CCH Open Integration 5.8.2: Limitations and Notable issues

Multicurrency Not Supported  

Open Integration does not currently cater for 3rd party book-keeping systems using multi-currency.  A warning is given if you connect to a multi-currency business. 

General Limitations - finsit 

finsit does not support the Internet Explorer 11 Browser - After clicking on finsit launch, it doesn't redirect to the finsit URL. 

Integration with finsit 

In addition to transactions the following four specific end points have been implemented. Each book-keeping system has its own limitations, and these are documented below: 

Divisions	Scanned Invoices	Accounts Payable/Receivable	Budget Data

Scanned Invoices 

We are currently getting Scanned Invoices information for the following endpoints: 

• Invoice 
• Bank Transfers 
• Credit Notes 
• Bank Transactions 
• Receipts 
• Repeating Invoice 

We are unable to retrieve scanned invoices for the following end points: 

• Contacts  
• Accounts (Xero API does not support uploading of attachments for the Accounts endpoint) 
• Manual Journals (Xero API does not support for uploading of attachments for Manual journals). 

Accounts Payable/Accounts Receivable (APAR) 

Balance (outstanding) - the API does not take into account the date of partial payments or receipts; it just returns outstanding amount. If a partial payment is made on 1st June 2020 and you run an AP/AR report on 31 May 2020, you would expect the amount outstanding to ignore the 1st June 2020 part payment. Unfortunately, due to the APIs this is not possible. 

Overpayments – The overpayments data is not flowing through the Xero API’s to OI. There is a different endpoint for overpayments in Xero that needs to be incorporated. 

Budget Data 

1. Only the ‘Overall Budget’ can be synced from Xero to Open Integration, due to the API response only providing the overall budget values.  You can only have one overall budget per organisation, but you can create additional budgets within Xero. 

2. Tracking Category associated with Budget summary is not available, due to the API not provide tracking category data associated with the budget.  

3. Accounting Periods, the Overall Budget summary can only be returned for the current accounting period. 

4. Deletion of Overall Budget, is not covered in the APIs and therefore to reflect these changes, a user will need to Disconnect and Reconnect within OI.  

Sending data back to Xero - "The Period is Locked in Xero for all users." 

There are 2 lock dates in Xero. One stops basic users (not advisors) from posting in Xero. A second one stops all users, including advisors from posting. Usually a company locks basic users from posting to a period before the advisors are locked, allowing the advisors to make closing entries. Although this system works within Xero, it does not work when Open Integration tries to post transactions back to Xero through its APIs. Xero’s APIs prevent transactions being posted back to Xero if the period is locked for basic users even if it is still open to advisers. Xero has confirmed that this is how the APIs are currently working. 

Access Denied or Forbidden error syncing to Xero 

We have had some reports of this error and the user needs to disconnect and reconnect to resolve them. We believe the issue occurs if a single Xero business, e.g. the Xero Demo Company, is connected to multiple clients in Open Integration. If one of these Open Integration clients disconnects from Xero, then the connection is lost for all of them and the user will see this error if they try to Sync data with Xero on one of the other Open Integration clients. 

This error is more likely to arise from CCH testing Open Integration than from an actual practice.  

Integration with finsit 

In addition to transactions the following four specific end points have been implemented. Each book-keeping system has its own limitations, and these are documented below: 

Divisions	Scanned Invoices	Accounts Payable/Receivable	Budget Data

Editing within QBO 

An incremental synchronisation may not resolve issues where data has been edited in QBO since the last automatic overnight download. So, a full synchronisation may be required in this case. 

Accounts Payable/Receivable 

Journal Entries to Accounts Payable/Receivable are not reflected within the APIs and therefore not returned to OI 

Budget Data 

Accounting Periods, the Budget summary can only be returned for the current accounting period. 

Note on mappings with QBO if using code numbers 

We have used nominal account names in our mappings with QBO.  If you have added nominal code numbers to your nominal accounts, you will be required to undertake the exercise of mapping to the appropriate financial category in Open Integration. 

Integration with finsit 

In addition to transactions the following four specific end points have been implemented. Each book-keeping system has its own limitations, and these are documented below: 

Divisions	Scanned Invoices	Accounts Payable/Receivable	Budget Data

Divisions 

This functionality is currently unavailable, although a user can enter divisional information within the UI (Analysis Types), this information is not currently exposed to the API.  (https://developer.sage.com/api/accou...es/line_items/) 

Accounts Payable/Receivable 

Sales/Receipt or Purchase/Payment transactions which allows to do payment on account are not covered in Sage Business Cloud APAR functionality. 

Budget Data 

This functionality is currently not unavailable within Sage Business Cloud. 

Currencies 

 Non-UK base currencies if used through “online.uk” they are supported in Open Integration. But        if they are used through “online.com” then they are not supported. 

Integration with finsit 

In addition to transactions the following four specific end points have been implemented. Each book-keeping system has its own limitations, and these are documented below: 

Divisions	Scanned Invoices	Accounts Payable/Receivable	Budget Data

Scanned Invoices 

We only support storing and retrieving the document link for Sales and Purchase ledgers entered via Basecone for this release. We also have only looked at PDF filetype as a source of the scanned invoices. 

Accounts Payable/Receivable 

Using newer Blue “neo” tiles for data entry 

Twinfield does not have API support yet for the newer “Neo” Blue Tiles.  One issue we have found is that Sales invoices entered via the Sales Invoice Blue tile can be marked as “paid”. The marking of “paid” does not update any existing Twinfield API, so we are unable to retrieve this information. We recommend the user pays via “Bank Data Entry” until Twinfield provide support for this.  Currently we do not support Journal entries made to Customer or Supplier accounts. We will look to support this in a future release. 

