIs or by leveraging Knit’s unified accounting API.  

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Read more: Build vs Buy: The Best Approach to SaaS Integrations

Security Considerations for Accounting API Integrations

Accounting platforms handle critical financial data, making them prime targets for security breaches. Consequently, businesses must prioritize robust security measures when developing and managing accounting API integrations. Below is an overview of key security risks associated with accounting API integrations:

• Unauthorized Access: Without proper authentication and authorization mechanisms, accounting APIs are susceptible to malicious access, potentially leading to significant system disruptions.
• Broken Authentication Tokens: If authentication tokens are not securely generated, stored, and transmitted, attackers may hijack user sessions, gaining unauthorized control over active sessions.
• Injection Attacks: Techniques like SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS) allow attackers to manipulate input data, executing malicious code in database queries and accessing or modifying sensitive information.
• Data Exposure: Insecure transmission protocols, unencrypted data, inadequate data masking, and validation can result in data leaks and unauthorized access.
• Rate Limiting and Denial of Service (DoS) Attacks: Excessive requests can overwhelm the system, leading to service disruptions and reduced availability.
• Third-Party Dependencies: APIs from third-party vendors with weak security postures can introduce vulnerabilities, affecting the entire system.
• Human Error: Misconfigurations or accidental exposure of API keys by humans can lead to serious security breaches.

Understanding these risks is essential for developers and business leaders to implement effective security measures, such as:

Robust Accounting API authentication methods

Authentication and authorization are crucial for safeguarding accounting APIs. Authentication verifies a user’s identity, while authorization determines their access level. Depending on specific use cases, developers can choose from various authentication methods:

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• OAuth: Securely authorizes third-party access
• Bearer tokens: Provides time-bound access
• API key: Utilizes static, long-lived secret keys
• Basic Auth: Combines username and password
• JWT: Uses self-contained access tokens

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Choosing the appropriate authentication method is fundamental to maintaining the security and integrity of data exchanged between systems.

Secure transmission with HTTPS and encryption

Securing data transmission is just as important as secure access. Developers should employ techniques like HTTPS, which uses Transport Layer Security (TLS) or its predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), to encrypt data before transmission. This ensures that only the intended recipient can decrypt the data.

Input validation 

Input validation is critical to protect accounting API integration against injection attacks mentioned in the preceding section. This involves thoroughly monitoring and cleaning any incoming data, i.e. sanitizing the inputs to remove potentially harmful scripts or queries. 

Monitoring and logging of Accounting API traffic

Monitoring API traffic enables real-time detection of anomalous activities, such as sudden spikes in traffic or unusual access patterns. Logging all API interactions is equally important for forensic analysis, compliance, and auditing. Combined, these practices support real-time alerts when security thresholds are breached and provide mitigation strategies based on historical records.

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Read more: API Monitoring and Logging

Accounting API integration decommissioning 

Security doesn’t end with active use; it extends to the decommissioning of APIs. Ensuring that APIs are retired when deprecated, implementing version control, and enforcing deprecation policies help mitigate security risks. Regularly audit and monitor API usage and access controls to stay ahead of potential threats.

Regular audits and testing

Conducting regular security audits and penetration testing is essential. Audits help review API design, architecture, and implementation for security weaknesses and best practice violations. Penetration testing simulates cyberattacks to identify vulnerabilities and potential entry points, ensuring that your accounting API integrations remain secure.

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By understanding and addressing these security considerations, organizations can significantly reduce the risk of breaches, ensuring that their accounting APIs are both secure and reliable.

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Read more: API Security 101: Best Practices, How-to Guides, Checklist, FAQs

TL:DR

As the need for seamless financial data exchange across software platforms grows, accounting API integration has become vital for organizations. These integrations offer enhanced accuracy, productivity, automation of financial workflows, and broader market reach, making them increasingly desirable. From cash flow management to budgeting, forecasting, timely invoicing, and vendor management, numerous use cases are driving companies to adopt accounting APIs for both internal operations and customer-facing integrations.

