| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| API key | The secret you send in the Authorization: Bearer header. Each key belongs to one Integration and one environment. Sandbox keys start with ppiq_test_ and production keys with ppiq_live_. See Authentication. |
| Balance snapshot | An ordered list of Source balances you send for up to 100 Receivables. See Source balance snapshots. |
| Batch | Up to 100 records you queue in one request and PayPathIQ processes later. See Asynchronous batches. |
| Change feed | A durable list of the changes PayPathIQ has committed for your Integration and Client. Use it to find what changed after an outage. See Change feed. |
| Client | The business whose receivables are being recovered. Its clientCode appears in every API URL. An Organization is the PayPathIQ tenant that uses PayPathIQ; the two can be the same business. See Mapping your terminology. |
| Complete book | Your declaration that you have sent the Source’s whole book of Receivables. See Complete books and missing records. |
| Contact | A person and channel, such as an email address or phone number, nested under a Customer. A Contact carries no liability. See Updating Contacts. |
| Credit note, adjustment, write-off | Immutable records of a non-cash change to a Receivable’s balance. See Non-cash financial changes. |
| Customer | The person or business that owes the Client. See Core model. |
| Cursor | The opaque value you send to the change feed to continue from where you stopped. See Change feed. |
| External ID | The stable, non-sensitive ID you choose for a record. It is 1 to 128 characters from A-Z, a-z, 0-9, _ and -, and it goes in the URL. See Safe retries. |
| Feed mode | How a connection supplies financial changes: as a series of events (transaction) or as balances only (snapshot_only). It decides what a balance snapshot means. See Source balance snapshots. |
| Hosted payment request | A request for a PayPathIQ-hosted payment page for one Customer and a fixed set of Receivables. See Hosted payment requests. |
| Integration | The connection through which your source system supplies records for an approved Client and Portfolio. See Ownership of supplied data. |
| JSON Merge Patch | The PATCH format (RFC 7396). Omitted fields stay as they are, and null removes a nullable field. See Updates. |
| Lifecycle command | An explicit POST to pause, clear a pause, close or reopen a Receivable. See Core model. |
| Payment observation | An immutable record of a payment, refund or reversal received outside PayPathIQ. It reports a payment; it does not make one. See Report a payment. |
| Portfolio | A stable book of receivables for one Client. A key is granted access to an approved Client and Portfolio. See Authentication. |
| Problem details | The application/problem+json error body (RFC 9457). See Errors and retries. |
| Profile | The kind of obligation a connection is approved for: credit_union.v1 (loans) or property_management.v1 (service charges). See Credit-union and Property management. |
| Receivable | One independently identifiable posted obligation, with its liable Customers, due date, financial type and source revision. See Core model. |
| Recoverable amount | The posted source balance of a Receivable, in EUR with two decimals. Importing it never grants recovery permission. See Posted source balance. |
| Recovery instruction | A scoped, revisioned instruction that authorizes recovery for one Receivable. See Recovery entry. |
| Request ID | The X-Request-Id header on every response. Quote it when you ask for support. See Errors and retries. |
| Safety assertion | A fact you report that can restrict collection or contact. See Safety assertions. |
| Sandbox | The test environment at https://api.sandbox.paypathiq.com. Use synthetic data only. See Environments. |
| Scope | A permission on a key, such as customers:write. See Scopes. |
| Source freshness | Whether your accepted evidence is recent enough for PayPathIQ to act on. See Source freshness. |
| Source reference | A non-sensitive reference to the record in your own system, such as receivable-ref-123. |
| Source revision | The number that orders the versions of a Receivable you send. A changed Receivable must carry a higher number than the last one accepted. See Safe retries. |
| Webhook | A signed, minimal notification that something changed. See Webhooks. |
Getting started
Glossary
Plain-English definitions of the words you will see in the PayPathIQ API docs.
Terms are in alphabetical order. Each one links to the page that explains it in full.