Payroll integration
Unit4 to AFAS integration: employees from Unit4 ERP to payroll in AFAS Profit
With an integration between Unit4 ERP and AFAS Profit, employees managed by HR in Unit4 reach AFAS automatically with employment, job and cost centre, ready for payroll. A new employee starts the hiring workflow in AFAS and an end date in Unit4 closes the contract in AFAS.
What the integration does
Organisations that manage finance, projects and staff in Unit4 ERP and run payroll in AFAS Profit enter every new employee and every change of employment or cost centre twice. Without an integration the cost centres in AFAS fall behind those in Unit4, and the payroll journal comes back with codes finance does not know.
- HR records a new employee in Unit4 with employment and cost centre.
- KoppelHet picks up the employee and starts the hiring workflow in AFAS at the right employer.
- Payroll adds salary, collective agreement, payroll tax credit and bank account in AFAS and completes the workflow.
- A new cost centre or a different position in Unit4 goes to AFAS with its effective date.
- An end date on the employment in Unit4 sets the end date on the AFAS contract.
What to watch for with Unit4 ERP and AFAS Profit
- In Unit4 cost centre and department hang as relations on the employee, each with its own start and end date. KoppelHet sets a change in AFAS with that date, so payroll costs land on the new cost centre from the right month.
- Which Unit4 relation is the cost centre and which the department differs per setup. At the start we record that per relation, along with the mapping of Unit4 positions to AFAS functions.
- A cost centre that is new in Unit4 does not yet exist at the employer in AFAS. KoppelHet creates it there first and only then assigns the employee, so AFAS does not reject the change.
- Deleting in Unit4 is a soft delete that sets the status to terminated. KoppelHet treats that as an end of employment and never deletes an employee in AFAS, because the payroll history must stay.
- The Unit4 employee holds payment details for expenses, but the public documentation shows no bank account for salary and no payroll tax data. Payroll fills those in AFAS, and the integration does not overwrite them.
- The AFAS payroll journal often goes back to the Unit4 ledger afterwards. Because the cost centres in AFAS come from Unit4, the codes in that journal always match.
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 payroll journal go back to Unit4 as well?
That is a separate integration from AFAS to Unit4, which we also build. Start with the employees; the journal can follow later as an extension.
What if salary is in Unit4 after all?
Then we look at the start where it is held, for example in a flexi-field, and include it. Otherwise AFAS stays the source for salary.
Does this work if Unit4 only sends a foreign entity to AFAS?
Yes. The integration only takes the employees of the Unit4 companies that belong to an employer in AFAS.
Technical details for IT
For those who want to know how it works under the hood: APIs, fields and sources used.
- Unit4 ERPx is read through the Employees API (GET /v1/employees/{personId} with includeHistory and includeRelatedValues; employments per positionId with startDate and endDate; relatedValues with relationId, relatedValue, dateFrom and dateTo; flexi-fields as customFieldGroups) and the Attribute Values API for the cost centres.
- To AFAS through the HrOnboarding (new employee), KnEmployee (contract, job, cost centre, end date) and HrCostCentre (cost centres per employer) UpdateConnectors, with a dedicated app connector and OAuth; the classic token expires on 31 August 2027.
Which fields are transferred
The key fields. The full mapping is agreed per customer.
| Field in Unit4 ERP | Field in AFAS Profit | Notes |
|---|---|---|
personId | Medewerker (EmId) | |
nameInformation.firstName / surname | Voornaam en achternaam | |
contactPoints.address | Adres | |
employments.startDate | Begindatum contract | |
employments.positionId | Functie | Through a lookup from Unit4 positions to AFAS functions |
relatedValues (kostenplaats) met dateFrom | Kostenplaats met ingangsdatum | Which relation holds the cost centre differs per setup |
relatedValues (afdeling) | Organisatorische eenheid | |
employments.endDate | Einddatum contract |
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