Connecting your payment platform directly to your accounting system is one of the most effective ways to automate your accounts receivable process. When you integrate Paystand with Sage Intacct, you can eliminate manual payment data entry, reduce the risk of human error, and get a real-time view of your cash flow. This guide provides a detailed walkthrough of how to set up the integration, outlines the key benefits, and offers practical tips for troubleshooting common issues.
What are Paystand and Sage Intacct?
Before diving into the integration details, it’s helpful to understand what each platform does best. While both serve critical finance functions, they solve different problems.
Paystand is a B2B payments platform designed to automate accounts receivable and reduce transaction costs. It moves businesses away from traditional, high-fee payment methods like paper checks and credit cards by offering modern alternatives, including eCheck, ACH, and a zero-fee, blockchain-based payment network. Paystand helps mid-to-large enterprises digitize their entire cash cycle, from invoicing to reconciliation, giving them faster and more efficient access to their capital.
Sage Intacct is cloud-based financial management software built for growing small and mid-market organizations. As a best-in-class accounting system, it automates core financial processes like accounts payable, accounts receivable, and general ledger management. Its key strengths lie in its powerful financial consolidation for multi-entity businesses, detailed reporting capabilities, and robust compliance tools, making it a go-to choice for finance teams that need more than entry-level software.
Why Integrate Paystand with Sage Intacct?
Connecting these two systems creates a single, automated workflow that manages the entire payment lifecycle. By linking Paystand’s payment processing capabilities with Sage Intacct’s accounting foundation, you gain significant business advantages.
- Automate Your Accounts Receivable: The integration ends the need to manually enter payments received through Paystand into Sage Intacct. Once a customer pays an invoice via Paystand, the payment data is automatically created in Sage Intacct and matched to the corresponding open invoice. This removes a time-consuming administrative burden and frees up your finance team for more strategic work.
- Accelerate Your Cash Cycle: Digital payments through Paystand are significantly faster than waiting for paper checks to arrive and clear. When this speed is combined with instant data syncing to your accounting system, collections are faster and your true cash position is always up-to-date. This acceleration directly shortens your days sales outstanding (DSO) and improves overall cash flow.
- Enhance Financial Accuracy: Manual data entry is a primary source of financial errors. Transposed numbers, incorrect invoice matching, or duplicate entries can lead to reconciliation headaches at the end of the month. An automated sync ensures that payment information—including amounts, dates, and customer details—is transferred accurately, improving the integrity of your financial records.
- Gain Real-Time Cash Flow Visibility: With an integrated system, key stakeholders get an immediate, consolidated view of payments and their impact on cash flow directly within Sage Intacct. You no longer have to wait for batch uploads or manual reports. This real-time visibility enables better cash forecasting, more informed business decisions, and a constantly current view of your company’s financial health.
How to Integrate Paystand and Sage Intacct: A Step-by-Step Guide
Currently, the most common and robust method for connecting Paystand and Sage Intacct is through a custom API integration. While this approach requires technical resources, it offers the most flexibility and control over your specific data workflows. There are also third-party middleware platforms like Workato or Zapier that can facilitate the connection, but a direct API integration is often preferred for enterprise-level reliability.
Here is a step-by-step guide to building a custom API integration.
Prerequisites
Before you begin, make sure you have the following:
- An active Paystand account with administrative access to enable API features.
- An active Sage Intacct account with administrative permissions to manage users and web services.
- Access to a developer or an integration specialist familiar with REST APIs.
Step 1: Obtain API Credentials from Paystand
Your first task is to get the necessary API keys from Paystand. These keys will authenticate your connection requests.
- Log into your Paystand dashboard and navigate to the developer or API settings section.
- Generate a new set of API keys. Paystand typically provides a "publishable key" (public) and a "secret key" (private). Securely store the secret key, as it provides full access to your account's data.
- Make sure to generate separate keys for Paystand’s sandbox (testing) environment and production (live) environment.
Step 2: Configure API Access in Sage Intacct
Next, you need to authorize external connections in Sage Intacct by creating a dedicated Web Services user.
- In Sage Intacct, navigate to Company > Admin > Web Services Users.
- Click "Add" to create a new user. Give it a descriptive name, like "PaystandIntegrationUser," and provide contact information.
