# Quick start guide
Learn how to monitor or verify information about natural persons or organisations in just a few steps. Refer to our API documentation about the Information Service API or the Person Monitoring Service API for detailed information about all the available endpoints and their properties.
In order to follow the quick start guides below, you will need some test data. Exactly what kind of data you need will depend on the API and the endpoints you want to call. For example, you must provide the organisation number of a company to test organisational data sources, or you might need a test personal ID number to test person data sources. You can find information about how to access relevant test data on the Test data page.
# Before you start
If you don't have an account already, you need to sign up for a free Signicat account:
New to Signicat products?
We advise you to create a Sandbox account to test our services before implementing them in production. Follow the signup documentation and the setup instructions to configure your organisation and accounts.
# Set up an API Client on the Dashboard
To authenticate to the Risk and Identity Data Sources, you need to set up an API Client and configure the correct permissions.
Before continuing with this guide, follow the instructions to:
- Set up an API Client to obtain a Client ID and a Client Secret.
- Select the correct Permissions to connect to the Information Service API.
Permissions for Risk and Identity Data Sources
- Information Service for natural persons to connect to data sources about natural persons
- Information Service for organisations to connect to data sources about organisations
# Which service (API) to use
If you just want to fetch information about a person or an organisation, use the Information Service tab.
If you want to monitor information about natural persons as it changes over time (e.g. when they change addresses), use the Person Monitoring Service tab of the guide.