Understand the Compute Finance API
Which finance records your integration can read, which operations are available, and why a work agent never makes payments.
Read or export finance records without delegating payment
Use the Finance API to read the record family or export that your authorized integration needs to reconcile. It gives an authorized identity a separate way to describe and inspect finance records. It is not one of the five Compute work tools, and it does not turn a work agent into a payer. Use this guide to decide what an integration may read and what must remain with a human or your organization's accounting system.
An agent can prepare a reconciliation from permitted finance metadata. A person or the organization's accounting system still controls any external accounting action and payment decision.
Start with the selected Compute account, the invoice or statement you need to reconcile, and the finance permission assigned to your identity. Access to jobs does not imply access to invoices, finance configuration, or payment. An operation listed in a reference is not permission to call it or proof that it is enabled for your account.
Separate the record families
| Record family | Permitted purpose | Boundary to preserve |
|---|---|---|
| Billing profile | Identify the account's billing context and currency. | Not banking credentials or a debit mandate. |
| Usage and statements | Explain measured or recognized work and the stated period. | Observations and informational statements are not additional payables. |
| Invoice projection | Read the approved customer-safe representation of a Lithi invoice. | Preserve amount, currency, identity and source version. |
| Finance connection | Inspect the declared system, direction, state and safe reference. | A connection record is not custody of ERP credentials. |
| Finance mapping | Review the intended record treatment and mapping fingerprint. | Mapping approval is not a payment instruction. |
| Sync event | Inspect observation, replay and discrepancy information. | A successful event is not proof that payment cleared. |
| Payment status | Understand provider-backed state for the correct invoice. | A work key or external annotation cannot create settlement. |
Customer expenses use the customer-payable direction. Provider income and provider payout reconciliation are different commercial flows with separate identities and permissions. Do not reuse a provider earnings mapping to record a customer's Compute expense.
Inspect first, then decide what can proceed
For the visible inspection workflow, open Finance sync and choose Inspect authority. Review the account-bound connection and mapping metadata, source observation time, and any discrepancy. Plan dry-run inspects the proposed mapping without changing records. An enabled read or dry run does not make an Apply action available.
For a software integration, consult the operation's actual request, response, scope and availability information. Use the narrowest approved identity and existing protected credential handoff. Do not build a runnable request from an operation name alone or add guessed fields to a closed schema. An unavailable response should leave the intended action unapplied, not trigger a privileged fallback.
Read the impact report outside the finance record families
The monthly Compute impact report is not one of the record families above and is not a payable. It carries no amount to post and no settlement meaning, so it never belongs in the invoice projection or the payment status record.
It reaches your accounting or reporting process as an exported document that you file under your own approval, just as you would with an approved invoice mapping. There is no registered impact destination or Lithi-hosted impact connector, so no operation in this API creates, updates, or files an impact record on your behalf.
Keep each figure's evidence label with it when you read or forward it. A Modeled value is not a Measured one, and an Unavailable value is not zero. Do not let an import or a manual entry flatten either into a plain number.
Read the impact report guide for its Work, energy and community sections, and the impact methodology for the coverage, method and limits behind them. To file a report alongside an invoice, see Finance sync.
Preserve identity through retries and exports
Keep the account, source invoice, source version, mapping fingerprint, and safe external reference together. A retry of the same observation must not produce another external payable. Before repeating an import with an unknown outcome, read the existing destination record and compare those references. A changed invoice or mapping is a revised intent to review, not a reason to force a conflicting replay.
Use only an export actually supplied for that account and purpose. A metadata field naming CSV, PDF, JSON or API does not itself supply a document or a working retrieval method. When authorized records are unavailable, retain their references and ask billing support for the appropriate document rather than constructing an invoice from usage counters.
An agent may prepare a comparison using permitted, non-secret finance metadata. It must not change beneficiaries, bank details, the invoice amount or spending limits to reconcile a difference. External Paid remains an accounting annotation until the permitted payment evidence is matched to Lithi. Continue with finance mappings and dry runs for the human inspection and recovery workflow.