- Assign this user the necessary permissions to perform actions like creating and applying payments, reading invoices, and accessing customer records. Be sure to follow the principle of least privilege, granting only the access required for the integration to function.
- After saving the user, Sage Intacct will provide you with credentials, including a Sender ID and Password. Store these securely alongside your Paystand API keys.
Step 3: Develop the Integration Middleware
The middleware is the custom code that acts as the bridge between Paystand and Sage Intacct. This code will handle authenticating to both APIs, translating data between the systems, and managing the workflow logic. This is the stage where a developer is essential.
The developer will programmatically connect to the REST API endpoints for both platforms. The core task here is to map the data fields between the two systems. For instance, a "payment_id" field in Paystand might map to a "record_no" field in Sage Intacct, and an "invoice_id" in Paystand would map to an "invoice_no."
Step 4: Establish Automation Triggers and Workflows
With the connections technically established, you now define the logic for what should happen automatically. A common workflow is to use Paystand webhooks, which are automated notifications sent when an event occurs.
A typical accounts receivable workflow would look like this:
- Event Trigger: A "payment.succeeded" webhook is fired from Paystand when a customer successfully pays an invoice.
- Middleware Action: Your integration middleware receives this webhook notification, which contains all the payment details.
- Data Posting: The middleware then makes an API call to Sage Intacct to create a new 'AR Payment' record, populating it with the data from the Paystand webhook. It uses the invoice number from the webhook data to apply the payment to the correct open invoice in Sage Intacct.
Step 5: Test the Integration in a Sandbox Environment
Never deploy an integration without thoroughly testing it. Use the sandbox API credentials from both Paystand and Sage Intacct to run end-to-end tests.
- Process several test payments in the Paystand sandbox.
- Verify that corresponding payment records are created correctly in your Sage Intacct sandbox.
- Check that payments are applied to the right invoices and statuses are updated as expected.
- Test edge cases like partial payments or failed transactions to ensure your middleware handles them gracefully.
Step 6: Deploy to Production and Monitor
Once you are confident the integration is working as intended, switch from the sandbox credentials to the production credentials for both platforms. Your integration is now live.
During the first few days, closely monitor the transactions to ensure everything is flowing correctly. Review the integration logs to proactively identify and resolve any errors before they become significant issues.
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What Data Syncs Between Paystand and Sage Intacct?
A well-built integration synchronizes all the critical data needed for an automated AR process. Key data types include:
- Customers: Customer records can be synced to ensure that payments received in Paystand are correctly attributed to the right customer in Sage Intacct.
- Invoices: Open invoice data from Sage Intacct should be available in the Paystand system so that payments are correctly applied.
- Payments: This is the most important data sync. Successful payment details from Paystand are automatically created as payment records in Sage Intacct.
- Payment Status: The integration should update the status of an invoice in Sage Intacct from "Open" to "Paid" once the payment is confirmed in Paystand.
Common Integration Issues and How to Troubleshoot Them
Even with careful planning, you might encounter issues. Here are common problems and how to address them.
- Authentication Failures: This is often due to an incorrect API key, secret, or password. First, double-check that you are using the correct credentials for the right environment (sandbox vs. production). Also, confirm that the API user permissions in Sage Intacct are fully enabled.
- Data Mismatches: An error here might occur if a payment can't be matched to an invoice. This usually happens if the invoice or customer ID formats are inconsistent between the two systems. Review your data mapping logic to ensure identifiers like invoice numbers are being passed identically.
- Sync Delays: If data isn't showing up instantly, investigate potential API rate limits. Both Paystand and Sage Intacct may limit the number of API calls you can make in a given period. Your developer may need to build logic into the middleware to manage these limits and retry failed requests after a short delay.
- Failed or Incomplete Records: Sometimes a payment syncs but is missing key information. This points to an issue in your middleware logic. Check the error logs for the specific transaction to identify which data field failed to transfer and adjust the mapping accordingly.
Final Thoughts
Integrating Paystand with Sage Intacct bridges the gap between payment processing and financial accounting, creating a more efficient, accurate, and transparent accounts receivable workflow. By following the steps to build a custom API connection, you can automate manual tasks and give your finance team the real-time data needed to guide the business forward.
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