Developer guide to get employee data from Payfit API

Introduction

The Payfit API empowers businesses to programmatically access payroll and HR data, from employee records to accounting insights, allowing smoother integrations with your internal systems.

This article, part of our in-depth HRIS API series, focuses on how to fetch employee and accounting data using Payfit’s API.

Prerequisites

Before making requests to Payfit’s API, ensure you have:

• Access to Payfit’s Partner API with valid credentials.
• The Company ID for which you want to retrieve data.
• A Python environment set up with libraries like requests.

API Endpoints

The following Payfit endpoints are typically used for accessing company and employee-level data:

• Company Information:
  GET https://partner-api.payfit.com/companies/{companyId}
• Accounting Data:
  GET https://partner-api.payfit.com/companies/{companyId}/accounting-v2

Step-by-Step Implementation

Step 1: Fetch Company Information

import requests

def get_company_info(company_id, headers):
    url = f"https://partner-api.payfit.com/companies/{company_id}"
    response = requests.get(url, headers=headers)
    return response.json()

Step 2: Fetch Employee Accounting Data

def get_employee_accounting_data(company_id, date, headers):
    url = f"https://partner-api.payfit.com/companies/{company_id}/accounting-v2"
    params = {"date": date}
    response = requests.get(url, headers=headers, params=params)
    return response.json()

Note: The date parameter should follow the format YYYYMM (e.g., 202212 for December 2022).

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

1. Incorrect endpoint usage: Always verify you’re using the latest Payfit API version.
2. Authentication errors: Missing or invalid tokens can lead to 401 Unauthorized errors.
3. Ignoring rate limits: Payfit enforces rate limits add retry logic with exponential backoff.
4. Invalid date formats: Ensure dates follow the correct YYYYMM format.
5. Not validating company IDs: Invalid IDs can cause 404 or empty responses.
6. Poor error handling: Always check response codes and handle failures gracefully.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What authentication method does Payfit API use?
Typically OAuth or API key-based authentication, depending on your access level.

2. How can I handle API rate limits?
Use retry logic with exponential backoff and respect the Retry-After header.

3. What is the correct date format for accounting data?
Use YYYYMM, e.g., 202401 for January 2024.

4. Can I retrieve data for multiple months in one call?
No, each API request fetches data for a single month.

5. What if I get a 401 Unauthorized error?
Double-check your API token and ensure it hasn’t expired.

6. How should I handle response errors?
Implement robust error handling based on HTTP status codes (e.g., 400, 401, 429, 500).

Why Use Knit for Payfit API Integration

Integrating directly with Payfit can be time-consuming, especially with complex authentication and version updates.
Knit simplifies this by offering a single, unified API to access Payfit and other HRIS systems with built-in:

• Authentication and authorization handling
• Continuous integration maintenance
• Unified data models for employees, payroll, and accounting

By integrating with Knit once, your team can connect to Payfit and dozens of other systems effortlessly saving engineering hours and reducing maintenance overhead.