Clear Books (via Apideck)

Access Clear Books through Apideck's Accounting unified API — one of 34 Accounting connectors that share the same method surface. Code you write here ports to Access Financials, Acumatica, banqUP and 30 other Accounting connectors by changing a single serviceId string. Apideck handles auth, pagination, rate limiting, and retries so you don't write per-tenant Clear Books plumbing.

Beta connector. Clear Books is currently in beta on Apideck. Expect partial resource coverage and occasional mapping gaps. Always verify coverage (see below) and fall back to the Proxy API for unsupported operations.

Quick facts

• Apideck serviceId: clearbooks-uk
• Unified API: Accounting
• Auth type: apiKey
• Status: beta
• Gotchas: page
• Clear Books docs: https://www.clearbooks.co.uk/support/api/
• Homepage: https://www.clearbooks.co.uk/

At a glance

• Implementation difficulty: moderate — API access is granted by Clear Books on request; no self-service credentials.
• Vendor partnership required: no (developer portal) — No partner program; request access from Clear Books support.
• Apideck-managed credentials: not available — Each consumer supplies their own API key.
• Account type required: An active Clear Books account.
• Consumer access level: Permission to create an API key in Clear Books.
• Sandbox: not available — A free Clear Books trial account serves for testing.
• Costs: No API fees published.
• Rate limits: No rate limits published; expect throttling on sustained load.
• Authentication: The consumer's Clear Books SOAP API key; not OAuth.
• Webhooks: No webhooks — change detection is polling-based.

Important to know:

• Clear Books has discontinued the SOAP API this connector uses — no new applications will be approved for it. Existing API keys continue to work, but new integrations cannot obtain SOAP access; Clear Books now grants API access for its REST API instead.

Facts synced from Apideck's connector metadata API — GET /connector/connectors/clearbooks-uk (overview field) is the live, authoritative version.

When to use this skill

Activate this skill when the user explicitly wants to work with Clear Books — for example, "create an invoice in Clear Books" or "reconcile payments in Clear Books". This skill teaches the agent:

1. Which Apideck unified API covers Clear Books (Accounting)
2. The correct serviceId to pass on every call (clearbooks-uk)
3. Clear Books-specific auth and coverage caveats

For the full method surface (parameters, pagination, filtering), use your language SDK skill:

• apideck-node, apideck-python, apideck-dotnet, apideck-java, apideck-go, apideck-php, or apideck-rest

For the raw OpenAPI spec:

• Accounting: https://specs.apideck.com/accounting.yml · API Explorer

Minimal example (TypeScript)

import { Apideck } from "@apideck/unify";

const apideck = new Apideck({
  apiKey: process.env.APIDECK_API_KEY,
  appId: process.env.APIDECK_APP_ID,
  consumerId: "your-consumer-id",
});

// List invoices in Clear Books
const { data } = await apideck.accounting.invoices.list({
  serviceId: "clearbooks-uk",
});

Portable across 34 Accounting connectors

The Apideck Accounting unified API exposes the same methods for every connector in its catalog. Switching from Clear Books to another Accounting connector is a one-string change — no rewrite, no new SDK.

// Today — Clear Books
await apideck.accounting.invoices.list({ serviceId: "clearbooks-uk" });

// Tomorrow — same code, different connector
await apideck.accounting.invoices.list({ serviceId: "access-financials" });
await apideck.accounting.invoices.list({ serviceId: "acumatica" });

This is the compounding advantage of using Apideck over integrating Clear Books directly: code against the unified Accounting API once, gain access to every connector in it. New connectors Apideck adds become available to your app without code changes.

Clear Books via Apideck Accounting

Clear Books is a UK SMB cloud accounting platform with a focus on simplicity for small businesses, contractors, and accountants.

Entity mapping

Coverage highlights

• ✅ Sales invoices (CRUD)
• ✅ Bills
• ✅ Credit notes
• ✅ Customers, suppliers
• ✅ Chart of accounts
• ⚠️ Payments, journal entries — not in current coverage; use Proxy
• ❌ UK VAT return / MTD submission — use Proxy
• ❌ Payroll — separate product

Auth notes

• Type: API key, managed by Apideck Vault
• Business binding: one Clear Books business per connection.
• UK-only: Clear Books is UK-market. Multi-regional customers typically use a different platform.

Example: list unpaid bills

const { data } = await apideck.accounting.bills.list({
  serviceId: "clearbooks-uk",
  filter: { status: "open" },
});

Escape hatch: Proxy API

When an endpoint isn't covered by the Accounting unified API, use Apideck's Proxy to call Clear Books directly — Apideck injects auth headers and handles token refresh. Set x-apideck-downstream-url to the target endpoint on Clear Books's own API:

curl 'https://unify.apideck.com/proxy' \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ${APIDECK_API_KEY}" \
  -H "x-apideck-app-id: ${APIDECK_APP_ID}" \
  -H "x-apideck-consumer-id: ${CONSUMER_ID}" \
  -H "x-apideck-service-id: clearbooks-uk" \
  -H "x-apideck-downstream-url: <target endpoint on Clear Books>" \
  -H "x-apideck-downstream-method: GET"

See Clear Books's API docs for available endpoints.

Sibling connectors

Other Accounting connectors that share this unified API surface (same method signatures, just change serviceId):

access-financials (beta), acumatica (beta), banqup (beta), campfire (beta), digits (beta), dualentry, exact-online, exact-online-nl (beta), and 25 more.

See also

• Accounting OpenAPI spec · API Explorer
• apideck-connector-coverage — programmatic coverage checks
• apideck-best-practices — architecture, Vault, pagination, error handling
• apideck-node — TypeScript / Node SDK patterns
• Clear Books official docs