The Identity Model
FreshBooks users are uniquely identified by their email across our entire product. One user may act on several Businesses in different ways, so if leafy@example.com is an Administrator of one account and gets added as a Client on another, they will have some access to both. They could then open a second business of their own, or be added as an employee of another person’s business—we live complicated lives! Our Identity model is how we keep track of it.
Businesses & Account Ids
You can find ids for the Businesses and Accounts a user can interact with by making a call to the Identity Info endpoint (or /me). An example of its response is in the code pane on the right. The key we care about most is business_memberships.
All of the business objects listed in the business_memberships will have an accountId as well as a role on that business (see Roles below). Those business objects also each have an id, which is the business_id. Be careful not to mistake the business's id for the id of the business_membership object itself.
For example, in the Identity Info (/me) response:
"business_memberships": [
{
"id": 111,
"role": "owner",
"business": {
"id": 240340,
"business_uuid": "046cc001-0002-e93e-1db1-1186b2983879",
"name": "Awesome Business Inc.",
"account_id": "ABC123",
"date_format": "dd/mm/yyyy",
"active": true
}
}You can see that the user is an owner on this business which has a business_id of 230340 and an account_id of ABC123.
Access Requirements
For access to the /me endpoint.
Access | Requires Authorization |
|
Acting on a Specific Account
For historical reasons, FreshBooks has shifted from an account concept to a business concept, but many resources still make use of accountIds.
Calls to /accounting endpoints require the accountId and take this form:
/accounting/account/{accountId}/invoices/invoices
Calls to most non-accounting resources, such as the /timetracking/ and /projects/ endpoints usually require a businessId, for example:
/timetracking/business/{businessId}/time_entries
All FreshBooks users have an Identity and a Business resource and thus a business_id. Most users have accounts, which represent their own FreshBooks account, but not all. For instance, when a Client receives an invoice, views it, and saves it, they will exist as an Identity in our system with a client Role on a Business, but they do not have an Account of their own. If you know your integration will never need to deal with someone who is just a Client and doesn't have their own Account, you can ignore this. If you aren’t sure of that, you must gracefully handle the case where you cannot find an account for a user.
Roles
Over time the logical role names that FreshBooks' API utilizes have diverged slightly from the names they are given in the FreshBooks application. Below are the relationships.
API Role | FreshBooks UI Role Name | Details |
owner or admin | Owner | The primary Identity of a FreshBooks business. This shows as 'owner' in the business_memberships of the identity response, and 'admin' in the older, deprecated roles array of the response. |
business_partner | Admin | An additional Identity with full access to the FreshBooks business. |
business_manager | Manager | Identity without access to full financial reports and information. |
business_employee | Employee | Identity with access limited to their own expenses, projects, and time tracking. |
business_accountant | Accountant | Identity with access limited to accounting items such as report and expense categorization |
contractor | Contractor | An Identity with their own Business that can track time and invoice this business. |
client | Client | Identity that has received an invoice from this Business and saved it to their own. |
Field Descriptions
The Identity endpoint is the source of truth for information about that user and the connections they have. It is comprised of many objects, and its contents may change in the future.
Identity Endpoint Fields |
|---|
field |
id |
profile |
first_name |
last_name |
confirmed_at |
created_at |
unconfirmed_email |
setup_complete |
phone_numbers |
addresses |
profession |
links |
permissions |
groups |
subscription_statuses |
integrations |
business_memberships |
Businesses are a key object in the Identity Model. Every Identity is an Owner of a Business, and a Business may or may not have an Accounting System attached.
Business Fields |
|---|
field |
id |
name |
account_id |
address |
phone_number |
business_clients |
Group Memberships associate Identities with other objects, like Businesses or Projects. Identities have roles in Groups, but these are just named strings, not Role objects like the one outlined below. Identities and Group Memberships are the best way in our system to express relationships between people and the businesses they work with.
Group Fields |
|---|
field |
id |
group_id |
role |
identity_id |
first_name |
last_name |
company |
business_id |
active |
Roles are a means of describing an Identity's relationship to an Accounting System. FreshBooks is moving over the long term away from using Roles and Accounting Systems as primary objects in the Identity Model, so there is some overlap between this data and Business Memberships. Whenever possible, try to make use of Business Memberships rather than Roles.
Role Fields |
|---|
field |
id |
role |
systemid |
userid |
created_at |
links |
accountid |