Velixo and Sage Intacct Console

Created by Velixo Team, Modified on Tue, 5 Aug at 9:04 AM by Velixo Team

What is a console environment?

Normally, each company in Sage Intacct signs into one and only one company, which directly corresponds to a Tenant in a system like Acumatica. Each company has its own, non-shared, master data, such as the chart of accounts, customers, vendors, etc.).

The Company ID is entered on the Sage Intacct’s sign-in screen:

In certain cases, however, Sage Intacct provides what’s called a console company. It can be thought of as a “meta-company”, or a “parent company”, from which the user can automatically slide in (sign in) to multiple managed companies.

Depending on your Sage Intacct configuration, you can access your managed companies via  Console → Manage instances → Switch to Instance or Console → Manage Entities → Switch to Entity.

When a console is used

So why use a console as opposed to just having multiple entities/locations within a single company?

First of all, it’s important to understand that it’s not strictly one versus the other. A console is simply a higher level of hierarchy – each of the managed instances (companies) can still have multiple entities/locations internally.
Secondly, as we have mentioned, the main trait of distinct companies is that they don’t share the master data (charts of accounts, customers, vendors, etc.)

This combination makes a console environment suitable, or even necessary, in the following scenarios that we encountered in our practice:

SIAP partners who provide accounting services to multiple Sage Intacct customers slide into each instance from their SIAP console.
Large investment funds, where each fund is treated as a separate, isolated company.

How to perform a console slide-in using Velixo

Previously, we had thought that imitating a console slide-in was impossible through an integration. We had recommended to create a separate business user in each of the managed instances (companies), and then connect directly to those companies in Velixo.

However, in reality, a console slide-in can be performed via an integration like Velixo, too. The method has many pre-requisites and the set-up is tedious, but it’s a one-off operation. Read below for the instructions.

Pre-requisites

If you have multiple slide-in instances and/or console users that will use Velixo, the guidelines below, where applicable, need to be repeated for each relevant user and for each slide-in instance.

Console company: ensure “My instances” permissions are set for the user

Console company and the slide-in company both: ensure Web Services subscription is enabled

Console company and the slide-in company both: ensure Velixo Web Services Sender is authorised

Enabling the web service subscription or authorisation just in your console company is not enough—you need to do it in each of the managed instances where you want to slide in.

Console company: ensure you have performed a slide-in from the browser

In the console, ensure that you have performed the “switch to instance” at least once from the Sage Intacct UI:

This operation ensures that an external user exists or gets created in the relevant managed company.

Slide-in company: ensure the external user has the necessary permissions

Finally, for each instance that you want to connect to, navigate to the External users screen and ensure that the external user corresponding to your console company inside and ensure that they have the necessary permissions in the Subscriptions/View permissions section:

Note that the external user may or may not have a different name than the one you use in the console.

Instructions

Finally, you can slide into your managed company using the Velixo add-in:

Select the “Enter username & password in Velixo” sign-in method
As a CompanyID, use the pipe | character to separate the console company ID and the slide-in company ID: Console Company|Managed Company 1. Note that this ID is case-sensitive.
Use your username/password for the console company.

A common pitfall is to use your username and password from the slide-in/child company here. Do not do that – use the same set of credentials as you use to sign into the console.

Clicking Connect should establish the connection.

Is “Sign in with Sage Intacct” supported?

The recommended method for console users is to “Enter username & password in Velixo”.

We do not recommend using the “Sign in with Sage Intacct” method because it is currently affected by a known Sage Intacct bug.

Technical information about the bug: if your console company and the managed instance are located on two different database schemas, you may receive no data from the Velixo functions.

However, you can try utilising this method as well and see if it works. It doesn’t work for Velixo at the moment, as in “it returns no data”.

Select the “Sign in with Sage Intacct” in method.
After clicking Connect, enter your Sage Intacct credentials in the pop-up that leads you to the Sage Intacct website. As a CompanyID, enter just the name of your console company (e.g. VelixoMPP-console). You will select the managed company later in the pop-up.
Finally, you can select the tenant to slide into, and click the “Console” button: