How to integrate with Chift’s Unified APIs

In today's rapidly evolving B2B SaaS market, integrations have become indispensable for software vendors wanting to stand out from the competition. By connecting with a variety of tools and platforms, SaaS vendors can expand their Total Addressable Market (TAM), unlock powerful automation for their users and add valuable features to their products. In short, Integrations are not just a technical necessity anymore, but a strategic advantage.

However, achieving seamless integrations comes with its own set of challenges. Building and maintaining these integrations is often complex and resource-intensive. Each new integration demands significant development time and continuous maintenance, not to mention the potential performance issues that can arise if the process is not executed flawlessly. Moreover, the constant need to adapt to changes in third-party APIs adds another layer of difficulty, making it hard for companies to keep their integrations up-to-date and reliable.

This is where Unified APIs come into play, offering a robust solution to embedded native integrations. Unified APIs streamline the integration process by providing a single, standardized interface that connects to multiple software tools and platforms. This approach significantly reduces the development burden, simplifies maintenance, and ensures greater scalability. To see how this integration strategy stacks up against building or buying your integrations, see our in depth integration strategies article.

Chift recognizes that software vendors have varied product strategies, which is why we offer multiple ways for our partners to integrate with our Unified APIs and unlock their full potential. In this article, we'll dive into the specifics of each integration method, showcase how our clients are successfully using our products, and highlight the unique features that set Chift apart.

Your New ROI Ally

6 Unified APIs, Dozens of Integrations

Chift’s Unified APIs offer a powerful solution by providing access to multiple integrations within the same software category, all through a single, streamlined interface. Imagine it as a power strip that connects you to an entire ecosystem—this approach is the gold standard for scalability, enabling you to quickly expand into new markets.

Unified APIs eliminate the complexities and inconsistencies of integrating with different APIs for each tool. With minimal maintenance required, your developers can focus on enhancing your core product rather than getting bogged down in integration upkeep. It’s no surprise that this efficiency translates to significant cost savings—building a single integration in-house can cost up to €50,000, not to mention the hidden opportunity costs.

Chift currently offers six Unified APIs: Unified Accounting API, Unified Invoicing API, Unified Ecommerce API, Unified POS API, Unified Payment API and Unified PMS API.

As specialists in the European market, Chift provides integrations with the most popular financial tools used across European countries. Gain a strategic advantage in addressing the fragmented B2B software market with 1-click activation for the following connectors:

Unified Accounting API: Pennylance, Inqom, Sage, MyUnisoft, Odoo, etc.
Unified Invoicing API: Axonaut, Qonto, Sage 100, sellsy, etc.
Unified Ecommerce API: Prestashop, Shopify, etc.
Unified POS API: lightspeed, Zettle, Square, Hiboutik, etc.
Unified Payment API: Paypal, Stripe, Payplug, etc.
Unified PMS API: Mews.

Unparalleled Developer & User Experience

We understand that developing software is challenging enough, which is why we’ve built unique features to offer your developers a seamless integration experience:

Unified doc: Stop wasting time on accessing and understanding API documentation with Chift’s unified doc.
Dev tools: Create integrations in a few clicks and test them easily with test payloads.
Integrations dashboard: Monitor integrations in real-time, track client usage, connector activations, API calls, and transactions—all from a single dashboard.
Security & authentication: Chift supports robust authentication flows (OAuth 2.0, SSO, etc.), enhancing security and freeing you from the need to build and manage them.
Customizable integration UX: Tailor the integration experience to your needs—embed it directly into your software, offer a connector marketplace, or link users to specific connectors. You decide how your users access and activate integrations.
Webhooks: Keep track of real-time updates in your users’ lifecycle within your app by adding webhooks to integrations in your Chift dashboards.
Multi-environment: Chifts Dev Portal allows you to setup multiple work environments. In addition to Sandbox and Production, you can add additional environments if you desire (for example to track usage of specific user segments).

Your users also benefit from features designed to maximize the value of these integrations:

Easy connector activation: Activating a connector is just a few clicks away for your users. Users can also access up to date connector documentation.
Advanced onboarding: Users can invite third parties (like their accountants) to enter credentials they don’t have during the connector activation process.

