Deltek and Anaplan integration

What moves between them

Data moves in both directions on this pair. From Deltek into Anaplan, ml-connector reads project actuals, GL account balances, labor cost, and employee and project records and imports them into the matching Anaplan lists and modules, so forecasts compare against live actuals. From Anaplan into Deltek, it runs an Anaplan export of approved budget and forecast values and posts them into Deltek as journal entries, mapped to the correct GL accounts and organizations. GL accounts, cost centers, projects, and organizations are aligned as reference data so every imported figure and every posted journal line lands on a dimension that already exists on both sides. The cadence follows your planning cycle, typically after month-end close for actuals and after each budget approval for the plan.

How ml-connector handles it

ml-connector stores both credential sets encrypted. For Deltek it accepts the full tenant URL per customer, since Vantagepoint publishes no shared base address, completes the OAuth2 password-grant login, and refreshes the bearer token before it expires; the API user is configured with full field visibility so fee and cost values do not return as zero. For Anaplan it holds the Basic, certificate, or OAuth2 token and refreshes it before the 35-minute expiry. Because Anaplan runs bulk work asynchronously, it starts the export or import action, receives a task ID, and polls until the task reports COMPLETE before downloading or posting, and it serializes work against a single Anaplan model since a model locks during a task. GL accounts, organizations, and cost centers are mapped first, so each Anaplan budget line posts to a valid Deltek journal account. Deltek has no idempotency key, so the connector checks for an existing record before posting a journal entry to avoid duplicates, and it backs off on the Anaplan 600-per-minute rate limit and the HTTP 429 it returns. Posting journals into Vantagepoint may route through an approval workflow, so the connector respects draft or auto-post status as the instance is configured. Every record carries a full audit trail and can be replayed if a step fails.

A real-world example

A mid-sized engineering and architecture firm with around 250 staff runs Deltek Vantagepoint for project accounting, billing, and the general ledger, and builds its annual budget and rolling forecast in Anaplan. Before the integration, an analyst exported project profit and loss and GL balances from Vantagepoint into spreadsheets each month, loaded them into Anaplan by hand for variance reporting, then re-keyed the approved budget back into Deltek as opening journal entries. With Deltek and Anaplan connected, actuals import into Anaplan automatically after close and the approved plan posts back into Deltek as journals against the right accounts and organizations. The monthly load-and-reconcile step is gone and the forecast compares against numbers that match the ledger.

What you can do

• •Import Deltek project actuals, GL balances, and labor cost into the matching Anaplan lists and modules.
• •Export approved budget and forecast values from Anaplan and post them into Deltek as journal entries.
• •Map GL accounts, organizations, cost centers, and projects so every figure lands on a valid dimension on both sides.
• •Bridge the Deltek tenant OAuth2 password-grant token and the Anaplan auth token, refreshing each before it expires.
• •Drive Anaplan asynchronous import and export tasks by polling to completion, since neither system supports webhooks for this flow.

Questions

Which direction does data move between Deltek and Anaplan?

Both directions. Project actuals, GL balances, and labor cost move from Deltek into Anaplan for variance reporting, and approved budget and forecast values move from Anaplan back into Deltek as journal entries. Reference data such as GL accounts and organizations is aligned so each imported figure and posted journal line maps to a dimension that exists on both sides.

Does Anaplan hold invoices or GL accounts that post to Deltek?

No. Anaplan is a planning platform and has no native invoice, vendor, or GL account objects. Its data lives in a workspace and model as lists, modules, and line items, so ml-connector exports the planned values and maps them to valid Deltek GL accounts and organizations when it builds the journal entries it posts into Vantagepoint.

How does the integration handle that neither system pushes events for this sync?

Deltek Vantagepoint webhooks are workflow-triggered record-save callbacks rather than a full accounting event feed, and Anaplan has no outbound webhooks at all, so ml-connector polls. It starts each Anaplan bulk import or export action, receives a task ID, and polls the status endpoint until it reports COMPLETE, serializing work against a single Anaplan model because the model locks while a task runs.