Integrating Intacct with Dell Boomi
Apps Associates has been implementing integration solutions between different applications using Dell Boomi’s integration tool for our customers.
This blog describes Intacct (cloud computing financial application) integrations with Azure using Dell Boomi middleware tool.
Use Case: Customer Order Processing in Intacct
For this customer, Azure is the source system which holds customer order data. It gets refreshed from Salesforce daily. SFTP (Secured File Transfer Protocol) is an intermediate location for the billing team to review the data in an Excel format. Intacct is the financial management system that is used for sending customer invoices.
Current system:
- Business users generate CSV files from Azure
- Business users review the CSV file. After review they load the CSV file into Intacct manually using the import functionality of Intacct.
Challenges with the current system:
- Requires multiple extracts to generate billing review templates
- No mechanism to separate the templates by business unit
- Requires manual validations before loading into Intacct
- Templates are required for each customer which leads to an increased amount of files to be imported
- Requires manual intervention to separate failed records from Original file
- Requires manual process for reconciliation, as there is no tracking available in Azure
Proposed solution design to maximize the automation and reduce manual intervention:
Step 1:
Dell Boomi Process: It is a scheduled process, which will extract customer orders from Azure and generates billing review templates by business unit.
Billing review templates are placed on to the SFTP folder.
Step 2:
Billing Review Team: Manually reviews these files. Upon approval the files are moved to differ folder to be generated as customer orders.
Step 3:
Dell Boomi Process: Polls approved billing review templates from SFTP folder and loads them to Intacct using REST API.
Step 4:
Dell Boomi Process: It is a scheduled daily job, which loads all current Customer Orders from Intacct (Using REST API) to Azure. This is used for reconciliation.
About Intacct REST API:
Intacct provides XML based REST services to communicate with Intacct objects.
End point URL: https://api.intacct.com/ia/xml/xmlgw.phtml
Note: This is same for every customer.
Payload structure:
Below is the payload structure for all Intacct API requests.
Request for Extract from Intacct:
readByQuery function call is used to extract the data. This API call can return a maximum of 1000 records with pagination index and resultid.
readMore function call is used to extract next set of 1000 records by using resultId from the result of readByQuery.
Request for Import into Intacct:
create_sotransaction function call is used to create Order Entry data (Customer Orders) into Intacct. This API can load 100 transactions per each request. So this has to be invoked in batches of 100 at a time.
Things to Deal while working with Intacct:
API DTD Version: Intacct has 2 DTD versions. For this implementation, we have used two different API versions. 2.1 which is also called legacy and 3.0.
Batching and Filtering: Dell Boomi Intacct connector doesn’t have the option to filter data using IN operator and no batching is provided in the extract operation. For these, Dell Boomi HTTP connector can be used to communicate Intacct REST APIs.
Benefits with Automation:
Document tracking: Dell Boomi provides a document tracking feature to enable key business data values at connector operations. With this, the customer can use Dell Boomi’s process reporting for tracking and troubleshooting specific business data.
Process only good data: With the manual file upload, the Intacct system either loads all data or fails all data. With this automation, only all good data is processed and failed data will be captured and stored in separate a file for further review.
Review and reprocess error file: With this automation, Apps Associates generated an error file similar to the source file along with error messages for failed transactions. This process has enabled the client to review and reprocess only failed data.
Notification with summary of transactions: Notifications are enabled for each process execution with a summary of the transaction details. This enables the customer to review the summary of each execution in a single email.
Flexibility to modify business units: Business units are extended at the Dell Boomi environment level, so the Dell Boomi admin can add or remove or change the business units at any time.
Reconciliation made easy: As the daily Dell Boomi process loads Intacct customer orders back to Azure, the customer can reconcile the data in the Azure system.
Conclusion:
By using the above technical approaches, we have enabled the customer to manage automated Intacct integrations using Dell Boomi middleware. With these integrations, a large amount of customer orders are processed quickly and efficiently. Advanced tracking mechanism allows customer to troubleshoot and track business data.
If you have any questions, please leave your comments or suggestions below. For more blogs, check out https://appsassociates.com/.
