Get started with Bill Pay solution

View the core steps required to perform the initial setup for the Bill Pay solution

Journey overview

The diagram below represents the overall activity flow when using Bill Pay. You can manage bills, suppliers, and payment methods in different ways and order.

We will take you through each of these elements so that you can build the flow that suits you and your customers best.

Once you decide to build with Bill Pay, you need to configure Codat accordingly. Let's go through these requirements in detail.

Enable Bill Pay

1. Open the Codat Portal and sign in.
2. Click on Settings > Organizational settings > Products.
3. In the list of products, find the relevant version of Bill Pay (async or sync) and click Enable. Then, follow the on-screen prompt.

Configure Bill Pay

Data types

In the Codat Portal, navigate to Settings > Integrations > Data types. Enable the data types required for Bill Pay and set them to Fetch on first link:

Data source	Bill Pay (async)	Bill Pay (sync)
Accounting	bankAccounts bills billCreditNotes billPayments chartOfAccounts company paymentMethods suppliers taxRates trackingCategories	bankAccounts bills billPayments chartOfAccounts company paymentMethods suppliers

Configure the solution to refresh data when you need it by setting a synchronization frequency on the same screen. We recommend setting it to a daily or a monthly sync.

Manage data sources

In the Codat Portal, navigate to Settings > Integrations and click Manage integrations. Next, click Manage next to the specific integration you want to enable and set it up to serve as a data source for the solution.

You can also view detailed configuration instructions by clicking on the relevant tile:

Integrations supported by async Bill Pay

MYOB Business

Oracle NetSuite

Premium

QuickBooks Desktop

Premium

On-premise

QuickBooks Online

Sage Intacct

Premium

Xero

Integrations supported by sync Bill Pay

FreeAgent

Oracle NetSuite

Premium

QuickBooks Online

Xero

Zoho Books

Authorization flow

As part of using Bill Pay, you will need your customers to authorize your access to their data. To do so, use Link - our pre-built, embeddable, conversion-optimized, and white-labeled authorization flow.

The solution lets you tailor the authorization journey to your business needs. You can:

• Customize Link settings.
• Set up company branding.
• Set up redirects.

Webhooks

Codat supports a range of event types you can listen to that help you manage your data pipelines. In the Codat Portal, navigate to Settings > Webhooks > Configure consumer and click Add endpoint to add webhook consumer endpoints, or learn more about the Webhook service at Codat.

We recommend listening to the following event types to make the most of Bill Pay:

• read.completed.initial

  Listen to this event to track the completion of the initial read of data types for a specific company. When you receive a message from this webhook, verify the payload before proceeding to the next steps of the bill pay process.

• read.completed

  This event indicates the read of data types has completed. This applies both to reads of changes to existing data and reads of new data records. You should then refresh the data in your platform.

• bill.write.successful and bill.write.unsuccessful

  Listen to these events to track the completion of the bill pay operation in the SMB's accounting software.

You may also want to listen to client.rateLimit.reached and client.rateLimit.reset events to track your request count to Codat's API in relation to your allocated quota.

Client libraries

Use our comprehensive Bill Pay libraries to kick-start and simplify your build. Simply install the library in one of the supported languages and pass your base64-encoded API key to the constructor.

TypeScript

Install

NPM

npm add @codat/sync-for-payables

Yarn

yarn add @codat/sync-for-payables

Initialize

import { CodatSyncPayables } from "@codat/sync-for-payables";

const payablesClient = new CodatSyncPayables({
        security: {
            authHeader: "Basic BASE_64_ENCODED(API_KEY)",
        },
    });

Python

Install

pip install codat-sync-for-payables

Initialize

import codatsyncpayables
from codatsyncpayables.models import operations, shared

payables_client = codatsyncpayables.CodatSyncPayables(
    security=shared.Security(
        auth_header="Basic BASE_64_ENCODED(API_KEY)",
    ),
)

C#

Install

dotnet add package Codat.Sync.Payables

Initialize

using Codat.Sync.Payables;
using Codat.Sync.Payables.Models.Shared;
using Codat.Sync.Payables.Models.Operations;

var payablesClient = new CodatSyncPayables(
    security: new Security() {
        AuthHeader = "Basic BASE_64_ENCODED(API_KEY)",
    }
);

Go

Install

go get github.com/codatio/client-sdk-go/sync-for-payables

Initialize

import (
	"context"
	syncforpayables "github.com/codatio/client-sdk-go/sync-for-payables/v2"
	"github.com/codatio/client-sdk-go/sync-for-payables/v2/pkg/models/shared"
)

func main() {
	payablesClient := syncforpayables.New(
		syncforpayables.WithSecurity(shared.Security{
			AuthHeader: "Basic BASE_64_ENCODED(API_KEY)",
		}),
	)
}

Recap

You have enabled Bill Pay, set up the relevant integrations, configured auth flow parameters, and noted the recommended webhooks. This completes the initial setup of the solution.

Next, you will create a company and its connection to build out the core infrastructure required to manage accounts payable with Codat.

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Read next

• Set up your SMB customer for Bill Pay's solution to continue building your AP management process.
• Check out our client libraries to kickstart your Bill Pay build.