Whether you prefer full control over your integrations or are looking for no-code solutions, our product range is designed to meet your needs. Next, we’ll explore our two main models, who they are for, and the unique advantages and features they offer.

Chift Unified APIs - Flexibility & Control

Chift Unified APIs allow you to natively integrate our Unified APIs into your product using our Unified Doc. Build and maintain a single integration to access a full suite of native software integrations.

This approach gives you full control over the integration logic, as you decide when and where you use the API calls. Keep the integration fully embedded (with white-label options) in your software by sending users directly to connector activation pages or providing a link to our customizable connector marketplace where users can select which connectors they want to activate.

Example Marketplace for users of Skello to activate connectors

Chift Unified APIs are available for all software, including those without an API. You can integrate one or more Unified APIs to unlock connectors to software in that category.

While building the integration with our Unified APIs offers maximum flexibility, amazing scalability and give you all the benefits of managing a single integration, it also comes with certain considerations that we take into consideration when we decide which product to use for a specific client:

You must understand & build the logic: Each integration requires logic to map data, which demands a deep understanding of the Unified API product category you want to integrate. For instance, an invoicing software editor might need accounting expertise to build the correct logic. Our experts are there to help your team with this.
You build the integration: While you gain access to multiple integrations within our Unified APIs, you are responsible for building the integration to the Unified API itself, though our Unified Doc is there to help you with this.
How standard is your use case? Every case is different. But some are more common than others and fit the specific scope of one of our Syncs (see next section).

Chift Syncs - Ready Made Integrations

For software vendors who want to minimize the workload associated with integrations (and have an API) or don’t have in-house expertise, and want to free up time for their roadmap, we offer Chift Syncs.

Each Sync has been build by us with with a specific use case and scope. We currently offer 6 Syncs with more being added regularly:

Ecommerce Sync: Push ecommerce sales data straight to your customers’ accounting software.
POS Sync: Make manual POS data exports a thing of the past with seamless accounting integrations.
Invoices Sync: Build feature rich accounting integrations for accounts payable and receivable data.
PMS Sync: Easily generate accounting entries from PMS orders and payments thanks to integrations.
Payments Sync: Make payment reconciliation an automatic process with our accounting integrations.
Expenses Sync: Offer expense management software users feature rich accounting integrations.

With Syncs, we create a connector to your API and link it to the relevant Unified API, instantly unlocking ready-made flows from your software to multiple connectors in another software category. In addition to the general benefits of Unified APIs, Syncs offer unique advantages, including:

No synchronization logic: We host and execute the synchronization based on your requirements (an event, a timer, …). You don’t have to worry about the infrastructure… we support it for you!
No business logic to define: We develop the business logic between your API and our Unified API.
Mapping interface: Connecting software (for exemple sending invoices to an accounting tool) require mapping of data fields. Syncs come with a ready made mapping interface for your users, you don’t have to build it.
No-code: Syncs integrate your API with our Unified APIs, eliminating the need to add complexity to your software.
No maintenance: We handle maintenance from start to finish.
Super fast deployment: Our Unified APIs allow teams to deploy integrations much faster. But Syncs go a step faster with powerful embedded integrations going live in just days or weeks.

Example of Flow allowing Pleo users to connect their account to their MyUnisoft accounting, unlocking accounting automations.

Here’s an example to illustrate Syncs: you are an invoicing software editor who wants to integrate with various accounting tools to help your users automate their accounting. To access our Invoices Sync, we create a connector for your invoicing software’s API and link it to our Accounting Unified API. You can then activate the Sync and allow your users to activate connections with various accounting tools. Now they can send invoices from your software to to their accounting software and automatically generate accounting entries without manual data entry.

Tech Pioneers Partner With Chift

Our Unified APIs and Syncs have been successfully implemented by leading companies to solve complex integration challenges, streamline operations, and drive growth. Check our customer stories to see how software vendors such as Defacto, Pennylane or Agicap have turned integrations into a competitive advantage.

The ability to efficiently integrate with various software platforms is no longer just a technical necessity—it's a strategic imperative. Gain a competitive edge and position yourself for success by working with Chift. Reduce costs and development time associated with integrations, close more deals, and increase product velocity.

Ready to take the integration fast lane? Reach out to our team for a demo.