How to connect Exact Online

Connecting Exact Online takes two actions, in this order: pick your API domain — the Exact Online region you sign in on — and save it, then click Authorize and sign in with your Exact Online account. There are no credentials to type or paste. Apideck runs the OAuth flow and keeps the short-lived access token refreshed afterwards, so the connection keeps working without you re-entering anything.

Do the region first. Exact Online runs every country as a separate instance with its own hosts, and this connector sends the authorization to the domain you select. When the API domain is left unset it falls back to the Dutch instance (nl), and Vault does not block Authorize on the setting — so it is easy to skip, and skipping it sends anyone outside the Netherlands to a host that holds none of their data. Choosing the domain and saving takes a few seconds and avoids the whole class of problem.

Prerequisites

• An active Exact Online subscription in your country edition.
• A user account that can authorize third-party app connections. If you are not sure whether yours can, check with your Exact Online administrator before you start.
• The right administration selected in Exact Online before you authorize. Exact Online calls a company an administration (a division in the API). A connection is anchored to one of them, and it is taken from whichever administration your account is currently in at the moment you authorize — so if your account has access to more than one, switch to the one this connection is for first. Step 3 explains the detection and how to correct it.

1. Select your API domain — then save

Open the Exact Online connection in Apideck Vault. Its settings include Select your API domain:

Region	Exact Online sign-in domain
Belgium	start.exactonline.be
Germany	start.exactonline.de
Netherlands	start.exactonline.nl
Spain	start.exactonline.es
United Kingdom	start.exactonline.co.uk
United States	start.exactonline.com

1. Pick the region whose domain matches the one you sign in to Exact Online on.
2. Click Save.

This choice decides which Exact Online instance the authorization — and every later request — is sent to. An app registration also belongs to one country instance, so the region has to be the one the integration you are setting up was registered for.

These six domains are the ones this connector's API domain setting offers. If you sign in on another Exact Online instance — France (start.exactonline.fr), for example — this setting cannot reach it, so contact the provider of the integration: they own the relationship with Apideck and can raise the request.

2. Authorize with Exact Online

1. If your Exact Online account has access to more than one administration, sign in to Exact Online and switch to the administration this connection should use. Whichever one is current when you authorize is the one the connection gets.
2. Back in Vault, with the API domain saved, click Authorize. Vault redirects you to the Exact Online sign-in page for that region.
3. Sign in with the Exact Online account this connection should use.
4. Review the access the app asks for and grant it.

You are never asked for a redirect URL, a client ID, or a client secret. Those belong to the Exact Online app registration held by the provider of the integration.

3. Your administration is detected automatically

Right after authorization, Apideck reads the current division of the account you just signed in with and stores it as the connection's default administration. You never type a division number, and there is no dropdown to fill in.

Because it is your current division that gets captured, the administration you were in when you authorized is the one now on the connection. If the wrong one was captured, switch administration in Exact Online and run Authorize again.

An integration that works across several administrations can target a different one per request by sending the division id in the x-apideck-company-id header. Requests without that header use the administration stored on the connection.

4. Optional connection settings

None of these are required to save the connection, but two of them are needed in practice before certain records can be created.

Setting	Needed for	Notes
Purchase Journal	Creating bills (purchase invoices)	Dropdown, read live from the journals in your administration.
Bank Journal	Creating payments and bill payments	Must be an actual bank journal (Exact journal type 12), not a general or sales journal.
Balance-Sheet / Profit-and-Loss titles	Balance sheet and profit-and-loss reads on a non-Dutch classification scheme	See the Balance Sheet and Profit and Loss configuration guide.

Without a Bank Journal, creating a payment or bill payment fails with Invalid journal. Without a Purchase Journal, bills cannot be created. Both dropdowns list every journal in your administration, so choose deliberately — entries are posted to the journal named here. The one exception: an integration can override the journal on an individual write request, so a record created with a different journal than the one configured here is expected behaviour rather than a broken setting.

The Balance-Sheet and Profit-and-Loss title fields only matter when the built-in Dutch RGS headings do not match your administration's classification scheme, which is the normal case outside the Netherlands. The linked guide walks through reading your own headings and entering them.

Notes

• Token refresh is automatic. Apideck refreshes the short-lived access token for you; there is nothing to re-enter while the connection is in regular use.
• A connection left unused for 30 days needs re-authorizing. Exact expires a refresh token after 30 days without use, and each refresh replaces the previous one — they are single-use. Regular use keeps the connection alive. Restore a dormant one by opening it in Vault and clicking Authorize again.
• Payments are recorded, not reconciled. Creating a payment or bill payment writes a bank entry in the bank journal you configured. It does not match that entry against the invoice, so the invoice status does not change to paid — do the matching in Exact Online.
• A 429 is a rate-limit answer, not a broken connection. Exact counts calls against a per-minute and per-day budget per app per administration (the current figures are in this connector's overview). When the budget runs out Exact answers 429, and Apideck passes Exact's rate-limit and retry-after headers through so the integration can back off and retry.
• The connection's reach is the authorizing user's reach. What it can read and write follows that Exact Online user's permissions and administration access. If their access is reduced or their account is disabled later, the connection is affected too.

Troubleshooting

The sign-in page is for the wrong country, or my Exact Online login is rejected. The API domain was almost certainly not saved before Authorize, so the authorization went to the Dutch instance. Set Select your API domain to your region, click Save, then click Authorize again.

Authorization completed but the connection returns another company's data. The division captured at authorization was not the one you wanted (step 3). Sign in to Exact Online, switch to the right administration, and run Authorize again on the connection.

Exact Online will not let me authorize the app at all. Two things to check, in order. First, that your user is allowed to authorize third-party app connections — your Exact Online administrator can confirm. Second, that the app has been approved by Exact for use outside the Exact instance it was registered in; until it is, only accounts on that same instance can connect. The second one is not yours to change — report it to the provider of the integration, who owns the app registration and its review.

Creating a payment or bill payment fails with Invalid journal. The Bank Journal setting is empty, or points at a journal that is not a bank journal. Open the connection, pick a bank journal from the dropdown, and save.

Bills cannot be created. Set the Purchase Journal on the connection (step 4).

The balance sheet or profit-and-loss sections look wrong or empty. Your administration's first-level classification headings differ from the built-in Dutch RGS defaults. The Balance Sheet and Profit and Loss configuration guide shows how to read your own headings and which fields to enter them in.

Requests start failing with 429. The call budget for this administration is used up. The connection itself is fine — nothing needs re-authorizing, and it recovers once the budget resets. If it keeps happening, report it to the provider of the integration: how the integration paces its calls is theirs to manage, and this connector's overview lists the current limits.

The connection worked and later stopped. The usual causes, in order:

1. It sat unused for more than 30 days — re-authorize (see Notes).
2. The Exact Online user who authorized it lost access, or the subscription lapsed — re-authorize with an account that has the access.
3. The Exact Online app credentials behind the integration changed. That sits with the provider of the integration, not with you, and affects every connection using them — report it to them.

Still stuck? Contact Apideck Support.