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However, the integration process is often challenging, making the development and maintenance of these integrations a daunting task for developers. They require significant engineering resources, and a DIY approach with connectors can be difficult to scale, maintain, and can also be costly. To address these challenges, companies are turning to unified APIs like Knit’s accounting API. Knit’s Unified Accounting API is designed to ensure the highest level of data protection during the transfer of sensitive financial information. It also features a no-polling, webhooks-driven architecture that enables real-time data transfer. Additionally, Knit simplifies development with consistent authentication, pagination, rate limiting, and automated issue detection.

Connect with one of our experts to discover how Knit’s accounting API can be tailored to your specific needs.

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Organizations today adopt and deploy various applications, to make their work simpler, more efficient and enhance overall productivity. However, in most cases, the process of connecting with these applications is complex, time consuming and an ineffective use of the engineering team. Fortunately, over the years, different approaches or platforms have seen a rise, enabling companies to integrate applications for their internal use or to create customer facing interfaces. 

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In this article, we will discuss the different options available for companies to integrate with SaaS applications. We will detail the diverse approaches for different needs and use cases, along with a comparative analysis between the different platforms within each approach to help you make an informed choice. 

Types of SaaS integrations

As mentioned above, particularly, there are two types of SaaS integrations that most organizations use or need. Here’s a quick understanding of both:

Internal use integrations

Internal use integrations are generally created between two applications that a company uses or between internal systems to facilitate seamless and data flow. Consider that a company uses BambooHR as its HRMS systems and stores all its HR data there, while using ADPRun to manage all of its payroll functions. An internal integration will help connect these two applications to facilitate information flow and data exchange between them. 

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For instance, with integration, any new employee that is onboarded in BambooHR will be automatically reflected in ADPRun with all relevant details to process compensation at the end of the pay period. Similarly, any employees who leave will be automatically deleted, ensuring that the data across platforms being used internally is consistent and up to date. 

Customer facing integrations

On the other hand, customer-facing integrations are intrinsically created between your product and the applications used by your customer to facilitate seamless data exchange for maximum efficiency in operations. It ensures that all data updated in your customer’s application is synced with your product with high reliability and speed. 

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Let’s say that you offer candidate communication services for your customers. Using customer-facing integrations, you can easily connect with the ATS application that your customer uses to ensure that whenever there is any movement in the application status for any candidate, you promptly communicate to the candidate on the next steps. This will not only ensure regular flow of communication with the candidate, but will also eliminate any missed opportunities with real time data sync. 

Best SaaS integration platforms for different use cases

With differences in purposes and use cases, the best approach and platforms for different integrations also varies. Put simply, most internal integrations require automation of workflow and data exchange, while customer facing ones need more sophisticated functionalities. Even with the same purpose, the needs of developers and organizations can be varied, creating the need for diverse platforms which suit varying requirements. In the following section, we will discuss the three major kinds of integration platforms, including workflow automation tools, embedded iPaaS and unified APIs with specific examples within each. 

Internal integrations: Workflow automation tools/ iPaaS 

Essentially, internal integration tools are expected to streamline the workflow and data exchange between internally used applications for an organization to improve efficiency, accuracy and process optimization. Workflow automation tools or iPaaS are the best SaaS integration platforms to support this purpose. They come with easy to use drag and drop functionalities, along with pre-built connectors and available SDKs to easily power internal integrations. Some of the leaders in the space are:

Workato

An enterprise grade automation platform, Workato facilitates workflow automation and integration, enabling businesses to seamlessly connect different applications for internal use. 

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Benefits of Workato

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• High number of pre-built connectors, making integration with any tool seamless
• Enterprise grade security functionalities, like encryption, role-based access, audit logs for data protection
• No-code/ low code iPaaS experience; option to make own connectors with simple SDKs

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Limitations of Workato 

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• Expensive for organizations with budget constraints
• Limited offline functionality

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Ideal for enterprise-level customers that need to integrate with 1000s of applications with a key focus on security. 

Zapier

An iSaaS (integration software as a service) tool, Zapier allows software users to integrate with applications and automate tasks which are relatively simple, with Zaps. 

