Acumatica and Asana integration

What moves between them

The main flow runs from Acumatica into Asana. ml-connector reads new and changed bills and purchase orders and creates or updates an Asana task for each one, writing the amount, due date, vendor, and reference number into mapped Asana custom fields. Employee records move the same direction so the Asana user roster reflects active staff. Task completion and custom field changes flow back from Asana into Acumatica, where a completed approval task can trigger the Release action on the matching bill. GL accounts and the chart of accounts stay in Acumatica and are not written from Asana.

How ml-connector handles it

ml-connector stores both credential sets encrypted, refreshes the Acumatica OAuth token when a call returns 401, and accepts the full tenant URL plus endpoint version per customer since Acumatica publishes no shared base address. Because Asana has no finance objects, each bill or purchase order is represented as a task and its figures land in custom fields that you map once; custom fields are resolved by GID, not name, because names can change. On the Asana side ml-connector registers a webhook, completes the X-Hook-Secret handshake, verifies the HMAC-SHA256 signature on every event, and re-registers automatically because Asana deletes webhooks after 24 hours of failures. On the Acumatica side it can receive Push Notifications via a shared-secret header or fall back to polling LastModifiedDateTime with offset pagination, since push delivery is not guaranteed. Acumatica field values are wrapped and unwrapped on each request, both APIs return 429 with backoff so requests are retried, and because Acumatica has no idempotency key, the connector checks for an existing record by natural key and stores the Asana GID before re-creating.

A real-world example

A mid-sized construction firm runs Acumatica for project accounting and accounts payable and runs Asana for day-to-day project coordination across field teams and the office. Before the integration, every subcontractor bill entered in Acumatica was copied by hand into an Asana task so a project manager could approve it, and the approval then had to be re-keyed back into Acumatica to release the bill. With Acumatica and Asana connected, each new bill becomes an Asana approval task automatically with its amount and due date in custom fields, and marking the task complete releases the bill in Acumatica. The duplicate data entry on both ends is gone, and approvals stop falling through the cracks.

What you can do

• •Create or update an Asana task for each new or changed Acumatica bill and purchase order.
• •Write Acumatica amounts, due dates, vendors, and reference numbers into mapped Asana custom fields by GID.
• •Release or approve an Acumatica document when its matching Asana approval task is completed.
• •Keep the Asana user roster aligned with active Acumatica employees.
• •Bridge Acumatica OAuth or session login with an Asana token, with retries and a full audit trail on every record.

Questions

How does the integration handle the fact that Asana has no invoice or purchase order objects?

Asana has no native finance objects, so ml-connector represents each Acumatica bill or purchase order as an Asana task. The financial values, such as amount, due date, and reference number, are written into Asana custom fields that you map once during setup. Those custom fields are matched by GID rather than name, because Asana lets field names be renamed.

Which direction does data move between Acumatica and Asana?

The main flow is Acumatica into Asana, where bills, purchase orders, and the employee roster create or update Asana tasks and users. Task completion and custom field changes flow back from Asana so a finished approval can trigger the Release action on the matching Acumatica document. The Acumatica chart of accounts stays in Acumatica and is not written from Asana.

Does it use webhooks or polling to detect changes?

Both, depending on the system. Asana sends signed push webhooks, so ml-connector completes the handshake, verifies the HMAC-SHA256 signature, and re-registers when Asana auto-deletes a webhook after repeated delivery failures. On the Acumatica side it can receive Push Notifications through a shared-secret header, and because that delivery is not guaranteed it also polls LastModifiedDateTime as a catch-up.