Sage 50 and Cleo integration

What moves between them

The main flow is Sage 50 into Cleo. Purchase orders, customer invoices, and vendor master records read from Sage 50 are posted to Cleo as EDI transactions or API payloads for broadcast to trading partners and suppliers. The integration polls Sage 50 every 5 to 15 minutes to detect new or modified documents, then stages them for Cleo distribution on a schedule you control. Only outbound data flows; Cleo does not write transactions back into Sage 50.

How ml-connector handles it

ml-connector runs on a Windows machine where Sage 50 is installed and uses the appropriate SDK (Sage 50 .NET SDK for the US edition, Sage Data Objects COM layer for the UK edition) to poll for modified records by date range. Each poll retrieves documents changed since the last run, validates vendor and customer dimensions, and posts them to Cleo via OAuth2 Bearer token, which ml-connector refreshes on 401. Because Sage 50 requires exclusive access (the integration user cannot be logged in interactively while the SDK session is open), polling is coordinated with your business hours. When Cleo OAuth tokens expire, ml-connector re-authenticates without manual intervention. Every record carries the source Sage 50 document ID and posting timestamp for audit and replay.

A real-world example

A mid-sized distributor runs Sage 50 for accounting and order management across three warehouses and a central office. Suppliers expect purchase orders in EDI 850 format and invoices in 810 format, but the finance team was manually exporting from Sage 50, converting to EDI, and uploading to Cleo on a batch schedule twice daily. With Sage 50 and Cleo connected, each new purchase order and vendor invoice in Sage 50 flows to Cleo automatically within 15 minutes, formatted as EDI 850/810 and ready for supplier pickup. Order processing time drops by a full day, and the manual export-convert-upload cycle is eliminated.

What you can do

• •Read purchase orders, customer invoices, and vendor master records from Sage 50 every 5 to 15 minutes and post them to Cleo as EDI transactions or API payloads.
• •Authenticate Sage 50 via the local Windows SDK (Sage 50 .NET SDK for US edition, Sage Data Objects COM for UK edition) and Cleo via OAuth2 password grant.
• •Handle Sage 50 exclusive-access constraints so the integration does not conflict with interactive user sessions.
• •Refresh Cleo OAuth2 Bearer tokens automatically when authentication fails, with retries and exponential backoff.
• •Maintain a complete audit trail of every document read from Sage 50 and posted to Cleo, with replay capability if transmission fails.

Questions

Which direction does data move between Sage 50 and Cleo?

The main flow is Sage 50 into Cleo. Purchase orders, customer invoices, vendors, and customer records move from Sage 50 to Cleo for distribution to trading partners via EDI. Cleo does not write transactions back to Sage 50.

How does the integration handle Sage 50's lack of cloud API and exclusive-access requirement?

ml-connector runs on the Windows machine where Sage 50 is installed and uses the local SDK (Sage 50 .NET SDK for US, Sage Data Objects COM for UK) to poll for modified records by date range. The polling schedule respects Sage 50's exclusive-access model so the integration user and interactive users do not conflict.

How does the integration authenticate to Cleo?

ml-connector exchanges the Cleo OAuth2 username and password for a Bearer token on each session, then includes that token on every REST call. If Cleo returns 401, ml-connector re-authenticates without manual intervention. Tokens expire after a fixed lifetime and are refreshed at the next poll cycle.