# Understanding the Contracting API

The Contracting API enables you to efficiently participate in and keep track of the contracting process of your Accommodation Partners.

## What is contracting?

For an Accommodation Partner's property to become open and bookable, the Accommodation Partner must sign a contract with Booking.com.

To start building a property with `HotelDescriptiveContentNotif` you *must* first provide the Legal entity ID (LEID) which specifies the unique Booking.com ID of an Accommodation Partner.

One-to-one relationship between LEID and legal contact email
Every LEID has a one-to-one relationship with a legal contact email in the Booking.com system.
This means you cannot use the same email to create more than one LEID.

## Contracting for all countries

Accommodation Partners have to sign a contract that includes all the countries they have properties in.
If an Accommodation Partner has already signed a contract and wants to add a property in an additional country,
they must sign the contract again for the new country.
The Contracting API enables you to add a new country that also triggers an email to the Accommodation Partner with a link to the Booking.com contracting tool Booking.com uses.

→ To switch on the contracting feature, see the [Accommodation Partner New Contract Flow feature on the feature management page.](https://connect.booking.com/feature_management#)

### Understanding the contracting flow using Legal entity ID

To understand how to use the legal entity ID flow, look at the following diagram and descriptions:

![LEID first](/assets/leid-first.cf5282a06e083b0e2aa4c3ba9b109570022a4fdaf8839b024b9ab2691c37fa63.956aee9b.png)

## What is possible with the Contracting API?

On a high level, the Contracting API enables you to:

* Send legal details of Accommodation Partner (AP) to create a legal entity ID and send an email to AP with link to Booking.com contracting tool.
* Check whether AP has signed the contract with Booking.com.
* Resend email to AP with link to Booking.com contracting tool.
* Retrieve basic legal details AP: Legal entity ID, contract signed status, and countries in which the AP has properties.
* Request access to an existing partner account to build properties.


## Why use the Contracting API?

Using the Contracting API greatly helps you to simplify the contracting process.

### Main URL and use of shortened endpoint paths

The Contracting API's main URL is `https://supply-xml.booking.com/contracts-api`. All shortened endpoint paths imply that you must add the main URL. For example: `/partners/legal-details` becomes `https://supply-xml.booking.com/contracts-api/partners/legal-details` in an actual request.

### Authentication

Contracting API uses the same [authentication methods](/connectivity/docs/authentication) as other APIs.

## Going live

Before you go live with your API integration, take a look at [Going Live.](/connectivity/docs/going_live/)