---
title: "Start Date and End Date for API Calls"
canonical: "https://help.validic.com/space/VCS/1634926604/Start%20Date%20and%20End%20Date%20for%20API%20Calls"
format: markdown
---
***Why should I use a start date and end date for my API calls and how do I add it?***

Using start date and end date filters with your API call can help get the data you need without wasting resources retrieving data you don’t need. A start date and end date can be added to any data object on a user or organization level call. It will return any records that have a “timestamp” on or after the start date up to or on the end date. This is particularly useful if you are only interested in the currently available data related to a certain period that, for example, correlates to a corporate event. This does not mean that the records between those dates will never get updated.

You may also use a start date and end date for calls to latest.json. Using these filters on a latest.json call will return any records that have a “last_updated” date on or after the start date up to or on the end date. One of the benefits of using a start date and end date on a latest.json call is that once the call is made, no new records for that period can ever be returned. The next call you make can start right after the last end date and no data will be missed barring any connectivity issue.

**Using the Filters**

Adding the start date and end date to your call can be done by appending &start_date=YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ&end_date=YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ to it. The date component must be in ISO 8601 format which allows you to omit certain components. The timezone offset for all of are timestamps and last_updated fields is always in UTC time (+00:00) so you can always omit the timezone offset if making requests in UTC Time. Using a date without a time YYYY-MM-DD will use 00:00:00 for the time component. Remember that the day ends at the time 23:59:59.999999999 so a request for a single day should read, for example

```
GET https://api.validic.com/v1/organizations/{ORGANIZATION_ID}/users/{USER_ID}/fitness.json?access_token={ACCESS_TOKEN}&start_date=2015-05-04T00:00:00+00:00&end_date=2015-05-04T23:59:59.999999999+00:00
```

**NOTE:** If you were to make a call with a start date and end date of &start_date=2015-05-04&end_date=2015-05-05 to get a days worth of data, you could end up with data that fell at the very start of the next day also.

More information on the start date and end date filters can found in the [Data Retrieval](https://docs.validic.com/docs/data-retrieval#section-optional-query-parameters) section of our [API Documentation](https://docs.validic.com/docs).