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Overview

Counterparts represent the suppliers and clients of an organization. They can be organizations or individuals. A counterpart must be created before an organization can create invoices, quotes, and other documents.

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Roles and permissions

To use the /counterparts* endpoints with an organization user token, this organization user must have a role with the counterpart permission. If using a partner-level token, no special permissions are needed.

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Create a counterpart

To create a new counterpart, call POST /counterparts with the request body containing the name, address, contact information, and other details. 
curl -X POST 'https://api.sandbox.tesouro.com/v1/counterparts' \
     -H 'X-Finops-Version: 2025-06-23' \
     -H 'X-Organization-Id: ORGANIZATION_ID' \
     -H 'Authorization: Bearer ACCESS_TOKEN' \
     -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
     -d '{
       "type": "organization",
       "is_vendor": false,
       "is_customer": true,
       "organization": {
         "legal_name": "Beskar Steelworks",
         "phone": "8886834583",
         "email": "info@beskarsteel.com",
         "address": {
           "country": "MN",
           "city": "Keldabe",
           "postal_code": "02215",
           "state": "MA",
           "line1": "1 Forge Road",
           "line2": ""
         }
       },
       "language": "en",
       "tax_id": "1234567890"
     }'
The language field in the payload of the POST /counterparts request determines the language on all PDF documents for the counterpart. If the counterpart language is not provided, Tesouro checks whether or not the organization’s settings object contains a default language and creates PDF documents in that language. If neither is available, all PDF documents for the counterpart will be in English. The successful response contains the unique id assigned to this counterpart, along with other information. 
{
  "id": "3fa85f64-5717-4562-b3fc-2c963f66afa6",
  "created_at": "2023-01-30T12:51:09.299Z",
  "updated_at": "2023-01-30T12:51:09.299Z",
  "created_by_entity_user_id": "0ac6962b-2aad-4dd1-b2a1-912b0b741437",
  "default_billing_address_id": "912b0b741437-4562-b2a1-0ac6962bf",
  "default_shipping_address_id": null,
  "language": "en",
  "type": "organization",
  ...
}
After creating a counterpart, make sure to specify additional information about this counterpart:

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Counterpart address

The address specified when creating a counterpart becomes its default billing address for invoices. The ID of this address is saved to the default_billing_address_id field of the counterpart object. If you add additional addresses to a counterpart, you can change its default billing address at any time by calling PATCH /counterparts/{counterpart_id}.

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Counterpart tax ID

This information applies to accounts receivable.
A common compliance requirement for certain transaction types is to include the customer’s taxpayer ID in invoices, if available.

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Tax ID examples

  • For organizations, tax_id can be the taxpayer number or a similar business identifier.
  • For individuals, tax_id can be a government-issued identification number such as a social security number (SSN), taxpayer number, passport number, national ID, or similar.
Tesouro does not validate tax IDs in national registries and does not check the value format.The organization is responsible for providing the correct data about its counterparts. Invoices will include the counterpart’s tax IDs whether or not they are valid.

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Check if tax ID is required

Tesouro API follows these conventions:
  • Organization-type counterparts require at least one tax ID specified.
  • Individual-type counterparts generally do not require a tax ID.
A counterpart can be created successfully even without a tax ID. But if these values are required for invoices to be compliant, invoices will fail to be issued to this counterpart unless the missing values are provided. Before creating a counterpart, you can use GET /receivables/required-fields to check whether tax_id is required for organization-type or individual-type counterparts from a specific country. (In the example below, spaces are added for readability.) 
GET /receivables/required-fields
  ? counterpart_country = <two-letter country code>
  & counterpart_type    = <organization | individual>
If a counterpart already exists but not necessarily has a tax_id filled in, you can instead use: 
GET /receivables/required-fields
  ? counterpart_id = <...>
  & counterpart_billing_address_id = <...>
This takes into account the country and type of the organization making the API call to determine country-specific regulatory requirements for invoices. The response indicates whether the tax_id is required for said counterpart: 
{
  "counterpart": {
    "tax_id": {
      "description": "...",
      "required": false
    }
  },
  ...
}

