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Pleo supports organisations with multiple legal entities (companies). When integrating with the Pleo API, it’s important to understand how companies and organisations are represented, and how this affects API access and data isolation. This page explains Pleo’s multi-entity model and the API constraints that apply in these setups.

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Company vs Organisation

Pleo distinguishes between companies and organisations:
TermDescription
CompanyA single legal entity in Pleo, identified by a company_id. All expenses, employees, wallets, and accounting exports belong to a specific company.
OrganisationA group of one or more companies, identified by an organisation_id. Organisations are used for administration and discovery, not accounting exports.
Example:
  • Alexey Software Ltd operates as a single company → one company_id
  • Love Crème Brûlée Group operates subsidiaries in NL, DE, and BE → one organisation_id, multiple company_ids

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How Pleo Supports Multi-Entity Organisations

A single Pleo organisation may contain multiple companies with:
  • Separate accounting configurations
  • Separate employees and vendors
  • Separate wallets and currencies
  • Separate ERP or Accounting System integrations
Each company is treated as an independent accounting boundary.

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API Scope and Entity Isolation

The Pleo API enforces strict company-level isolation.

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Key rule

All accounting-related API calls are scoped to exactly one company_id.
  • You cannot perform accounting operations across multiple companies in a single request
  • You cannot update or export data for multiple companies using an organisation_id
This applies to:
  • Expense exports
  • Master data sync (accounts, tax codes, vendors, tags)
  • Other supported APIs that uses company_id.
Each company must be handled independently.

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Authentication Scope in Multi-Entity Setups

Authentication credentials are also company-scoped.

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Accounting integrations

  • API keys and OAuth 2.0 clients are created per company
  • Credentials are valid only for the company they were generated for
  • Multi-entity organisations require separate credentials per company

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Organisation-level access

  • Organisation-scoped tokens may be used for:
    • Discovering companies
    • Automation and orchestration
  • They cannot be used to bypass company-level isolation for accounting operations

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Practical Integration Implications

If you’re integrating Pleo for a multi-entity organisation:
  • Treat each company_id as a separate integration instance
  • Store and manage credentials per company
  • Run exports, retries, and error handling per company
  • Avoid assumptions that organisation-level access implies accounting access
This design is intentional and ensures:
  • Accounting integrity
  • Auditability
  • Clear ownership of financial data

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What comes next?

  • Explore Employees and Roles Understanding how employees and roles are represented in Pleo is essential when designing integrations, configuring permissions, and automating workflows.