HR to ERP
HiBob to Unit4 integration: Bob employees as employees in Unit4 ERP, per employer in the right company
With an integration between HiBob and Unit4 ERP, every employee in Bob automatically becomes an employee in the Unit4 company that matches their employer, with department as a relation from the effective date in Bob's work history. On departure in Bob KoppelHet terminates the employee in Unit4, without deleting them, so hours and projects stay with the same person.
What the integration does
Organisations that manage HR in HiBob and run finance and projects in Unit4 ERP enter new employees into Unit4 by hand, often only when someone wants to book their first hours. Leavers stay active in Unit4 until finance notices, and a transfer recorded ahead in Bob does not reach Unit4 on the right date.
- HR creates an employee in Bob or records a transfer or departure.
- Bob reports the change. KoppelHet fetches the employee and their work history itself, with only the fields Unit4 needs.
- Unit4 first checks a new employee without saving and then creates them in their employer's company.
- The department goes to Unit4 as a relation with the effective date from Bob, also when it lies in the future.
- On departure the employee gets the status terminated in Unit4.
What to watch for with HiBob and Unit4 ERP
- In Bob every employee belongs to exactly one employer, and Unit4 only accepts new employees in one call if they belong to the same company. KoppelHet records the Unit4 company per employer and processes employees per company. Employers without a Unit4 ledger stay outside the integration.
- A notification from Bob only contains the employee and which fields changed, not the new values. KoppelHet then fetches the work history, and only sends a change to Unit4 if the department or dates really differ, so a changed phone number costs no call to Unit4.
- An entry in Bob's work history can have a future effective date. Unit4 keeps relations with a date from and to. KoppelHet puts the transfer into Unit4 straight away with that date and closes the previous department on the day before.
- If the service user in Bob lacks the right to a field, Bob drops that field without an error. An empty department would then reach Unit4 as a change. KoppelHet checks per run that the expected fields are present and stops with a notice instead of clearing a relation in Unit4.
- Bob only returns active employees in a search by default, and Unit4 does not delete an employee on termination but sets the status to terminated. The daily comparison therefore queries leavers in Bob separately, so someone who drops out of the list without a notification is still terminated in Unit4.
- The employee ID from Bob is the key in Unit4, with Unit4's automatic numbering switched off; Unit4 refuses a second employee with the same ID. When a former employee returns in Bob, they get a new employment on their existing employee in Unit4.
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 the cost centre go along too?
If it is kept in Bob, it can go as a second relation. Many organisations derive the cost centre in Unit4 from the department; we agree that at the start.
Does salary from Bob go to Unit4?
No. The integration reads no salary table from Bob. Finance manages hourly cost rates in Unit4.
What if a department from Bob does not exist in Unit4?
Then Unit4 reports it in the check beforehand, and KoppelHet creates nothing halfway. After a line in the lookup table the employee goes through.
Technical details for IT
For those who want to know how it works under the hood: APIs, fields and sources used.
- HiBob through the REST API with a service user. Webhooks v2 (employeeId and the names of changed fields), people search with showInactive for leavers, and the work history through the Employee Tables API with effectiveDate. Fields without rights are dropped without an error.
- Unit4 ERPx through the Employees API with client ID and client secret. POST /v1/employees/validate and POST /v1/employees/batch (one companyId per call), PATCH /v1/employees/batch with AddOrReplaceById on relatedValues (dateFrom, dateTo, relationId), DELETE /v1/employees/{personId} sets the status to Terminate. If the first name is part of the name definition (HS_NAME), Unit4 updates the full name itself.
Which fields are transferred
The key fields. The full mapping is agreed per customer.
| Field in HiBob | Field in Unit4 ERP | Notes |
|---|---|---|
Personeelsnummer (Bob) | personId | Fixed key; automatic numbering in Unit4 off |
Employer | companyId | Fixed table per employer |
firstName en surname | nameInformation | Unit4 can compose the name itself from first and last name |
Werk-e-mail | contactPoints (e-mail) | |
Startdatum en einddatum | employments (startDate, endDate) | |
work.department (werkhistorie met effectiveDate) | relatedValues (afdeling, dateFrom, dateTo) | Through a lookup to the Unit4 value |
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