Many companies use customized financial or accounting systems that are specifically tailored to their needs. You can link your company's custom architecture to the Lockstep Platform using a connector. You can download Lockstep's example connector code, or build your own using this tutorial.

Connector Summary

Most financial and accounting systems have methods of exporting data, whether via an SQL connection or exported data files. Here's how Your first task is to identify how to access export data

Identify which connector data models you wish to export to the Lockstep Platform
Export this data to a standardized file format such as XML, Excel, CSV, or JSON.
Choose one of the Lockstep SDKs in a language convenient for your software developers.
Using the SDK, select the Lockstep data objects you intend to support, such as CompanySyncModel, ContactSyncModel, InvoiceSyncModel, PaymentSyncModel, or others.
Create a map between your own data fields and the data fields in the Lockstep API format.
Call the Create Batch Import API using the Lockstep data models you converted.

Example connector

Lockstep provides an example connector application written in C# for your use. This program is available under the MIT License and can be freely used and redistributed.

Here's how the example connector works:

The FileDownloader.cs file demonstrates the ability to retrieve XML files from a SSH FTP site.
The ModelConverter.cs file loads data in as XmlDocument objects and provides a placeholder function for converting between source and destination formats.
The BatchSubmitter.cs file writes all records to a CSV file, then merges all data into a ZIP file and submits it to the Upload Sync File API.
Once the file has been uploaded, Lockstep will inspect each record to determine whether any records are new, have changed, or are unchanged. The Lockstep Platform API will then apply changes only to those records that are new or have been updated.
Finally, the code demonstrates how to check on the status of a sync request using Retrieve Sync.