HR to ERP
SAP SuccessFactors to Coupa integration: employees from Employee Central as Coupa users with approver and default account
With an integration between SAP SuccessFactors and Coupa, every employee from Employee Central who needs to order or approve automatically becomes a Coupa user, with manager, department, content group and default account from their legal entity and cost centre. A termination HR records ahead of time in SuccessFactors deactivates the user in Coupa after the last working day.
What the integration does
Organisations with Employee Central as HR system and Coupa for purchasing and invoices maintain Coupa users with Coupa's CSV template. After a reorganisation in SuccessFactors requisitions in Coupa still go to the previous manager, and someone who is rehired sometimes gets a second account.
- KoppelHet fetches the changed employees from Employee Central, only for legal entities that use Coupa.
- KoppelHet checks whether manager, department, content group, account group and default account already exist in Coupa.
- A new employee becomes a Coupa user who signs in with single sign-on; if a reference is missing, they go on a list.
- A new manager or cost centre goes to Coupa on the effective date from SuccessFactors.
- After the last working day KoppelHet sets the user to inactive; on a rehire the same user becomes active again.
What to watch for with SAP SuccessFactors and Coupa
- Coupa requires department, manager, content group, account group, role and default account to exist before a user is created. KoppelHet checks those references per employee from SuccessFactors and lists employees with a missing value for the Coupa administrator.
- On a rehire with a new employment Employee Central can assign a new user ID, while the person stays the same. KoppelHet therefore uses the person ID as employee number in Coupa, so the old user becomes active again instead of a second one being created.
- For simple rules, such as an approver per cost centre, Coupa describes linking an approver to each cost centre value. If approval follows the budget holder rather than the manager from SuccessFactors, KoppelHet only sends the cost centre, and finance manages the approvers in Coupa.
- A termination is often recorded weeks ahead in Employee Central, but the OData API shows only today's record by default. KoppelHet also requests future records, so the deactivation in Coupa is ready for the day after the last working day and does not come a day late.
- A legal entity in SuccessFactors has its own currency and often its own suppliers. KoppelHet sets the content group and default currency in Coupa per company, so an employee of the British entity orders in pounds from British suppliers.
- Not every employee in SuccessFactors needs to be in Coupa. KoppelHet only includes people who order or approve according to a table per job classification or department, so no licences go to colleagues who never open Coupa.
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
Who decides the approval limits?
Finance. A table per job classification can be added later as an extension; in the first version finance manages the limits in Coupa.
Do employees on a global assignment go along?
They get one Coupa user. Which legal entity it belongs to during the assignment is agreed per customer.
Technical details for IT
For those who want to know how it works under the hood: APIs, fields and sources used.
- Employee Central through the OData API (v2) with OAuth 2.0: EmpJob (company, costCenter, department, managerId, jobCode), EmpEmployment (startDate, endDate), PerPerson (personIdExternal), PerPersonal and PerEmail; fetched with fromDate and toDate=9999-12-31 and filtered on lastModifiedDateTime.
- To Coupa through the Users API (/api/users; POST, PUT on Coupa ID, GET on Coupa ID) with login, email, employee_number and mention_name as unique fields, manager, department, default_account, default_currency, content_groups, account_groups, authentication_method saml with sso_identifier and active. An initial load can go through the CSV import for Users.
Which fields are transferred
The key fields. The full mapping is agreed per customer.
| Field in SAP SuccessFactors | Field in Coupa | Notes |
|---|---|---|
personIdExternal | employee_number | Stays the same on rehire |
PerEmail (zakelijk) | login, email en sso_identifier | |
PerPersonal firstName en lastName | firstname, lastname en mention_name | |
EmpJob managerId | manager | |
EmpJob department | department | |
EmpJob company | content_groups en default_currency | Through a table per legal entity |
EmpJob company + costCenter | default_account | |
EmpEmployment endDate | active = false |
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