How do I configure RetailVista to send financial journals to Afas via integration?

This document describes the one-time setup of RetailVista so that there is an integration between RetailVista ERP and Afas. 

Licenses

In order to use an integration, a 'Financial exports' license must be present. Furthermore, licenses are required for the modules to be connected, such as cash reconciliation, invoicing, and/or inventory transactions.

Configuration

In order to communicate with Afas, a 'Token' is important. This token is a kind of authorization that allows RetailVista to log in to Afas as a user to retrieve and send data. Each Afas environment has its own administrations and therefore its own tokens. Most Afas customers have only one environment. Within an environment, there are users who can access multiple administrations (depending on their rights). A token is ultimately linked to a user, making tokens suitable for connecting to different administrations.

> At this time, it is not yet clear how to indicate in which administration a request should be directed. Possibly submit a support ticket to Afas!

The process of creating a token starts with creating an 'App Connector'. To do this, open Afas Profit and go to General, Management, App Connector. Create a new connector and name it, for example, 'RetailVista ERP'. Specify the user group that will have access to this App Connector under 'User Group'. This may need to be discussed with the customer to determine how security is set up.

Click 'Finish' to create the App Connector. By default, an App Connector is blocked upon creation. Go to General and uncheck 'Blocked'.

Now go to 'User Token' and add at least 1 user who will have rights to modify data. In essence, this will be the user that RetailVista logs in as to retrieve and modify data.For this reason, it is advisable to eventually create a fictitious 'RetailVista' user and give that user the necessary rights within Afas. This way, it will be possible to see later on which data has been created and/or modified by RetailVista. In the example below, 'Charlotte' is added as a user to the RetailVista ERP AppConnector.

After clicking 'Next', the generated 'Token' will be shown in the screen below. Please note: This token will only be visible once at this point. Copy the token into, for example, 'Notepad' because it will be needed later to enter this token in RetailVista ERP. If this is not done, the user must be removed from the AppConnector and created again. In that case, a new token will of course also be generated!

Then go to 'UpdateConnectors' and add the 'Financial mutations' connector. This can be found with connector ID 'FiEntries'. With this connector, RetailVista is able to add financial mutations to Afas.

By performing these steps, a correct RetailVista ERP AppConnector exists in Profit and the transition to RetailVista can be made.

Now create a new authentication provider in RetailVista. Enter the link to the Afas REST services as the URL. The format of this link is probably https://<ID>.rest.afas.online/ProfitRestServices/connectors but it will have to be provided by Afas. Replace <ID> with the connection number of your administration provided by Afas. In the 'Custom Parameters' field, enter the API token from Afas that was previously created when assigning a user to the AppConnector. All communication with Profit will take place under this user. The username and password remain empty.

Update 6/3/2019: The Custom Parameters must now be filled with Token=<Afas token>;Administration=<Afas Administration number>. It is not necessary to adjust existing configurations, RetailVista supports the old notation form with only a token value. But in that case, no explicit administration code is sent and it seems that Afas always chooses administration '1'. The possible administrations can be selected within Afas via General, section 'Administration', 'Open'. In the screen that appears, all available administrations are shown along with their corresponding administration number.

Now go to Settings, Financial in RetailVista and enter at least the journal type and authentication provider under the 'Application' tab. The journal type should be 'Afas' and enter the Afas authentication provider created above for 'Authentication provider'.

Now go to 'Financial', General Ledger, Chart of Accounts within Afas Profit. Make sure that the chart of accounts in RetailVista corresponds to Afas in terms of numbering. If not, errors will occur when sending journals. Because the chart of accounts code in RetailVista is always mutable (even afterwards), it is still possible to adjust the codes and resend a transmission even in case of any communication report errors.

The same applies to the journals. Currently, 2 financial journals can be sent to Afas, a cash journal from the cash accountability and an invoice journal from invoicing. The journal codes in Profit can be found in Profit via 'Financial', General Ledger, Journal.

The journal codes in RetailVista can be found via Administration, Journal codes. The screen below shows that there is a journal code 'Cash' with an export code '40'.Code 40 can always be adjusted afterwards and this code must correspond to the diary code in Profit. Because RetailVista ERP generates its own document numbers when making financial transactions, it is important that a diary code is exclusively created for RetailVista ERP. In such a diary, manual bookings cannot be made within Profit itself!

Now also enter this diary code in the settings for the journal to be exported. For the cash accountability, this can be found under Settings, Cash Accountability, 'Export' tab, under the 'Diary code' setting.

For invoicing, this can be found under 'Invoicing', 'Export' tab, under the 'Diary code' setting, and for inventory transactions, under the 'Inventory' section, 'Journal' tab.

Once these steps have been completed, a first test can be done by sending a journal to Profit. In this example, we assume an export of the cash accountability journal to Profit, but of course, this can just as well be an invoice journal or an inventory transaction journal. This explanation assumes that the journals have already been created. The explanation for creating them is beyond the scope of this Afas Profit integration documentation.
Go to Start, Cash Accountability, and choose 'Export journals'. Enter the journal to be exported, along with the period and other details, as shown in the example below.

If the sending is successful, a notification will appear on the screen above. The report of the sending can be viewed in the journal itself. The example below shows a small part of that report. From this report, it can be deduced what the possible problems were if the sending was not successful.

The above report indicates a successful sending where Profit has assigned journal number 43311 to the transaction journal.These changes can now be found in Profit via Financial, General Ledger, Financial transactions. By entering that number in the 'Journal Entry No.' column, the financial transactions can be retrieved again.

With these steps, the integration between RetailVista ERP and Profit is completed.