HR to ERP
HiBob to SAP S/4HANA integration: Bob employees as workforce person, with company code, hours and cost centre
With an integration between HiBob and SAP S/4HANA, every employee from Bob becomes a workforce person with a work agreement in SAP S/4HANA, with company code, cost centre and hours per week from the effective date in Bob. Finance no longer maintains employees by hand in S/4HANA, and a departure in Bob closes the work agreement.
What the integration does
Organisations that use HiBob as their HR system and SAP S/4HANA Cloud for finance, purchasing and expenses often load employees into S/4HANA with a CSV. Transfers and departures from Bob therefore arrive late, and work agreements with overlapping periods are rejected by S/4HANA.
- Bob reports a change; KoppelHet fetches the employee's work and employment history.
- From that KoppelHet builds consecutive periods with company code, cost centre and hours.
- The employee goes to S/4HANA through the replication API; S/4HANA then creates the business partner.
- KoppelHet checks that both steps succeeded and puts a failed employee on the error list.
- On departure the work agreement gets an end date.
What to watch for with HiBob and SAP S/4HANA
- S/4HANA does not allow the hours per week and working time percentage fields to be empty. Bob calculates hours per week and an FTE percentage per employment entry from the working pattern. KoppelHet takes those values; if an entry in Bob has no working pattern, KoppelHet falls back on the site's default pattern instead of letting the delivery fail.
- Work entries in Bob only have an effective date. S/4HANA rejects overlapping periods, even when the end date equals the start date of the next period. KoppelHet therefore ends each period on the day before the effective date of the next entry in Bob.
- Bob states in the response which columns were left out because the service user lacks view or history permission. KoppelHet checks that list on every fetch; if a column S/4HANA needs is missing, the integration stops with an alert instead of sending a period without cost centre.
- Contractors are a type of employment in Bob. In S/4HANA that is a service performer, which requires a work order with supplier and validity. Bob has no supplier, so KoppelHet only sends own employees and puts contractors on a list for purchasing.
- If an employee moves to another entity in Bob, that is a different company code in S/4HANA. S/4HANA creates a new personnel number for it and keeps the old one until someone deletes it. KoppelHet sends the move as one change and reports the old number to finance.
- The communication scenario for this replication allows only one communication arrangement per client in S/4HANA. If another HR source already uses it, for example for a subsidiary with its own HR system, Bob and that source share the same arrangement. KoppelHet records which employees come from Bob, so the two do not overwrite each other.
- An employee's first record in S/4HANA may not be inactive. An employee who already left before the integration goes live is therefore not included in the initial load; only those active on the start date reach S/4HANA.
How we build and run it
- The integration runs on the KoppelHet platform, hosted in a data centre in the EU.
- Every sync and every error is visible in the functional log; on an error your administrator is notified.
- A change that cannot go through is not half-applied but queued for another attempt.
- KoppelHet is ISO 27001 certified. Data travels encrypted and stays on the platform no longer than needed.
- After go-live we manage the integration and adjust it when your process changes.
- The integration fits next to your existing integration layer. Only the fields in the design are transferred; the platform keeps no register of its own.
Implementation and price
This is not an app you switch on. We build the integration for your organisation on our platform, with building blocks we reuse on every project. So it is custom work that does not start from scratch.
A consultant prepares the intake and analyses both systems. We then record the mapping and exceptions field by field, test in the test or acceptance environment and go live at a moment you choose. Costs are a one-off amount for the setup and a monthly amount for platform, monitoring and support.
Frequently asked questions
Does salary from Bob go to S/4HANA?
No. S/4HANA does not need salary for purchasing, expenses and approvals. The service user in Bob gets no salary permissions.
Does this also work with S/4HANA on-premise?
The route differs per release; this page assumes S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. For on-premise we choose the right interface at the start.
Technical details for IT
For those who want to know how it works under the hood: APIs, fields and sources used.
- HiBob through employee data webhooks and the Employee Tables API - work history (effectiveDate, site, department) and employment history (weeklyHours, fte, contract, type, effectiveDate, endEffectiveDate). Responses include restricted_columns with no_view_permission and no_view_history_permission.
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition through the SOAP API Replicate Basic Master Data for Workforce from External HR Systems (WORKFORCEPERSONMASTERDATAREPLI, scope item 1FD, communication scenario SAP_COM_0301 with one arrangement per client). PersonExternalID at most 20 characters; WorkingTimePercentage, WeeklyWorkinghours and WeeklyWorkDays not empty; first status not inactive. Business partner sync tracked in Monitor Data Synchronization (Employee – Business Partner). Service performer (PersonWorkAgreementType 3) requires WorkOrder with ValidityPeriod and Supplier.
Which fields are transferred
The key fields. The full mapping is agreed per customer.
| Field in HiBob | Field in SAP S/4HANA | Notes |
|---|---|---|
root.id of personeelsnummer | PersonExternalID | At most twenty characters |
root.firstName, root.surname | Voornaam en achternaam | |
work.company of entiteit | Bedrijfscode | Lookup table |
work.effectiveDate | Begindatum periode | End on the day before the next entry |
employment.weeklyHours | WeeklyWorkinghours | |
employment.fte | WorkingTimePercentage | |
Kostenplaats (veld in Bob) | Standaardkostenplaats | Finance lookup table |
employment.type (Permanent, Temporary) | Werkovereenkomst als medewerker | |
Lifecycle (vertrek) | Einddatum werkovereenkomst |
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