Fresh 2026

Analyze spend

How to aggregate and analyze spend from bills, expenses, and journal entries using the Merge Accounting API.

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Your user authorizes your application to access their accounting service (e.g., QuickBooks Online, NetSuite) via an OAuth or similar authorization flow through Merge Link.

The following steps will cover the business logic you will need to configure in your backend to interact with Merge's Unified API. "Settings" or "Master" data refers to all information related to vendors, accounts, and (in some cases) tracking categories. To do this, we will access four endpoints:

Sync your customer's chart of accounts by using the 

**GET** /accounts

 endpoint. You can use the 

`classification`

 and 

`parent_account`

 fields to compile account types and hierarchy!



Follow the steps outlined in the 

Sync Customers or Suppliers use case

 to sync vendors in your system with the third party.



If your customer has classes, locations, or departments configured, you can retrieve them from the accounting platform with 

**GET** /Tracking Categories

.



Utilize the 

**GET** /items

 endpoint to pull in your customer's products, goods, and services.

Retrieve all transactions in your customer's ERP/Accounting platform related to spend by compiling data from the below endpoints:

Use the 

**GET** /invoices

 endpoint to access all bills, and set the 

`type`

 query param = 

`ACCOUNTS_PAYABLE`

 to filter to only bills.



Use the 

**GET** /payments

 endpoint to access all payments related to bills.



Use the 

**GET** /expenses

 endpoint to access any direct purchases your customer makes, such as a credit card transaction or check purchase.



In some cases, your customer may record purchases as direct entries against the ledger. You should utilize the 

**GET** /journal-entries

 endpoint to retrieve these transactions.



(Optional) You can optionally pull in purchase orders to your application through the 

**GET** /Purchase-Orders

 endpoint.

Using the transactions retrieved in the prior step, you'll be able to paint a full picture of your customer's spend. You'll be able to aggregate by Date, General Ledger Account, Vendor, Class, Department, Location, and more.

After the initial pull of data, you'll need to keep your data up to date by regularly fetching data from Merge. The modified_after query parameter can be utilized on all of Merge's GET endpoints to keep these subsequent processes more efficient. For a full overview of Merge's syncing best practices, see our guide here!

Webhooks can be utilized to make this process more efficient.

• Webhooks