Glossary

Short definitions of the terms used throughout this documentation. For how these fit together when you build, see How it works.

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Connector

A piece of software Chift can talk to — Odoo, Sage, Shopify, Lightspeed. You choose which connectors to activate for your customers in your account configuration. Chift’s API paths and fields call these integrations; the two words mean the same thing.

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Consumer

One of your customers, as Chift knows them. Identified by a uuid (consumerid) that you pass in almost every API request to say whose data you want. Manage them via the API or in the platform.

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Connection

The link between one consumer and one connector, holding that customer’s credentials and configuration — for example one customer’s Odoo credentials. A consumer can have several connections, but only one per connector. See Create a connection.

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Post-connection

A follow-up question asked after credentials are accepted, such as which accounting folder or POS location to use. See Connection lifecycle.

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Unified API

One consistent API shape covering many connectors in the same category. Chift has seven: Accounting, Invoicing, POS, E-commerce, Payment, PMS, and Banking. See Unified APIs overview.

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Sync

A pre-built synchronisation between two Chift APIs, built and run by Chift instead of by your engineering team. A sync contains one or more flows, each triggered by an event or a timer (e.g. nightly at 4 AM), running a process such as “get invoices and inject them into accounting” for every consumer linked to the sync. See Syncs.

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Mapping

A correspondence your end-user confirms during onboarding to a sync — for example matching tax rates between their POS and their accounting software.