Deltek and Gusto integration

What moves between them

The main flow runs from Gusto into Deltek Vantagepoint. When a payroll is processed, ml-connector reads its per-employee gross pay, employer taxes, and deductions from Gusto and posts the labor cost lines into Vantagepoint as a journal entry, mapped to the matching GL accounts and organizations. Employee records flow the same direction so the Vantagepoint employee hub reflects Gusto hires, terminations, and rehires. Gusto work locations and departments are aligned so payroll allocations land on valid Vantagepoint organizations. Gusto holds no AP, invoice, or vendor data and exposes no GL to write into, so ml-connector never writes financial entries back into Gusto.

How ml-connector handles it

ml-connector stores both credential sets encrypted and completes the Gusto authorization code flow once per company, caching the two-hour access token and rotating the single-use refresh token on every refresh so a stale token cannot lock the customer out. On the Deltek side it accepts the full tenant deltekfirst.com URL, database name, and password-grant credentials per customer, refreshes the bearer token before it expires, and requires the API user to have accounting and administrator roles so journal entries are allowed to post. Because Gusto has no GL of its own, each employee's gross pay, taxes, and deductions are mapped to Vantagepoint GL accounts and organizations first, so every line references a dimension that already exists. Gusto sends a signed payroll.processed webhook, which ml-connector verifies with HMAC-SHA256 against the subscription token and returns a 2xx within ten seconds, then reads the full payroll detail and posts the entry; Vantagepoint's own webhooks are unsigned, so employee changes from Vantagepoint are read by page-based polling. Gusto dollar amounts arrive as string decimals and are parsed with a decimal library so totals balance, and because Vantagepoint has no idempotency key, ml-connector checks for an existing entry before posting, backs off on Gusto 429 responses within the 200-per-minute limit, and replays any record whose downstream call fails.

A real-world example

A 90-person architecture and engineering firm runs Deltek Vantagepoint for project accounting, billing, and finance, and uses Gusto for payroll, benefits, and HR across two studios. Before the integration, the controller exported each payroll summary from Gusto every pay period and typed the wage, tax, and benefit totals into Vantagepoint by hand as a journal entry, then spent the first days of month-end close reconciling staff headcount against the labor accounts in the ledger. With Deltek and Gusto connected, each processed payroll posts into Vantagepoint automatically, allocated to the organization for each studio, and new hires and terminations keep both systems aligned. Close starts with the labor accounts already reconciled, and the manual re-keying is gone.

What you can do

• •Post each processed Gusto payroll into Deltek Vantagepoint as a balanced journal entry of gross pay, taxes, and deductions.
• •Keep the Vantagepoint employee hub aligned with Gusto hires, terminations, and rehires.
• •Map Gusto pay components, work locations, and departments to Vantagepoint GL accounts and organizations so payroll lands on valid dimensions.
• •Bridge Gusto's per-company authorization-code token and single-use refresh with Deltek's tenant URL and password-grant token.
• •Verify signed Gusto payroll webhooks to trigger each post, with duplicate checks, retries, error replay, and a full audit trail on every record.

Questions

Which direction does data move between Deltek and Gusto?

The main flow is Gusto into Deltek Vantagepoint. Payroll detail and employee records move from Gusto into Vantagepoint, while work locations and departments are aligned so allocations match. Gusto has no AP or vendor data and no general ledger to write into, so ml-connector does not write financial entries back into Gusto.

How does ml-connector get GL postings out of Gusto when Gusto has no general ledger?

Gusto stores payroll as per-employee gross pay, net pay, taxes, and deductions rather than as ledger entries. After a payroll is processed, ml-connector reads that detail from the Gusto payrolls endpoint and maps each component to a Vantagepoint GL account and organization that you configure up front. Those mapped lines are then posted into Vantagepoint as a single balanced journal entry.

Does the connector use Gusto webhooks or polling for Deltek?

Both, because the two sides differ. Gusto pushes HMAC-SHA256 signed webhooks such as payroll.processed, which ml-connector verifies and uses to trigger each posting in real time. Vantagepoint's workflow webhooks carry no signature, so employee changes coming from Vantagepoint are read by page-based polling on a schedule tied to your payroll calendar.