Businesses

At Railz, a business refers to an entity that shares access to its data. Each business can have multiple data connections to different service providers such as one connection to accounting data and one or more connections to bank accounts. Businesses are often represented by your customers.

Businesses are uniquely identified by their business name, denoted by businessName.

Creating a Business

Businesses can be created in one of four ways:

Using the POST /businesses endpoint in the Railz API.
Using Railz Connect™ by providing the businessName parameter.
Using Railz Sites™ Onboard Link
Using the Railz Dashboard Dashboard

Restrictions on Business Names

If you don't provide a business name when loading Railz Connect™ in your client-side app, Railz Connect™ will auto-generate a unique identifier as the business name.

Business Names must be:

Unique
At least 2 characters long
A maximum of 40 characters long
Should not contain any of the following special characters {% [ ] \ * | ( ) { } "}

Business Statuses

Each Railz business has a status that can be one of the following values:

Status	Description
`new`	A new business that has no data connections yet.
`inactive`	Businesses with no active connections. You will still be able to retrieve existing data but no future synchronization will take place.
`active`	The business has connected to an accounting service provider and you should be able to retrieve its accounting data.

🚧
New Business Lifecycle & Auto Deletion Policy

Businesses created using Railz Connect™ without a connection, will appear in the Railz Dashboard or the GET /businesses endpoint as new for 24 hours. After 24 hours, these businesses will automatically be deleted. This is to prevent an influx of businesses without a connection in your business list.

Businesses created without a connection using the following methods: POST /businesses API endpoint, Railz Dashboard and Railz Sites Onboarding Link, will appear in the Railz Dashboard or through the GET /businesses endpoint as new. Businesses created through this method will not be auto deleted.