Billing Manager Blog

We’re hard at work on the next release of Billing Manager, most of which is related to under-the-hood performance improvements (especially important as we get more user sign-ups every day), but I thought I’d take a sec and touch on another “coming soon” feature that’ll be a bit more visible: the Billing Manager API.

API, for the non-technical crowd, means Application Programming Interface – a way to talk to the data stored in Billing Manager without using a web browser.  If you’re a software developer, you’ll be able to write applications that talk to Billing Manager in cool new ways.  If you’re just a regular Billing Manager user, you’ll be able to use applications and plug-ins others have built on top of the API.  We’ve already got some ideas kicking around internally, like a native iPhone app, Blackberry app, and export-to-Excel capabilities.  The API will open the doors for these and lots of other things we haven’t even thought of yet.  In addition to our own add-ons, we’re looking forward to seeing some creative software built by the community that will make everyone’s Billing Manager experience better.  We’ll keep you posted on the API’s progress and official release date as we flesh everything out in the coming weeks.

And, just in case you’re worried about security, know that using the API or applications built on top of the API will require authentication just like Billing Manager does today.  You can’t see anyone else’s data, and no one else can see yours.

Developers: the default API interface will likely be RESTful XML.  Are there other formats you’d like to see (JSON, etc.)?  Any features beyond the obvious ones like creating an invoice that are absolute must-haves in the API (e.g. getting invoice history information)?  We really would like input from our users, since this feature is for you!

This entry was posted on October 6, 2008 at 7:53 am and is filed under New Features. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.