API Access Request Review for Payroll Reporting Integration

Hello, Kara.

Hello, is this JD?

Yes, it is. How are you doing?

Good, how about you?

Doing well. Thanks for the last-second schedule adjustment yesterday. I appreciate it.

No worries. Tuesday is always, uh, super busy, so yeah, if anyone wants to reschedule at the last minute, I'm never— you know, I know it sounds terrible, but I understand. Um, well, just to jump right on into it, we got an API access request. Um, mainly I like to schedule a call obviously to answer any questions, but just make sure that the request matches the form. A lot of times people will check off more than they really need, and mostly what we want to do is just make sure that we're enabling what we need and kind of go into, you know, just some minor details. OK, let me take a look at this again. I was looking at this yesterday. The first page looks great. I'm not really— the only question I have is, is this just going to be production or is it going to be production and sandbox access?

I don't think we need sandbox access because this is just an internal tool. It's not like—

Just reporting.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Cool. You're going to be the one pulling and developing to the solution, is that correct?

That is correct, yes.

Okay, cool. There's a lot of information on our developer portal, a lot of the hyperlinks. In the form that you completed, the access request form links to that website. If you hadn't realized, at least— I wouldn't expect anyone to just automatically, you know, but let me show you in case you have not. Any of these links here pretty much link directly to our developer portal. So if you're like, you know, for some reason you're like, what is this? It'll go to the page, gives you lots of information up here. You've got your API basics like authentication for tokens, errors, tons of information depending on what you're pulling. It's going to take you through the setup of some of those things through Postman, etc. It doesn't do every little detail, but it's going to give you everything you need and give some support information. That being said, back here. Cool. Okay, the answer is the first question. So the second— I thought I saw this was updated with some— yeah, do you see it's like in the background? That's weird. Hold on. I'll stop sharing first. It's in the CRM tool, you know, but when I downloaded it, the boxes anyway. So let me just— I want to take down some notes here in a second. So tell me in, um, I guess in your own words, what are you looking to have access to? Like reporting information for tracking? I was saying that on the first page and stuff like that, but like more specifically?

Um, yeah, I think we're looking to get an idea of kind of a Right now everything is very— after the month close, we have an idea of where our payroll cost comes in. Um, and I want to be able to pull in the data directly from Paylocity and kind of, uh, I guess work with it on our end to kind of look at, um, how we can accrue payroll costs in the month rather than having to do a big Excel file calculation at the end of a of every month. Um, that's one aspect of it. Get real-time access to employee payroll costs so we can understand, because a lot of our payroll is project-based. So it's good to see, like, on a Friday, we know we're very busy on a Friday, how many hours of overtime do we actually accrue? Who were on those? Who were those overtime hours kind of, uh, yeah, batched into? Because we know who is on certain jobs and just make sure that our expectations are aligning. And right now in Paylocity, it's kind of hard to pull that information out into a report and then synthesize it. It's just a little manual. So being able to build an API that kind of custom fits exactly what we're looking for is the idea.

Yeah, that makes sense. This isn't the most fancy thing ever, but I'm just going to bring this over here. Here's what you have marked off. So couple of things. Anything with new is part of our Next Gen API. Anything without new is part of our, like, I say legacy loosely because we're still actively using it pretty widely. But eventually, aka at some range of time in the future, we will migrate everything over to our Next Gen API. So just keeping that in mind. And if you've worked in this business, again, for transparency, like it could be anywhere from 2 months to 20 years before that finishes, in my opinion. So, you know, we use both pretty widely. So what happens is if we do, you know, which this does happen, but if we were to say check all these off and then just give the API access, you get 2 sets of credentials, one for our Web Link API, which is our older, more established API. Next Gen has more batching and filtering options, which is all of the new you're seeing here. Usually what I like to do is look and say, hey, what are you looking for? Here's what's marked off. Can we reasonably set it to one set of credentials or the other? If not, we could do both. That's totally totally fine. Um, and is there any endpoints basically that you might not need? Like, for example, Pantry API is like a POST to the payroll directly. If that's a solution you guys are looking to implement later, then that makes sense. But I do want to mention that because it sounds like you're mostly just getting information. Yeah, for reporting. So, you know, that might not be needed. Same thing for this punch import. That's to post information to time and labor, like to the employee timesheets. It's similar to Pantry, just different place, right? Okay, so you might not need either of those for now, but this is going to get you the schedules, this is going to get you the punches. Do you, do you guys use our time and labor system?

Yes, we do.

Okay, cool. I mean, it's reporting, you know, that makes sense to me. Pay setup API and get earnings. So this is like a new one, and for some reason when they add these on this form, it does not— they don't match it one-to-one with the actual endpoint system. So forgive me. So they're like Pay Setup API, and mostly it's just— it links directly to what it's talking about. So we're just talking about getting earnings, and you have single and batching options with the new, which is helpful rather if you were to go in and say earnings. This is what— where is it? I was just showing you a second ago. This is what this is that you also have marked off. And it only lets you pull one at a time. Well, you can pull a range, I think, some kind of range, but it doesn't let you pull in batches of like, let's say, 20 at a time, for example. So I'm just kind of thinking out loud here. I feel like my— let's see. So you say get employee unrestricted, get pay statements. I think probably you'll end up with two sets of credentials because they don't have a pay statements API. They don't really even have like anything like it on NextGen, you know, like how these two things are similar.