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Benefits of Zapier

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• Easily accessible and can be used by non-technical teams to automate simple tasks via Zaps using a no code UI
• Provides 7000+ pre-built connectors and automation templates
• Has recently introduced a co-pilot which allows users to build their own Zaps using natural language

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Limitations of Zapier

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• Runs the risk of introducing security risks into the system
• Relatively simple and may not support complex or highly sophisticated use cases

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Ideal for building simple workflow automations which can be developed and managed by all teams at large, using its vast connector library. 

Mulesoft

Mulesoft is a typical iPaaS solution that facilitates API-led integration, which offers easy to use tools to help organizations automate routine and repetitive tasks.

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Benefits of Mulesoft

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• High focus on integration with Salesforce and Salesforce products, facilitating automation with CRM effectively
• Offers data integration, API management, and analytics with Anytime Platform
• Provides a powerful API gateway for security and policy management

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Limitations of Mulesoft

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• Requires a steep learning curve as it is technically complex
• Higher on the pricing, making it unsuitable for smaller organizations

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Ideal for more complex integration scenarios with enterprise-grade features, especially for integration with Salesforce and allied products. 

Dell Boomi

With experience of powering integrations for multiple decades, Dell Boomi provides tools for iPaaS, API management and master data management. 

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Benefits of Dell Boomi

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• Comes with a simple UI and multiple pre-built connectors for popular applications
• Can help with diverse use cases for different teams
• Adopted by several large enterprises due to their experience in the space

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Limitations of Dell Boomi

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• Requires more technical expertise than some other workflow automation tools
• Support is limited to simpler integrations and may not be able to support complex scenarios

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Ideal for diverse use cases and comes with a high level of credibility owing to the experience garnered over the years. 

SnapLogic

The final name in the workflow automation/ iPaaS list is SnapLogic which comes with a low-code interface, enabling organizations to quickly design and implement application integrations. 

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Benefits of SnapLogic

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• Simple UI and low-code functionality ensures that users from technical and non-technical backgrounds can leverage it
• Comes with a robust catalog of pre-built connectors to integrate fast and effectively
• Offers on-premise, cloud based on hybrid models of integration

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Limitations of SnapLogic

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• May be a bit too expensive for small size organizations with budget constraints
• Scalability and optimal performance might become an issue with high data volume

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Ideal for organizations looking for automation workflow tools that can be used by all team members and supports functionalities, both online and offline. 

Customer facing integrations: Embedded iPaaS & Unified API

While the above mentioned SaaS integration platforms are ideal for building and maintaining integrations for internal use, organizations looking to develop customer facing integrations need to look further. Companies can choose between two competing approaches to build customer facing SaaS integrations, including embedded iPaaS and unified API. We have outlined below the key features of both the approaches, along with the leading SaaS integration platforms for each. 

Embedded iPaaS

An embedded iPaaS can be considered as an iPaaS solution which is embedded within a product, enabling companies to build customer-facing integrations between their product and other applications. This enables end customers to seamlessly exchange data and automate workflows between your application and any third party application they use. Both the companies and the end customers can leverage embedded iPaaS to build integration and automate workflows. Here are the top embedded iPaaS that companies use as SaaS integrations platforms. 

Workato Embedded

In addition to offering an iPaaS solution for internal integrations, Workato embedded offers embedded iPaaS for customer-facing integrations. It is a low-code solution and also offers API management solutions.

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Benefits of Workato Embedded

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• Highly extensive connector library with 1200+ pre-built connectors and built-in workflow actions
• Enterprise grade embedded iPaaS with sophisticated security and compliance standards

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Limitations of Workato Embedded

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• Requires customers to build each customer facing integration separately, making it resource and time intensive
• Lacks a standard data model, making data transformation and normalization complicated
• Cost ineffective for smaller companies and offers limited offline connectivity

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Ideal for large companies that wish to offer a highly robust integration library to their customers to facilitate integration at scale. 

Paragon

Built exclusively for the embedded iPaaS use case, Paragon enables users to ship and scale native integrations.

