ZipBooks API
ZipBooks is cloud accounting and invoicing software for small businesses, freelancers, and service providers, covering bookkeeping, billing, expense management, and reporting. An unofficial API lets you programmatically pull invoices, estimates, contacts, transactions, expenses, and time entries—and push updates like new invoices, payments, and customer records back into ZipBooks—without wrestling with its thin, login-only JWT REST surface.
What is ZipBooks?
ZipBooks is cloud-based accounting software designed to simplify bookkeeping, invoicing, and financial reporting for small businesses, freelancers, and service providers. Customers use ZipBooks to send invoices and estimates, connect bank and credit card accounts, auto-categorize and reconcile transactions, accept online payments, track time against projects, and surface financial insights through its Intelligence reporting suite.
Core product areas include:
- Accounting (bank connectivity, auto-categorization, reconciliation, smart tagging)
- Billing & Invoicing (invoices, estimates, recurring auto-billing, online payments via credit card and PayPal)
- Expense Management (expense tracking, receipts, transaction tagging)
- Time Tracking & Projects (time entries, project management, team collaboration and permissions)
- Intelligence (financial reporting, insights, and competitive benchmarking)
Common data entities:
- Contacts, Customers, Vendors
- Invoices, Estimates, Payments
- Transactions, Bank Accounts, Expenses, Receipts
- Time Entries, Projects, Tasks
- Reports and financial statements
The ZipBooks Integration Challenge
Small businesses run their books on ZipBooks daily, but building reliable automation on top of it is harder than the marketing suggests:
- Login-only authentication: The API issues JWTs from a single POST /v2/auth/login with email and password—there is no OAuth app registration, scoped keys, or developer portal token flow, so credentials must be managed and rotated carefully
- Thin REST surface: The published v2 reference covers a narrow set of read endpoints (contacts, estimates, invoices); full CRUD coverage across expenses, transactions, time entries, and payments is sparsely documented
- No SDKs: ZipBooks ships no official client libraries, so every consumer hand-rolls JWT handling, JSON API parsing, and pagination logic
- No webhooks: There is no documented event/callback mechanism, so keeping downstream systems current means polling the JSON API on a schedule
- JSON API quirks: Responses follow the jsonapi.org spec with relationships, included resources, and per-resource default page sizes (100 for contacts/estimates, 50 for invoices), which adds parsing overhead for simple data pulls
- Undocumented limits: Rate limits and token expiry are not published, so naive integrations risk throttling or silent session expiry mid-sync
How Supergood Creates ZipBooks APIs
Supergood reverse-engineers ZipBooks' authenticated JWT flow and JSON API surface to deliver a resilient, fully-typed API layer for your ZipBooks account—so you integrate once and rely on consistent objects across invoicing, accounting, and time tracking.
- Handles email/password login and JWT issuance securely, with automated token refresh before expiry
- Maintains session continuity and credential rotation without manual re-authentication
- Normalizes JSON API responses—flattening relationships and included resources—across contacts, invoices, estimates, transactions, and time entries
- Adds event-style change detection on top of polling so you get webhook-like updates ZipBooks doesn't natively provide
Use ZipBooks with AI agents: ZipBooks MCP Server →
Getting Started
- Schedule Integration Assessment
Book a 30-minute session to confirm the ZipBooks entities, workflows, and authentication model you need.
- Supergood Generates and Validates Your API
We deliver a production-ready ZipBooks adapter with normalized objects and managed JWT sessions.
- Deploy with Monitoring
Go live with continuous monitoring and automatic adjustments as ZipBooks evolves.
API Endpoints
Authentication
/v2/auth/loginAuthenticate with email and password to obtain a JWT bearer token for downstream calls.
Contacts
/v2/contactsList contacts (customers and vendors) with JSON API pagination; defaults to 100 per page.
Invoicing
/v2/invoicesRetrieve invoices with relationships and included resources; defaults to 50 per page.
Invoicing
/v2/invoicesCreate a new invoice for a contact with line items, amounts, and due date.
Estimates
/v2/estimatesList estimates with JSON API pagination; defaults to 100 per page.
Accounting
/v2/transactionsPull bank and ledger transactions for reconciliation and reporting.
Use Cases
Sync invoicing and payment data to your systems
- Pull invoices, estimates, and payments into a warehouse or billing dashboard - Stream new invoice and payment events to revenue and cash-flow tools - Reconcile contact records across ZipBooks and your CRM
Automate bookkeeping and reconciliation
- Pull transactions and bank account activity for downstream ledgers - Push categorized expenses and tags back into ZipBooks - Surface unreconciled items to accounting workflows
Keep customer and vendor records in sync
- Sync contacts (customers and vendors) between ZipBooks and CRM/ERP - Create new contacts programmatically when deals close - Match billing details across systems for unified reporting
Integrate time tracking and projects
- Pull time entries and projects for billing and payroll - Convert tracked time into draft invoices automatically - Report project profitability across connected tools
Technical Specifications
Authentication
Email/password login at POST /v2/auth/login issuing a JWT bearer token, handled in a managed session
Connectivity
REST over HTTPS against https://api.zipbooks.com/v2, normalized into a stable Supergood API layer
Response format
JSON API (jsonapi.org) responses with relationships and included resources, flattened to normalized JSON
Rate limits
Not published by ZipBooks; Supergood applies adaptive throttling to avoid server-side limits
Session management
Automatic JWT refresh before expiry and credential rotation without manual re-auth
Data freshness
Near real-time polling for invoices, transactions, and contacts with optional scheduled syncs
Security
Encrypted credential vault, scoped access tokens, SOC 2-aligned controls, and audit logging
Webhooks
Not natively supported by ZipBooks; Supergood adds event-style callbacks via change detection
Latency
Sub-second reads on cached entities; multi-second writes when posting invoices and payments
Throughput
Horizontally scaled workers sized to small-business invoice and transaction volume
Reliability
Retry, backoff, and idempotency keys for invoice and payment writes
Adaptation
Continuous monitoring of ZipBooks API and JSON API schema changes to keep integrations stable
Frequently asked questions
ZipBooks uses JWTs. You POST email and password to /v2/auth/login to obtain a bearer token, which is sent in the Authorization header on every request. There is no OAuth or scoped API key flow, so Supergood securely manages and rotates these credentials and refreshes the token before it expires.
No. ZipBooks ships no official client libraries and has no documented webhook mechanism. Supergood handles JWT auth, JSON API parsing, and pagination for you, and layers event-style change detection on top of polling to provide webhook-like updates.
The published v2 reference documents contacts, estimates, and invoices, with JSON API pagination and relationships. Supergood normalizes these alongside transactions, expenses, payments, and time entries so you integrate against consistent objects rather than the raw, sparsely-documented surface.
Responses follow the JSON API specification (jsonapi.org), including data objects, relationships, included resources, and pagination metadata such as total, from, and to. Supergood flattens these into normalized JSON so you don't have to parse the JSON API envelope yourself.
ZipBooks does not publish rate limits or token expiry windows. Supergood applies adaptive throttling, retry, and backoff to stay within server-side limits and prevent silent session expiry during long syncs.