> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.thredfi.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Importing Business Activity

Thred turns your SME customer's financial activity into proper accounting - invoices become journal entries, payments update cash position, refunds adjust revenue, bank transactions get categorized and reconciled. Your users' books stay up-to-date in real-time, powering the P\&L, balance sheet, and cash flow reports they see.

## What to Sync

### Accounts Receivable (AR)

If your platform handles your SME customers' sales, revenue, or payment collection - whether you are operating a POS system, booking software, invoicing tool, or payment gateway - sync the following data to Thred to keep their books updated in real-time:

**Invoices**

* Sales invoices from SME customer to their end customers
* Creates receivable balance, recognizes revenue in P\&L

**Payments**

* Customer payments received via card, bank transfer, or cash
* Reduces what's owed (AR), increases cash

**Payouts**

* Processor settlements (Stripe, Adyen, Mollie) transferring to bank account
* Moves funds from processor to bank, deducts settlement fees as expenses

**Refunds**

* Credits owed to end customers from cancellations, returns, or overpayments
* Creates liability, reverses revenue in P\&L

**Refund Payments**

* Actual cash returned to end customers
* Clears the liability, reduces cash balance

<Warning>
  **Sync in the correct order**

  Create customers before invoices, invoices before payments, refunds before refund payments. Violating this order causes validation errors.
</Warning>

### Accounts Payable (AP)

If your platform handles your SME customers' vendor bills or expenses, sync the following data:

**Bills**

* Vendor invoices the business needs to pay
* Creates payable balance, recognizes expense in P\&L

**Bill Payments**

* Payments made to vendors
* Reduces what's owed (AP), decreases cash

**Vendor Credit Notes**

* Credits received from vendors (returns, overpayments)
* Reduces expenses or creates vendor credit balance

<Warning>
  **Prevent duplicate records**

  Use `external_id` on all create operations to ensure safe retries. If a request fails, retrying with the same `external_id` returns the existing resource instead of creating duplicates.

  [See complete idempotency guide →](/implementation/idempotency)
</Warning>

## Next Steps

Learn about [AR integration](/implementation/ar-integration) (invoices, payments, refunds).

For bank transactions, your business users can connect their bank accounts directly in the Thred UI to keep transactions synced in real-time. [See bank accounts guide →](/implementation/bank-accounts)