Introducing the Stream Accounting Tool & API: Money Stream Accounting Made Easy

Money streaming is a powerful technology that has the potential to revolutionize the way we handle financial transactions. Thanks to continuous money streams, individuals and businesses can send and receive payments in real-time, allowing them to earn, spend, and invest money by the second.

However, with this new way of handling money comes the need for special accounting accommodations to track real-time transactions. That’s because traditional accounting software records value transfer on a per-transaction (rather than ongoing, second-by-second) basis. Without support for real-time accounting, it can be difficult to accurately and efficiently keep track of streaming value transfer, which is crucial for financial reporting, tax payments, and decision-making purposes.

This is where the Stream Accounting Tool & API comes in.

Much like how a shop’s cash register groups daily transactions together and records them in accounting software to help keep a company’s finances organized, we’ve built the Stream Accounting Tool: software that converts ongoing money streams into daily, weekly or monthly amounts that can be easily imported into any existing accounting tool. Thanks to this tooling, anyone can start paying with streams without having to worry about how to manage their accounting, or having to do manual calculations each month.

And for all the builders in our community and anyone integrating Superfluid, we’ve also built a Stream Accounting API that allows you to visualize streams in discrete transactions and use these data as you please within your application (e.g., accounting, invoicing, financial controlling, treasury management, etc).

By providing Superfluid users with an easy way to fetch and export stream data that’s compatible with existing accounting software, freelancers and ops teams can now leverage money streaming without having to manage additional accounting complexity.

Getting Started With Stream Accounting

Stream Accounting Tool

Users can access and export their stream data from the new Accounting widget, which is found within the Superfluid Dashboard by clicking the “More” menu on the bottom left corner of the app and selecting “Export Stream Data.”

After selecting the address they’d like to export stream data for (along with various parameters like date range and price granularity), users can see an Export Preview before choosing to save their export as a .csv file that can be easily imported into their accounting software.

Stream Accounting API

For developers interested in building Superfluid projects that support stream data exporting, they needn’t look further than the Stream Accounting API.

The Stream Accounting API is RESTful and exposes a single endpoint which allows for fetching stream data across all Superfluid tokens and networks. The API lets you chop up the amounts an address has been streaming over time into discrete periods of your choice (e.g., monthly, daily, hourly).

Our Stream Accounting API supports:

• Dynamic Token Prices: If the token you’re streaming has price tracking from Coingecko, then you can get price information for each period in the currency of your choice. You can also select price granularity, which lets you choose whether you want to get your prices as an average over a lagging timeframe or just the instantaneous price for each period.

• Flow Rate Updates: The API accommodates changes in stream flow rates. Basically, a “stream period” is a period over which a stream’s flow rate is the same. Once the flow rate is updated, a new stream period begins. When retrieving accounting data for an address that includes a stream whose flow rate has been updated, you’ll see that the data is segmented into separate stream periods for each different flow rate.

• Outgoing and Incoming Streams: The API accounts for both outgoing and incoming streams in the same data export, denoting incoming streams with positive values and outgoing streams with negative values.

• All Mainnets, All Super Tokens: The API supports all mainnets and Super Tokens through use of the Superfluid Subgraphs.

To learn more about the Stream Accounting API, check out the documentation and developer quickstart!

Equipping Superfluid Users and Developers With Comprehensive Accounting Data

By making it easy to retrieve and export granular stream data as a .csv, the Stream Accounting Tool is an essential resource for Superfluid users looking to include stream activity into their accounting cycle. Moreover, the Stream Accounting API provides a simple and powerful way for developers to integrate second-by-second accounting features into their Superfluid projects, opening the door for more data rich money streaming applications.

In tandem, the Stream Accounting Tool & API brings valuable stream data within reach for users and developers — improving the end-to-end money streaming experience.

Ready to start simplifying accounting for money streams? Sign up for a live demo of Superfluid Accounting today!