Instances are an important concept as they hold the accounting data for a single business. You can think of them as a “set of books”. This means that a small business customer in your product, such as a “user”, will be associated with an instance in Teal.

Remember to store the association between an instance in Teal and their associated entity in your product.

You can add instances on your Platform by using the Create Instance API.

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Accounting package

An instance must be associated with an accounting package (e.g. PlatformGL, QuickBooks). This is set using the gl_backend parameter.

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Subscription tier

By default, instances are created with a Tier 0 subscription. To enable Tier 1 or 2 features, upgrade the instance subscription using the Update Subscription endpoint. Remember that there are different charges depending on subscription level. Sandbox subscriptions incur no charges.

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Start date

The start date (entries_start) is the date from which the API will sync your instance’s accounting data. You will not be able to enter transactions or journal entries before the start date, but you will be able to read reports. You will generally set a start date that is the beginning of the financial year that your instances will begin tracking their books on your platform, or the start date of their business, whichever is sooner.

You can use the opening balances endpoint to set up their balance sheet properly so that it is accurate on the start date. (PlatformGL only).

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Chart of accounts (Platform GL)

When you create a new PlatformGL instance using the Create Instance endpoint, you will need to select a chart of accounts template for their ledgers to be generated from. You can do this by setting the coa_template_id parameter. You can view and manage your templates in the Developer Portal.

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