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Benefits of Paragon

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• Offers effective monitoring features, including event and failure alerts and logs, and enables users to access the full underlying API (developer friendly)
• Facilitates on-premise deployment, especially, for users with highly sensitive data and privacy needs
• Ensures fully managed authentication and user management with the Paragon SDK

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Limitations of Paragon

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• Fewer connectors are readily available, as compared to market average
• Pushes customers to create their own integrations from scratch in certain cases

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Ideal for companies looking for greater monitoring capabilities along with on-premise deployment options in the embedded iPaaS. 

Pandium

Pandium is an embedded iPaaS which also allows users to embed an integration marketplace within their product. 

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Benefits of Pandium

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• The embedded integration marketplace (which can be white-labeled) allows customers and prospects to find all integrations at one place
• Helps companies outsource the development and management of integrations
• Provides key integration analytics

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Limitations of Pandium

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• Limited catalog of connectors as compared to other competitors
• Requires technical expertise to use, blocking engineering bandwidth
• Forces users to build one integration at a time, making the scalability limited

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Ideal for companies that require an integration marketplace which is highly customizable and have limited bandwidth to build and manage integrations in-house. 

Tray Embedded

As an embedded iPaaS solution, Tray Embedded allows companies to embed its iPaaS solution into their product to provide customer-facing integrations. 

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Benefits of Tray Embedded

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• Provides a large number of connectors and also enables customers to request and get a new connector built on extra charges
• Offers an API management solution to to design and manage API endpoints
• Provides Merlin AI, an autonomous agent, powering simple automations via a chat interface

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Limitations of Tray Embedded

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• Limited ability to automatically detect issues and provide remedial solutions, pushing engineering teams to conduct troubleshooting
• Limited monitoring features and implementation processes require a workaround

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Ideal for companies with custom integration requirements and those that want to achieve automation through text. 

Cyclr

Another solution solely limited to the embedded iPaaS space, Cyclr facilitates low-code integration workflows for customer-facing integrations. 

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Benefits of Cyclr

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• Enables companies to use seamlessly design a new workflow with templates, without heavy coding
• Provides connectors for 500+ applications and is growing
• Offers an out of the box embedded marketplace or launch functionality that allows end users to deploy integrations

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Limitations of Cyclr

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• Comes with a steep learning curve 
• Limited built-in workflow actions for each connector, where complex integrations might require additional endpoints, the feasibility for which is limited
• Lack of visibility into the system sending API requests, making monitoring and debugging issues a challenge

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Ideal for companies looking for centralized integration management within a standardized integration ecosystem. 

Unified API

The next approach to powering customer-facing integrations is leveraging a unified API. As an aggregated API, unified API platforms help companies easily integrate with several applications within a category (CRM, ATS, HRIS) using a single connector. Leveraging unified API, companies can seamlessly integrate both vertically and horizontally at scale. 

Merge

As a unified API, Merge enables users to add hundreds of integrations via a single connector, simplifying customer-facing integrations. 

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Benefits of Merge

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• High coverage within the integrations categories; 7+ integration categories currently available
• Integration observability features with fully searchable logs, dashboard and automated issue detection 
• Access to custom objects and fields like field mapping, authenticated passthrough requests

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Limitations of Merge

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• Limited flexibility for frontend auth component and limited customization capabilities
• Requires maintaining a polling infrastructure for managing data syncs
• Webhooks based data sync doesn’t guarantee scale and data delivery

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Ideal to build multiple integrations together with out-of-the-box features for managing integrations.

Finch

A leader in the unified API space for employment systems, Finch helps build 1:many integrations with HRIS and payroll applications. 

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Benefits of Finch

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• One of the highest number of integrations available in the HRIS and Payroll integration categories
• Facilitates standardized data for all employment data across top HRIS and Payroll providers, like Quickbooks, ADP, and Paycom
• Allows users to read and write benefits data, including payroll deductions and contributions programmatically

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Limitations of Finch

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• Limited number of integration categories available
• Offers  “assisted” integrations, requiring a Finch team member or associate to manually sync data on your behalf
• Low data fields support limited data fields available in the source system

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Ideal for companies looking to build integrations with employment systems and high levels of data standardization. 

Apideck

Another option in the unified API category is Apideck, which offers integrations in more categories than the above two mentioned SaaS integration platforms in this space. 