Okay.

But if similar with local taxes. But this right here, it does have POST patch options with it. But if you were to say instead of doing Get Employee on the Web Link API, you did Employee Demographics, that does let you get employee demographics and in batched— like in groups rather than one at a time. So maybe move that here.

Okay.

You don't have to.

No, no, no. You're going to know more than I do about it. So I would trust your opinion.

I have a specialty in SFTP integrations. But, you know, it's a pool of just API and SFTP over here. Right. So the difference here. You see, it says single, so you can pull it in a single or a batch. Um, it lets you pull like 20 at a time, and it does pull some information. I find, I find that the Get Employee, like the, like our web link down here, um, not that one, I clicked the right one. It has more information. It has like tax information. You see how I'm like scrolling forever? Right. So this would let you pull one at a time, but it has more. Or I mean, honestly, you could do both. You don't have to do one or the other. Less is, less is better in our opinion. That's usually what we'd recommend. But, you know, but this lets you pull in batches. So the— so this lets you pull one at a time but has more fields. And if I could stop clicking on everything. And this, again, this lets you pull in batches, but it has slightly less information like on the tax side. So, okay, let me see. So, you know, I'm just going to make a recommendation, but after this call, I'll send you the same thing I'm showing here, which is just a snapshot of what we talked about, what you probably will need. You can look into any of these links and then just say, "No, give me both," or, "No, give me one or the other." It's your information. There's some additional details that sometimes come up with some of the newer API, but you don't have any of that stuff marked off that I feel like I would have to mention. But I think right now, probably you'll end up with— let's see, just so you can get a snapshot, an image. This is just company-level information, like job codes, cost center codes. There's not anything crazy about that one. Um, I'm not sure which one you want here. I'm just gonna say versus You know, so row 1, then row 2. Does that make sense? Not a whole lot different. I mean, you could do this one too. Sorry, I'm also thinking out loud as I'm looking at your form, so forgive me.

I appreciate it.

Mm-hmm. You have some options, and the good thing about this process is it's not like I'm giving access and just disappearing, and then here's your, you know, distribution, which I guess is fine, you know, like, but what'll happen is if we agree to one and I get this, you know, slightly updated form back from you and you realize, well, let's go ahead and add or update something, That's totally fine. We can do that. You know, I'm staying on to the project basically until you're able to get what you need in the way you need it. And then from there, we'll still have an additional 30 days before the project closes if you have questions, basically. So in an ongoing sense, we do have a web services team, [email protected]. They're like me, but the support version. And they answer questions in an ongoing format. Let's say 6 months from now, like you have questions or something happens, you know, or, you know, you're just like, hey, is this possible? Do you even have a thing like this or something? You know, just something like that. But we can always modify this form if we need to. Honestly, the form is the only annoying part of the process, to be honest, because, you know, if we update it, then we have to get an updated form, then go back and then we update it. It's not a big deal, but, you know. The back and forth sometimes.

That makes sense.

Um, any questions about that? Do you think this looks good? Do you want to— I'll send like a screenshot of— I mean, we could always just do what you originally proposed except for the pantry and the import, right? See what you like and then we can update it afterwards.

Yeah, I don't, um, I think you have a pretty good understanding of what I'm looking for. So, um, if you're confident that we have the right boxes checked, we can start with that. And if we feel like we're missing something or there's, there's something that we still need to be able to get like the full, uh, picture, then we can always update.

Yeah. Yeah. I think this looks pretty good and you'll know pretty quickly when you're trying to get the information, if it's on the new API and you're like looking for one specific field and you're like, you know, if we need to update it to this, the legacy API endpoint. We can see where that lands and what information you're able to pull if it matches with what you guys are expecting or if we need to adjust. I guess that's just part of the process really. I don't think— the only other thing I can think of— let's see. Let me check one other thing. I might not need to. Is this your guys' first API access with us? Like—

Oh, with Paylocity? Yes.

Okay. I think so, because I got the letter of intent, I think, on the project. I'll double-check that and make sure. But aside from that, there's one other thing floating around. No, I think that's pretty much it. It'll come back to me anyway. It's not, it's not, it's not a super important question. It just keeps taunting me apparently. Um, so next steps after the call, you know, probably it's a pretty quick call, so thank you for, you know, setting aside time and stuff like that to talk to me, but I'll email you and I'll give you the existing form and a new version of the form. Just— and in the email, kind of say, here's like what I anticipate, you know, just with some slight updates to the page 2, which is the endpoints. Once I have that, then probably like maybe today or tomorrow, what I'll be able to do is go in and get the access for you. Since you don't have demo, we don't have to go in and create an environment and all that stuff like that that usually makes it take an extra day. But since it's just production access, it shouldn't take too long to just go in there and provide the access. But other than that, any other questions?

No. It's so great. I'll look for your email and I'll turn it around so we can get access as soon as possible.

Let me know if you have any questions in the meantime, and then I guess once you are able— once I give out the credentials, you're able to take a look and poke around, then we can go in there and adjust if we need to for any of the endpoints.

Perfect.

Cool.

Thank you, Kara.

Yeah. No, thank you for your time. I will talk to you soon.

Okay.

Bye. Bye.