Review and implement the instructions in How to build a Toast integration.

Use the configuration API to retrieve necessary configuration information you need to build your analytics capabilities. For example, retrieving a list of the dining options for a restaurant so that you can provide human-readable dining option names when presenting information from the orders API.

Use the restaurants API to retrieve general information about the configuration of a restaurant.

To ensure you have the latest restaurant configuration, poll the configuration API and the restaurants API once per restaurant location per day, and update configuration information in your system based on anything that was added, updated, or deleted.

Integrations consuming order information will rely on the restaurants’ usage of menu items and the overall structure of orders.

To understand Toast menu concepts before you begin development, review menu hierarchy information.

To successfully retrieve information relevant to orders, familiarize yourself with the structure of an order by reading the Orders API overview and Order object summary. For more information about the orders API, see the reference documentation.

To report on cash transactions, you need to retrieve cash entries and deposits once per day.

To display additional information associated with cash transactions, query the following configuration API endpoints at least once per day:

In addition, query the /employees endpoint of the labor API at least once per day to retrieve information about the employees associated with cash transactions.

To report on order information, use the orders updated webhook to receive order updates as they occur.

To ensure you have the latest menu information, use the menus webhook or query the /metadata endpoint of the menus API throughout the day. For more information about understanding menu updates, see Menus webhook.

Retrieve a new menu when you determine that your existing menu is outdated.

In addition, query the following configuration API endpoints at least once a day:

When a restaurant first connects to your integration, they may expect to see some historical information already displayed in your system. Define how many days of historical orders and cash transactions you retrieve when a restaurant first connects to your integration.

To retrieve the orders for these days, use either the businessDate or startDate and endDate parameters of the /ordersBulk endpoint of the orders API.

Toast support recommends retrieving twelve weeks of historical and orders when a restaurant first connects to your integration.

Ensure your integration adheres to the endpoint specific rate-limit for the /ordersBulk endpoint when retrieving order data. For more information about Toast rate limits, see Rate limiting.

When retrieving cash transaction or order information, you need to determine the closeout hour of the restaurant.

The closeoutHour value in the General object returned by the restaurants API contains the restaurant’s closeout hour.

The default closeout hour is 4:00am local time unless a Toast employee changes this setting. The businessDate value on order entities changes after the closeoutHour.

Consider daylight savings time when interacting with the closeout hour.

For more information, see the API reference.