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Benefits of Apideck

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• Higher number of categories (inc. Accounting, CRM, File Storage, HRIS, ATS, Ecommerce, Issue Tracking, POS, SMS) than many other alternatives and is quick to add new integrations
• Popular for its integration marketplace, known as Apideck ecosystem
• Offers best in class onboarding experience and responsive customer support

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Limitations of Apideck

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• Limited number of live integrations within each category
• Limited data sync capabilities; inability to access data beyond its own data fields

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Ideal for companies looking for a wider range of integration categories with an openness to add new integrations to its suite. 

Knit

A unified API, Knit facilitates integrations with multiple categories with a single connector for each category; an exponentially growing category base, richer than other alternatives.

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Benefits of Knit

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• Seamless data normalization and transformation at 10x speed with custom data fields for non-standard data models
• The only SaaS integration platform which doesn’t store a copy of the end customer’s data, ensuring superior privacy and security (as all requests are pass through in nature)
• 100% events-driven webhook architecture, which ensures data sync in real time, without the need to pull data periodically (no polling architecture needed)
• Guaranteed scalability and delivery, irrespective of the data load, offering a 99.99% SLA
• Custom data models, sync frequency and auth component for greater flexibility
• Offers RCA and resolution to identify and fix integration issues before a customer can report it
• Ensures complete visibility into the integration activity, including the ability to identify which records were synced, ability to rerun syncs etc. 

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Ideal for companies looking for SaaS integration platforms with wide horizontal and vertical coverage, complete data privacy and don’t wish to maintain a polling infrastructure, while ensuring sync scalability and delivery. 

Best SaaS integration platforms: A comparative analysis

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TL:DR

Clearly SaaS integrations are the building blocks to connect and ensure seamless flow of data between applications. However, the route that organizations decide to take large depends on their use cases. While workflow automation or iPaaS makes sense for internal use integrations, an embedded iPaaS or a unified API approach will serve the purpose of building customer facing integrations. Within each approach, there are several alternatives available to choose from. While making a choice, organizations must consider:

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• The breadth (horizontal coverage/ categories) and depth (integrations within each category) that are available
• Security, authentication and authorization mechanisms
• Integration maintenance and management support
• Visibility into the integration activity along with intuitive issue detection and resolution
• The way data syncs work (events based or do they require an additional polling infrastructure)

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Depending on what you consider to be more valuable for your organization, you can go in for the right approach and the right option from within the 14 best SaaS integration platforms shared above. 

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QuickBooks is an easy-to-use accounting software that helps small and medium-sized businesses manage their finances. It offers tools for invoicing, tracking expenses, handling payroll, and preparing taxes, all in one place. 

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With QuickBooks Online APIs, whether you’re launching a new business or have been running one for years, managing your finances becomes easier and more efficient. 

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Key highlights of QuickBooks Online APIs:

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1. Easy Data Access: Helps to connect and access your financial data like transactions, invoices, and reports easily with other apps.

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2. Automation: Let’s you automate tasks like invoicing and expense tracking to save time and reduce errors.

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3. Custom Integration: You can easily integrate QuickBooks with other tools and create custom solutions to fit your business needs.

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4. Real-Time Sync: It helps you keep your data up-to-date across platforms with real-time synchronization.

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5. Strong Security: It helps you protect your financial data with secure authentication and authorization.

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6. Scalable: As your business grows, QuickBooks APIs can handle more transactions and complexity.

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7. Developer-Friendly: Clear documentation and support make it easier for developers to work with the APIs.

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8. Global Support: Works with different currencies, tax systems, and languages, making it great for businesses around the world.

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While we have covered the Quickbooks Online API in depth earlier, in this article, we'll provide an overview of the QuickBooks Online API endpoints.

