6 ways we’ve elevated our accounting integrations

Our team has been hard at work rolling out new features, capabilities, and general improvements for our Accounting Unified API. 

With a focus on enhancing critical accounting use cases and expanding our capabilities, we’re excited to introduce six powerful new features. 

Read on to discover what’s new and how you can start using each feature.

Leverage Idempotency when writing large amounts of accounting data

We now support idempotency for all POST accounting endpoints to prevent duplicate entries (and all the unnecessary headaches they create).

We recommend using idempotency for bigger tasks—like writing transaction or journal entry data—to prevent duplicate entries. 

To perform an idempotent request, simply include an idempotency key in each POST request. 

Note: Idempotency is available to all customers and is currently available in beta.‍

Use Selective Sync to optimize sync times when pulling invoices and/or payments

For many of our customers, accessing accounts receivable (AR) and accounts payable (AP) data in one model is beneficial, as it reduces the number of API calls they need to make. 

However, this approach isn’t useful for customers who only need data from either AR or AP, as it can lead to longer sync times and unnecessary data being pulled.

To address this, we've introduced a new selective sync filter.  It lets you pick and choose the AR and/or AP transactions you want to sync in a matter of clicks within the Merge Dashboard.

Sync general ledger transactions with your product exponentially faster

Our teams aren’t just focused on introducing new capabilities; we’re also committed to continuously improving existing ones. 

The General Ledger Transactions endpoint enables FP&A teams to pull all transactions posted to your customers’ general ledger through a single endpoint. 

But given the sheer volume of transaction data in your customers’ general ledgers (think millions of rows of data!), it can be difficult to continuously fetch it quickly.

Despite this challenge, we’ve improved the sync speeds for the endpoints across our accounting integrations. For example, the sync speed for QuickBooks Online has improved by 50x, while our NetSuite integration can now sync general transactions as much as 20x faster. 

https://www.merge.dev/blog/netsuite-api?blog-related=image

Use Remote Fields to access any custom data 

Remote fields let you read and write non-mapped fields to your customers' accounting platform. This feature is already supported for select ticketing and CRM integrations, and we’ve now expanded support to include NetSuite and Sage Intacct across key Common Models, including Journal Entry, Invoice, Payment, Contact, and more.

Some examples of how to use Remote Fields are: 

• Creating invoices with custom fields defined in your customers’ Netsuite instance
• Creating a contact with additional information outside of our common model
• Train your models with additional data to power more robust and personalized AI features

Apply vendor credits and/or credit notes with ease 

We’ve expanded our AR and AP use case functionality by supporting POST/ vendor credits and credit notes for NetSuite, Sage Intacct, Xero, and QuickBooks Online. These credits, often issued for returns, overpayments, or discounts, can now be linked directly to invoices. This streamlines your invoicing workflows and processes and improves tracking and reporting.

With this data, you can capture specific details like the credit amount, date, and the invoices the credit is applied to.

Reconcile transactions more smoothly with bank feeds

Last but not least, we’ve added two new common models to support Bank Feeds functionality: Bank Feed Accounts and Bank Feed Transactions.

Using these endpoints, your customers can automatically sync the transactions from your banking product with customers’ ERP systems. This helps account for the latest transactions more easily, and it both improves the customer experience and reduces human errors—as your customers no longer have to manually add the transaction data or use CSV uploads.

Common use cases for Bank Feeds include:

• Allowing your customer to reconcile card transactions in their ERP
• Enabling your banking product(s) to send cash information to your customer's ERP for regular reconciliation
• Creating records bills and payments for your customers in their ERP based off invoices and facilitate payments with their bank

We currently support Bank Feeds for NetSuite and Xero and will continue to roll this out for additional integrations.

Note: Bank Feeds is currently in beta for NetSuite and Xero. You can reach out to your dedicated customer success manager if you’d like to get early access.

https://www.merge.dev/blog/xero-api?blog-related=image

Final thoughts

We’re thrilled to bring these powerful new features to our Accounting Unified API. 

Whether you're optimizing sync times, improving the accuracy of your financial data, or unlocking new functionality, these features offer the flexibility and performance your accounting integrations need.

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