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Counterpart auto-linking and auto-creation

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Auto-linking

Every time a payable is created via OCR, updated, or approved for payment, Tesouro OCR checks if the counterpart_id is present in the payable. In case the counterpart_id is null, Tesouro uses the other counterpart information found in the payable to perform a search in the organization’s database on this sequence:
  1. Tax ID (tax_id field)
  2. Exact name AND address (city, country, postal_code, and line1 fields)
The same logic applies if more than one record is found for tax ID. Tesouro then searches for the name AND address to make sure the register found is unique. If, by the end of the final verification, there is still more than one counterpart, no counterpart is linked to the payable, i.e. counterpart_id remains as null. If a unique counterpart register is found in the organization’s database, i.e. this counterpart already exists in the Tesouro system, the payable is then automatically linked to the counterpart found, avoiding any manual work. Tesouro also tries to enrich the counterpart register in the database with the supplied counterpart data. In this case, the counterpart’s is_vendor field is set to true to indicate that this counterpart appears in payables.
AI-Powered counterpart suggestionsWhen a user uploads a payable, Tesouro automatically analyzes the payable data and uses AI to suggest the most likely matching counterpart. The suggestion is based on the similarity of the following fields:
  • name
  • address
  • bank_account
If no sufficiently similar counterpart is found, no suggestion will be generated.To get the suggested counterpart for a specific payable, call GET /payables/{payable_id}/suggestions.

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Auto-creation

When a payable is moved to the paid, partially_paid, or waiting_for_approval statuses, Tesouro also tries the counterpart auto-linking. If the counterpart cannot be auto-linked, a new counterpart will be automatically created with the information provided in the payable. The counterpart sub-resources are also created. In this case, the is_vendor field is set to true to indicate that this counterpart appears in payables. If the payable does not have enough information about the counterpart for its auto-creation, the counterpart cannot be created nor linked to the payable.
The auto-creation occurs only when the payable is submitted for approval, approved, marked as partially or completely paid. Before this point, users are able to update the payable and new data for the auto-linking may be provided. Therefore, auto-creation is the final step before freezing the payable data.

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Sub-resources

The counterparts sub-resources, which are addresses and bank accounts, can also be set during the auto-creation process, following this logic:
  • If no sub-resource information is found in the payable but the counterpart already exists in the Tesouro system, Tesouro fills the payable with the sub-resource information stored in the Tesouro system (the default register, when applicable).
  • If the sub-resource information is found in the payable, Tesouro checks if this information already exists in the Tesouro system:
    • If the sub-resource information is found in the payable but is not present in the Tesouro system, Tesouro automatically creates these counterpart sub-resources in the Tesouro system, if the mandatory fields are provided.
    • If the payable does not have enough information about the counterpart sub-resources for their auto-creation, the counterpart cannot be created nor linked to the payable.

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How to enable auto-linking and auto-creation

The auto-linking and auto-creation features are disabled by default.
The auto-linking and auto-creation features are configured at the partner’s settings level via the boolean fields allow_counterpart_autolinking and allow_counterpart_autocreation respectively. To enable or disable the auto-linking or the auto-creation, send a PATCH request to the /settings endpoint: 
curl -X PATCH 'https://api.sandbox.tesouro.com/v1/settings' \
     -H 'X-Finops-Version: 2025-06-23' \
     -H 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_APP_TOKEN' \
     -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
     -d '{
       "payable": {
         "allow_counterpart_autolinking": true,
         "allow_counterpart_autocreation": true
       }
     }'