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QuickBooks Online API Endpoints

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While there are several QuickBooks Online API endpoints, here are the most commonly used ones:

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1. Customer Endpoint (/customer)some text
   • /customer/{customer_id}/balance: Retrieve the current balance of a specific customer.
   • /customer/{customer_id}/creditmemo: Manage credit memos associated with a customer.
   • /customer/{customer_id}/estimate: Handle estimates or quotes for a customer.
2. Invoice Endpoint (/invoice)some text
   • /invoice/{invoice_id}/send: Send an invoice to a customer via email.
   • /invoice/{invoice_id}/payment: Retrieve payment details associated with a specific invoice.
   • /invoice/{invoice_id}/refundreceipt: Create or manage refund receipts for a specific invoice.
3. Payment Endpoint (/payment)some text
   • /payment/{payment_id}/apply: Apply a payment to specific invoices or other transactions.
   • /payment/{payment_id}/unapplied: Retrieve payments that have not yet been applied to invoices.
4. Sales Receipt Endpoint (/salesreceipt)some text
   • /salesreceipt/{salesreceipt_id}/email: Send a sales receipt to a customer via email.
   • /salesreceipt/{salesreceipt_id}/payment: Retrieve payment details related to a sales receipt.
5. Bill Endpoint (/bill)some text
   • /bill/{bill_id}/payment: Manage payments made against a specific bill.
   • /bill/{bill_id}/attachment: Attach documents, such as receipts, to a bill.
6. Vendor Endpoint (/vendor)some text
   • /vendor/{vendor_id}/purchaseorder: Manage purchase orders associated with a vendor.
   • /vendor/{vendor_id}/bill: Retrieve bills linked to a specific vendor.
7. Expense Endpoint (/purchase)some text
   • /purchase/{purchase_id}/receipt: Attach and manage receipts related to a specific purchase.
   • /purchase/{purchase_id}/payment: Manage payments made for specific purchases.
8. Account Endpoint (/account)some text
   • /account/{account_id}/balance: Retrieve the current balance for a specific account.
   • /account/{account_id}/transaction: List transactions associated with a specific account.
9. Item Endpoint (/item)some text
   • /item/{item_id}/inventory: Manage inventory levels for a specific item.
   • /item/{item_id}/sales: Track sales associated with a particular item.
10. Journal Entry Endpoint (/journalentry)some text
    • /journalentry/{journalentry_id}/line: Manage individual line items within a journal entry.
    • /journalentry/{journalentry_id}/reversal: Reverse a journal entry if needed.
11. Employee Endpoint (/employee)some text
    • /employee/{employee_id}/payroll: Manage payroll details and history for a specific employee.
    • /employee/{employee_id}/timeactivity: Retrieve time activities logged by a particular employee.
12. Time Activity Endpoint (/timeactivity)some text
    • /timeactivity/{timeactivity_id}/approve: Approve time entries submitted by employees or contractors.
    • /timeactivity/{timeactivity_id}/project: Associate time activities with specific projects or jobs.
13. Company Info Endpoint (/companyinfo)some text
    • /companyinfo/preferences: Retrieve or update company-level preferences, such as tax settings or currency.
    • /companyinfo/financialyear: Get details about the company's financial year, including start and end dates.

These endpoints offer more granular control and functionality, allowing developers to build more customized and detailed integrations with QuickBooks.

Here’s a detailed reference to all the QuickBooks Online APIs.

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QuickBooks Online APIs FAQs

Here are the frequently asked questions about QuickBooks Online APIs to help you get started:

1. How to integrate QuickBooks into a PHP codebase? Answer
2. Tracking Shopify Refunds as Payments in QuickBooks Online Answer
3. How to add custom tax to invoice? Answer
4. Is it possible to use intuit quickbooks online API without creating an app Answer
5. How do I link payments to invoices using the API Explorer? Answer

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Get started with QuickBooks Online API

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QuickBooks Online API access is available only for enterprise and developer tier accounts. If you're looking to integrate with various HRMS or recruitment APIs easily, consider using Knit. Knit offers a single API for connecting with all major HR integrations.

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To sign up for free, click here. To check the pricing, see our pricing page.

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PandaDoc is a simple platform for creating, sending, and signing documents like contracts and quotes. It helps businesses reduce paperwork, save time, and work more smoothly with templates and eSignatures.

