HR to ERP
SAP SuccessFactors to Unit4 integration: Employee Central employees in Unit4 ERP, with department and cost centre on the effective date
With an integration between SAP SuccessFactors and Unit4 ERP, every employee of the companies that post in Unit4 automatically becomes an employee in the matching Unit4 company, with department and cost centre as relations from the effective date in Employee Central. A termination in SuccessFactors terminates the employee in Unit4 without deleting them, so hours and projects stay with the same person.
What the integration does
Organisations that manage employees in SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central and run finance, projects and time entry in Unit4 ERP often enter new employees into Unit4 by hand from a list. A department or cost centre change that takes effect on the first of the month in Employee Central only reaches Unit4 later, so hours land on the old cost centre for a while.
- HR records a hire, job change or termination in Employee Central.
- KoppelHet fetches the changed employees, only for the companies that exist in Unit4.
- Unit4 first checks a new employee without saving; then Unit4 creates them in the matching company.
- Department and cost centre go to Unit4 as relations with the effective date from Employee Central.
- After a termination KoppelHet sets the employee in Unit4 to terminated, on the end date.
What to watch for with SAP SuccessFactors and Unit4 ERP
- Job information in Employee Central has an effective date, and Unit4 keeps an employee's relations with a date from and to. KoppelHet puts department and cost centre into Unit4 with those dates. KoppelHet fills the date to with the day before the next change, so relations have no overlap or gap.
- Employee Central can hold several changes on one day, distinguished by a sequence number. Unit4 has one entry per period for each relation. KoppelHet only uses the last change per day, so a same-day correction replaces the earlier cost centre.
- Unit4 only accepts new employees in one call if they belong to the same company, with at most 200 at a time. For the initial load from SuccessFactors KoppelHet therefore groups employees per company and in blocks, so one wrong company does not hold up the whole load.
- If HR corrects a start date in Employee Central to a later one, Unit4 does not allow the employment start date to be set later. KoppelHet removes the employment and puts it back with the right date, checking it first without saving.
- The SuccessFactors employee ID is the key in Unit4, with Unit4's automatic numbering switched off. A former employee who returns with the same ID gets a new employment on their existing employee in Unit4, and Unit4 refuses a second employee with that ID.
- In Employee Central department and cost centre sit separately on the job information. In Unit4 both are relations of the employee. KoppelHet sends them as two relations, each with its own effective date, so a cost centre change without a department change only affects the cost centre in Unit4 too.
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
Can Unit4 be the source for cost centres in SuccessFactors?
That can come later as an extension. In the first version only employees and their relations go from SuccessFactors to Unit4.
Does salary go to Unit4?
No. Salary is not needed for time entry and projects; finance manages hourly cost rates in Unit4.
Does the integration still work after basic authentication ends at SuccessFactors?
Yes. KoppelHet authenticates with OAuth 2.0 and a SAML bearer assertion.
Technical details for IT
For those who want to know how it works under the hood: APIs, fields and sources used.
- SuccessFactors through the OData API v2 with OAuth 2.0 and a SAML bearer assertion, on lastModifiedDateTime and filtered on company. Entities PerPerson (personIdExternal), PerPersonal, PerEmail, EmpEmployment, EmpJob (company, department, costCenter, startDate, seqNumber) and EmpEmploymentTermination.
- Unit4 ERPx through the Employees API with client ID and client secret. POST /v1/employees/validate and POST /v1/employees/batch (at most 200, one companyId; otherwise 403), PATCH /v1/employees/batch with AddOrReplaceById and RemoveById on relatedValues and employments, DELETE /v1/employees/{personId} sets the status to Terminate. A duplicate personId returns 409; with an active workflow 202 follows.
Which fields are transferred
The key fields. The full mapping is agreed per customer.
| Field in SAP SuccessFactors | Field in Unit4 ERP | Notes |
|---|---|---|
personIdExternal | personId | Fixed key; automatic numbering in Unit4 off |
EmpJob company | companyId | Fixed table per company |
PerPersonal (firstName, lastName) | nameInformation | |
PerEmail (zakelijk) | contactPoints (e-mail) | |
EmpEmployment startDate en EmpEmploymentTermination endDate | employments (startDate, endDate) | |
EmpJob department (met startDate) | relatedValues (afdeling, dateFrom, dateTo) | |
EmpJob costCenter (met startDate) | relatedValues (kostenplaats, dateFrom, dateTo) | Which relationId depends on the Unit4 setup |
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