If you have employees or contractors in your database that you need to match with Finch’s individual_ids, you will need a reliable method to reconcile the two. The following are two best practices for developers building with Finch.

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Recommended: full name + date of birth

All payroll systems require at least a first and last name, therefore, finding a match by full name is a good way of reconciling individuals. However, on rare occasions, naming collisions do happen even within the same company. Therefore, we recommend using a concatenation of first_name, last_name, and dob, all data points available from the /individual endpoint.
Finch returns first_name, last_name, and dob for all systems we support. However, sometimes all the data points not inputted into the system by the payroll administrator of a company. We recommend confirming with your customer that the data points are inputted into the system for all employees before reconciliation.

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Alternative: email address

Finch returns email addresses from the /individual endpoint. The uniqueness of emails, if they are returned by the underlying employment system, makes it a good data point to reconcile employees against.
Finch’s API does not always return emails. We find first_name, last_name, and dob are more consistent than emails.

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Alternative: Social Security Number

Finch returns Social Security Number (SSN) of an individual, which can be helpful in identifying unique individuals. However, SSN is not returned by default since it is a sensitive field; you must enable SSN for your application first.