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PandaDoc also provides APIs that let companies integrate its features into their own apps, automating document creation, managing templates, and handling eSignatures easily. This is especially useful for businesses that need to scale or customize their document processes. In this article, we will provide an overview of the Pandadoc API endpoints.

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Key features of PandaDoc APIs include:

1. Document Automation: They help to easily create and send documents programmatically, reducing manual tasks.
2. Template Management: They help to access and manage templates directly from your app or system.
3. eSignature Integration: They can be used to seamlessly add legally binding eSignatures to documents.
4. Real-time Tracking: They can be used to monitor document status with real-time notifications and updates.
5. Customizable Workflows: They help to tailor document workflows to fit your business needs.
6. CRM Integration: They can help you connect with popular tools like Salesforce, HubSpot, and others for smooth data flow.
7. Webhooks: They can also be used to get event notifications for document updates, status changes, and more.

These features allow businesses to automate and streamline their document processes effectively.

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Pandadoc API Endpoints

Here are the most commonly used Pandadoc API endpoints -

Documents

• GET https://api.pandadoc.com/public/v1/documents
• POST https://api.pandadoc.com/public/v1/documents
• GET https://api.pandadoc.com/public/v1/documents/{id}
• DELETE https://api.pandadoc.com/public/v1/documents/{id}
• POST https://api.pandadoc.com/public/v1/documents/{id}/send
• POST https://api.pandadoc.com/public/v1/documents/{id}/transfer-ownership
• POST https://api.pandadoc.com/public/v1/documents/{id}/attachments

Templates

• GET https://api.pandadoc.com/public/v1/templates
• GET https://api.pandadoc.com/public/v1/templates/{id}
• POST https://api.pandadoc.com/public/v1/templates
• DELETE https://api.pandadoc.com/public/v1/templates/{id}

Folders

• GET https://api.pandadoc.com/public/v1/folders
• POST https://api.pandadoc.com/public/v1/folders
• GET https://api.pandadoc.com/public/v1/folders/{id}
• PATCH https://api.pandadoc.com/public/v1/folders/{id}

Webhooks

• POST https://api.pandadoc.com/public/v1/webhooks
• DELETE https://api.pandadoc.com/public/v1/webhooks/{id}

Contacts

• GET https://api.pandadoc.com/public/v1/contacts
• POST https://api.pandadoc.com/public/v1/contacts
• GET https://api.pandadoc.com/public/v1/contacts/{id}
• PATCH https://api.pandadoc.com/public/v1/contacts/{id}
• DELETE https://api.pandadoc.com/public/v1/contacts/{id}

Users

• GET https://api.pandadoc.com/public/v1/users
• GET https://api.pandadoc.com/public/v1/users/{id}

Here’s a detailed reference to all the Pandadoc APIs.

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Pandadoc API FAQs

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Here are the frequently asked questions about Pandadoc APIs to help you get started:

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1. What is the limit of PandaDoc? Answer
2. How to getthe API key in PandaDoc? Answer
3. How many documents can I send with PandaDoc? Answer
4. Is PandaDoc legally binding? Answer
5. Can you send multiple documents in PandaDoc? Answer

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Find more FAQs here.

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Get started with Pandadoc API

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Pandadoc API is available for free testing in a sandbox environment and later has to be upgraded to an enterprise account for use in production. However, if you want to integrate with multiple e-signature APIs quickly, you can get started with Knit, one API for all top integrations.

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To sign up for free, click here. To check the pricing, see our pricing page.

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Dropbox Sign, formerly HelloSign, is an electronic signature platform allowing users to securely sign, send, and manage legally binding documents online. It can be integrated seamlessly with Dropbox and other cloud services, and simplifies workflows by enabling remote collaboration and reducing the need for physical paperwork. Ideal for businesses of all sizes, Dropbox Sign ensures compliance with global e-signature laws, offering a fast and reliable contract management and document processing solution.

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Dropbox Sign APIs enable developers to integrate electronic signature functionality directly into their applications. With easy-to-use endpoints, the API allows businesses to automate document workflows, request signatures, and track the status of agreements in real-time. It supports advanced features like template creation, embedded signing, and customizable branding, making it flexible for many use cases. The API also ensures security and compliance, providing audit trails and adhering to global e-signature standards like ESIGN and eIDAS.