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Retrieve a counterpart

To get information about a specific counterpart, call GET /counterparts/{counterpart_id} as shown: 
curl -X GET 'https://api.sandbox.tesouro.com/v1/counterparts/3fa85f64...2c963f66afa6' \
     -H 'X-Finops-Version: 2025-06-23' \
     -H 'X-Organization-Id: ORGANIZATION_ID' \
     -H 'Authorization: Bearer ACCESS_TOKEN'
The successful response returns information about the counterpart with the counterpart_id provided. 
{
  "id": "2e557c1e-db8b-48f9-8860-49336ef6fbab",
  "created_at": "2023-06-22T11:44:48.630894+00:00",
  "updated_at": "2023-06-22T11:44:48.630905+00:00",
  "default_billing_address_id": "912b0b741437-4562-b2a1-62bf0ac69",
  ...
}

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List all counterparts

To get a list of all of an organization’s counterparts, call GET /counterparts as shown: 
curl -X GET 'https://api.sandbox.tesouro.com/v1/counterparts' \
     -H 'X-Finops-Version: 2025-06-23' \
     -H 'X-Organization-Id: ORGANIZATION_ID' \
     -H 'Authorization: Bearer ACCESS_TOKEN'
The successful response returns an array containing all of an organization’s counterparts.

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Sort and filter counterparts

You can sort the returned counterparts by name, and filter the results by ID, name, address, email address, and other fields. For a list of available sort and filter parameters, see the description of the GET /counterparts endpoint. Here are some filtering examples:
  • GET /counterparts?type=organization&sort=counterpart_name - get the counterparts that are organizations, sorted by name.
  • GET /counterparts?counterpart_name__icontains=net - get all counterparts whose name contains “net” (case-insensitive).
  • GET /counterparts?address.country=US - get all counterparts registered in the United States (the address.country parameter is a two-letter country code).
  • GET /counterparts?created_at__gte=2022-01-01T00%3A00%3A00 - get all counterparts created on or after January 1, 2022.

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Edit a counterpart

To edit an existing counterpart, call PATCH /counterparts/{counterpart_id}: 
curl -X PATCH 'https://api.sandbox.tesouro.com/v1/counterparts/411dcb...289b3' \
     -H 'X-Finops-Version: 2025-06-23' \
     -H 'X-Organization-Id: ORGANIZATION_ID' \
     -H 'Authorization: Bearer ACCESS_TOKEN' \
     -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
     -d '{
       "default_billing_address_id": "f8c95f64-5717-ds6p-b3fc-2c963f2aada6",
       "tax_id": "12345678",
       "language": "en",
       "individual": {
         "first_name": "Dana",
         "last_name": "Cruz"
       }
     }'
Updating the language field of a counterpart will also update the language on all PDF documents created for that counterpart.
All PATCH requests to the endpoint must include the counterpart’s type object in the request body. You must provide an empty object if there is no data to be updated within the counterpart type object. For example, the following snippet updates the counterpart’s default_shipping_address_id and default_billing_address_id fields:
curl -X PATCH 'https://api.sandbox.tesouro.com/v1/counterparts/411dcb...289b3' \
     -H 'X-Finops-Version: 2025-06-23' \
     -H 'X-Organization-Id: ORGANIZATION_ID' \
     -H 'Authorization: Bearer ACCESS_TOKEN' \
     -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
     -d '{
       "default_shipping_address_id": "0ac3fa2b-2aad-4dd1-f8c9-4h5h963b741437",
       "default_billing_address_id": "f8c95f64-5717-ds6p-b3fc-2c963f2aada6",
       "organization": {}
     }'

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Delete a counterpart

To delete an existing counterpart, call DELETE /counterparts/{counterpart_id}: 
curl -X DELETE 'https://api.sandbox.tesouro.com/v1/counterparts/411dcb...289b3' \
     -H 'X-Finops-Version: 2025-06-23' \
     -H 'X-Organization-Id: ORGANIZATION_ID' \
     -H 'Authorization: Bearer ACCESS_TOKEN'