Getting Amrod API access approved

If you sell Amrod product and you want it on your own website, you need the API. Reading it is the only way to keep thousands of prices and stock figures current without somebody retyping them. This page covers how to get access, because that is the step most people get stuck on.

An account and API access are not the same thing

Amrod is trade only. Its own site says it does not supply end users and supplies registered and approved resellers. So the first requirement is an Amrod reseller account, which involves an application, documents, vetting and a once-off administration fee.

Having that account does not give you the API. API access is a separate permission granted against your account, and you have to ask for it. Plenty of resellers discover this after a developer has already told them the credentials are wrong.

How to request it

Amrod publishes an API access request form. At the time of writing it sits at content.amrod.co.za/new-api-access-request, and the documentation is at newapidocs.amrod.co.za.

The form asks who will be using the access. It allows for an external developer, which matters if somebody else is building your site: you can name them without handing over your own trade login.

Three things are worth putting in the request.

• Ask for a dedicated API user. Explained below, and it is the single most useful thing on this page.
• Say what you are building. A website carrying your own catalogue is an ordinary request. Saying so avoids a round of questions.
• Name your developer if you have one, so the credentials and the technical questions can go straight to them.

Ask for a separate API user, not your own login

This is the part that costs people money later.

The credentials that work on the API are usually the same ones your staff use to log in to Amrod's trade site. That means anybody who resets that password stops your website updating. It does not break loudly. The site keeps serving the last prices and the last stock figures it pulled, and it looks completely normal.

You find out when a customer orders something that went out of stock a week ago, or when you quote at a price that has changed.

Two things prevent it, and you want both. Ask Amrod for an API user that no person logs in with, so a routine password change cannot touch it. And make sure whoever runs your site is alerted when a sync fails, rather than finding out from a customer.

The three refusals, and what each one means

When a login fails, the response tells you which of three things is wrong. Reading it correctly saves a lot of time.

The third one is the important one. Nothing you or your developer changes will fix it. If you see it, stop debugging and go back to Amrod.

What access gives you, and what it does not

The API is read only. It publishes products, prices, stock, categories, brands and branding information.

It does not take orders. There is no endpoint that places an order with Amrod. Whatever your website does, somebody on your side still places the order with Amrod the way they do now. Any proposal that suggests otherwise has not read the documentation.

Two consequences follow, and they shape what a sensible website looks like.

• The website's job is to capture a complete, correctly priced order and hand it to a person in a form they can act on in seconds. Not to automate fulfilment, because it cannot.
• Because branded work is priced by print position and by quantity band, a quote is usually a better fit than a checkout. Why splitting an order across colours costs your customer more covers the arithmetic.

The prices you receive are your prices

Amrod places resellers on a loyalty ladder, and where you sit on it sets what you pay. The API returns the prices for the account that is calling, so two resellers running identical websites see different cost prices.

That is worth understanding before you set a markup. Your website should apply your margin to your cost, not to a price list somebody else published. How Amrod pricing tiers work goes into it.

Once you have it

You will have three pieces of information: a username, a password and a customer code. All three go together, and all three should be treated as banking credentials, because anyone holding them can see your buying prices.

Give them to whoever is building your site directly. They belong on a server, in a file that is not reachable from the web, and never in an email thread that gets forwarded.

The next question is usually what to do with the data once it arrives, which turns out to be less obvious than it looks: every endpoint returns the entire dataset, the largest is around 55 MB, and there is no way to ask for one product. The Amrod API, in practice covers what that means for a real website.

Questions people ask

Does Amrod charge for API access?

We have found no published fee for API access itself. Amrod does charge a once-off administration fee when a reseller account is first registered, and it does not publish that amount either. Ask them directly.

Can I use the API without an Amrod account?

No. The API returns prices for the account that calls it, so it has no meaning without one. Amrod supplies registered and approved resellers only.

Why does my login work on the Amrod website but not on the API?

API access is granted separately from the trade account. If the credentials are right and the API still refuses them, access has not been enabled on that account, and only Amrod can enable it.

How long does approval take?

Amrod does not publish a turnaround time, and we will not invent one. Ask when you submit the request.