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Key highlights of Dropbox Sign APIs include:

• Easy Integration: They simplify embedding e-signatures into websites or apps with minimal code.
• Embedded Signing: They allow users to sign documents directly within your app or site.
• Templates: They support reusable templates for recurring documents, improving workflow efficiency.
• Custom Branding: They also offer white-label options for branded signing experiences.
• Real-time Status Tracking: They provide real-time updates on document signing progress.
• Security & Compliance: They ensure documents meet global e-signature standards (ESIGN, eIDAS) with audit trails and secure encryption.
• Team Management: They support multi-user workflows and team-based access to documents.

In this article, we’ll provide an overview of the Dropbox Sign API endpoints.

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Dropbox API Endpoints

Here are the most commonly used Dropbox API endpoints:

Account

• GET /v3/account
• PUT /v3/account
• POST /v3/account/create
• POST /v3/account/verify

Signature Request

• GET /v3/signature_request/{signature_request_id}
• GET /v3/signature_request/list
• GET /v3/signature_request/files/{signature_request_id}
• GET /v3/signature_request/files_as_data_uri/{signature_request_id}
• GET /v3/signature_request/files_as_file_url/{signature_request_id}
• POST /v3/signature_request/send
• POST /v3/signature_request/send_with_template
• POST /v3/signature_request/bulk_send_with_template
• POST /v3/signature_request/remind/{signature_request_id}
• POST /v3/signature_request/release_hold/{signature_request_id}
• POST /v3/signature_request/update/{signature_request_id}
• POST /v3/signature_request/cancel/{signature_request_id}
• POST /v3/signature_request/remove/{signature_request_id}
• POST /v3/signature_request/create_embedded
• POST /v3/signature_request/create_embedded_with_template
• POST /v3/signature_request/bulk_create_embedded_with_template

Templates

• GET /v3/template/{template_id}
• GET /v3/template/list
• POST /v3/template/create
• POST /v3/template/create_embedded_draft
• POST /v3/template/delete/{template_id}
• GET /v3/template/files/{template_id}
• GET /v3/template/files_as_data_uri/{template_id}
• GET /v3/template/files_as_file_url/{template_id}
• POST /v3/template/update_files/{template_id}
• POST /v3/template/add_user/{template_id}
• POST /v3/template/remove_user/{template_id}

Bulk Send Job

• GET /v3/bulk_send_job/{bulk_send_job_id}
• GET /v3/bulk_send_job/list

Report

• POST /v3/report/create

Team

• GET /v3/team
• GET /v3/team/info
• GET /v3/team/members/{team_id}
• GET /v3/team/sub_teams/{team_id}
• POST /v3/team/create
• PUT /v3/team
• DELETE /v3/team/destroy
• PUT /v3/team/add_member
• POST /v3/team/remove_member

Unclaimed Draft

• POST /v3/unclaimed_draft/create
• POST /v3/unclaimed_draft/create_embedded
• POST /v3/unclaimed_draft/create_embedded_with_template
• POST  /v3/unclaimed_draft/edit_and_resend/{signature_request_id}

Embedded

• GET /v3/embedded/sign_url/{signature_id}
• POST /v3/embedded/edit_url/{template_id}

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Here’s a detailed reference to all the Dropbox API endpoints.

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Dropbox Sign API FAQs

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Here are the frequently asked questions about Dropbox Sign APIs to help you get started:

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1. What is the rate limit for Dropbox sign API? Answer
2. Get Embedded Sign URL is asking for client ID Answer
3. Dropbox sign refresh token getting expired after 1 hour Answer
4. Create Template API Error Answer
5. What is a best way to identify each document with its template after download Answer

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Find more FAQs here.

Get started with Dropbox Sign API

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Dropbox Sign API access is offered through various pricing plans: Essentials, Standard, and Premium. It also includes a test mode for trying out features before deploying them in production. For quick integration with multiple eSignature APIs, you can use Knit, a single API that connects to top SaaS platforms.

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To sign up for free, click here. To check the pricing, see our pricing page.

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