I'm hoping by posting this I can get a feel for how useful a Sage plugin and associated module for CiviCRM would be. We have a client that needs to have transactions from the various portions of CiviCRM that tend money to be recorded in their accounting package. I personally think it would be a great addition and being a client requirement, it has been factored into the costs.

There are several considerations as to how to approach this, I have thought of a good few ways of achieving the goal but I’d like if I may to ask for a little help fleshing out the details.

The main things I’ve been thinking of are:

• Method
• Synchronisation
• Security
• Direction

Method

I think that to get the structure of the data across neatly, XML may be the best option. With a reasonably well thought out structure all financials and arbitrary custom data can be successfully translated to something sage can work with.

Synchronisation

My main issue here is numbering the transactions. I think my best option here is to have a numbering system purely for CiviCRM transactions and reference them within Sage as opposed to trying to use Sage’s invoice numbers. There is so much scope for duplication of the numbers and getting out of sync that the best option is to keep them separate.

Also in synchronisation, we need to decide how data is passed around. The most logical solution here is for Sage to fetch the data. With Sage being a client-server app that means that a client will need to have a bespoke plugin installed. Once data has been retrieved, it needs to tell CiviCRM that it no longer needs the data that was prepared for it. Once again there are many ways of making sure that Sage only gets told about new transactions but which one is best? If CiviCRM provides an XML file i would mean that several Sage clients could have the plugin but if a Sage client were to ask for all transactions after a certain number we risk duplication of data.

Security

Obviously a concern when dealing with financial data. Although I see no need to pass card details around, the privacy of a user’s data is of great importance. If we are generating an xml file then it can easily be encrypted and hidden behind a secure area of a site for fetching by Sage.

Direction

That is, one-way or two-way data transfer. Do we really need to take data from Sage and add it to the CiviCRM system. I say no but I have a hunch that the client is saying yes. I can see a way of doing it but right now, I think I need to focus on getting the data out of CiviCRM and into Sage.

So, that’s the dilemma. Or rather, that’s basically part of my project for the next few days/weeks. I’ve added a huge number of other features for the client so far by using the api and occasionally overriding the core files with some custom ones so I should really let you know about those but for now, if there’s any comments or suggestions, please get typing.

Chris