Budget Data 

• Accounting Periods, the Budget summary can only be returned for the current accounting period.  
• Dimensions - associated with Budget summary is not available, due to the API not providing the dimension data associated with the budget. 

Other Connections 

Whilst you can use OI to connect with Twinfield and use finsit, you cannot currently connect Twinfield to CCH Accounts Production via OI.  We are considering this for a future release.

Quarterly Import From Twinfield Not Supported

Currently the quarterly import from Twinfield is not supported. When quarterly periods are entered, any transactions falling in months of the first quarter other than the end month will not be imported in Open Integration.

For example, in screenshot below in month of August and September) will not be imported in OI:

Integration with finsit 

In addition to transactions the following four specific end points have been implemented. Each book-keeping system has its own limitations, and these are documented below: 

Divisions	Scanned Invoices	Accounts Payable/Receivable	Budget Data

Divisions 

If a user recodes/edits a cost centre within the UI of Exact, the amendments do not get reflected as a change to the Transactions, and therefore because we are unaware that a transaction has changed the changes made to the divisions do not flow through to OI. The only way to see these changes being reflected in OI, would be to perform a Full Synchronisation within OI. 

Scanned Invoices 

1. Deletion Issue – If a user deletes attachments against a transaction, the deleted attachments are not provided by Exact in the API response. To resolve this, a user will need to perform a Full Synchronisation within OI. 

2. If a user creates a Sales Invoice using the "Send Based on Account" option, Exact creates different "FinancialTransactionEntryID" in Document API response. To resolve this a user will need to perform a Full Synchronisation within OI. 

Accounts Payable/Receivable 

In Exact, when a user creates a General Journal for G/L account type “Accounts Payable” or “Accounts Receivable” then the Total value is not updated and is shown as a “0”. The balance value is shown as expected.  

Budget Data 

In Exact, Past, Current, and future financial year Budget data are displayed in get API call but in all other Bookkeeping systems budget data are displayed for only current accounting period via get API call. There is an inconsistency the way bookkeeping solutions get API call represent budget data. 

Currencies 

Non-UK base currencies if used through “online.uk” they are supported in Open Integration. But if they are used through “online.com” then they are not supported. 

Integration with finsit 

Constraints 

Due to the fact that we are only able to get the Trial Balance from FreeAgent, there is no integration with finsit. 

Integration with Accounts Production (AP) 

Accounting Periods 

Due to the fact that we only integrate with FreeAgent at Trial Balance level, a pre-requisite to link to Accounts Production is that the accounting periods within AP must match those in FreeAgent. 

Integration with finsit 

Only the current year transactions are sync’d in OI and integrated with finsit. 

Divisions	Scanned Invoices	Accounts Payable/Receivable	Budget Data

Working and Limitations: 

1. When CCH Accounts Production is selected as a Source of Data in OI, Sync. with Open Integration does not get enabled in CCH Central -> Accounts Production. For synchronising the Accounts Production data with OI, we need to use Run Synchronisation from the SyncWorker Console Management option from CCH Central. 

2. To use AP as a BKS a year end within AP must have been performed to ensure opening balances have been created. If a year end has not been performed, then when trying to import into finsit, you will get an error ‘No Opening Balances found’. In other words, you can not just import a TB into AP and then link this to finsit. 

3. Clicking on the Sync option on the Open integration Overview screen does not bring data into OI. 

4. Sometimes the correct data does not flow through to Finsit due to an issue in the SyncWorker. The workaround is to do a Full Synchronisation from the SyncWorker Console Management. 

5. If data on deleted accounting periods appears in Finsit, disconnect the client from OI and then reconnect it. 

Generic Issues applicable to all book-keeping systems 

finsit - accounting periods that end mid-month  

If your accounting period in not a month end i.e. 5th April. We do not currently support this in finsit. We also get this issue for 29 February. 

finsit – first year of trading 

We have an issue on the first year of trading as finsit is currently looking for opening balances and they will not exist in this scenario. This will be addressed for the next release. 

Issue on Overview tab if Synchronisation is in progress and the user clicks on edit mapping at the same time 

Whilst a Sync is in progress a user can click on the edit mapping icon and launch the Wizard and start editing the mapping and this could cause an issue with the synchronisation. This will be addressed for the next release. 

VSTS 183099 – Journals from CCH Audit Automation (AA) 

We have an issue with Journal sent from AA to AP if they choose the Export to AP as “Journal”. 

Open Integration (OI) requires the user to choose “Advisor Journal” (Audit Journal). Only the Advisor Journal option will flow from AP back up to your client’s book-keeping system via OI. 

If the user accidently sends the journal from AA as a standard Journal, then it can’t be approved and it won’t flow back into OI. 

Work-around - to correct this would be to delete that journal in AP ideally, but this is not possible as the journal from AA will be read-only. So, the only option is to flush the data from AP by toggling the Sync. with Open Integration option from Transactions to Trial Balance or vice-versa. This will delete all the data from AP and you can re-synchronise your data from your BKS. However, if you had any Advisor Adjusting Journals that you had previously synced, then the type “adjusting journal” would be lost and it would come back in from the BKS as a normal journal. The downside to this would mean the Advisor Reports will no longer work. 

Transactions are not downloaded individually, only as a Trial Balance 

In the Data tab of OI the transaction stored from the trial balance has a date set to the last day of the financial period. For example, if the accounting period is 1st Jan 2020 to 31st Jan 2020 then all the transactions in OI would be dated as 31st Jan 2020. So, if we enter 1st Jan 2020 to 30th Dec 2020 in the date range filter of OI nothing would be shown. 

Incorrect balances are shown for 29th February year end 

If the account end date is set to 29th Feb, it results in incorrect calculation of Financial periods.