Visma and BambooHR integration

What moves between them

Employee records flow from BambooHR into Visma. When an employee is created or updated in BambooHR, ml-connector syncs the employee record to Visma, including name, employment status (active, terminated, on leave), job title, and department. Compensation changes in BambooHR are read and validated against Visma's GL account and cost center dimensions so labor costs land on the correct accounts. The integration also reads Visma's employee list to validate that terminations in BambooHR have been processed and to catch any discrepancies in headcount. The sync runs on a configurable schedule (typically daily or weekly depending on your HR cadence) with poll-based fetches for employee changes.

How ml-connector handles it

ml-connector stores both OAuth credential sets encrypted and maintains separate bearer tokens for Visma and BambooHR, refreshing each when it expires (Visma refreshes on demand, BambooHR on the one-hour expiry). For Visma, it includes the required ipp-company-id header on all calls and applies ETag validation on PUT operations to prevent lost updates. For BambooHR, it uses the customer's unique subdomain in both the API base URL and the OAuth token endpoint, refreshes tokens using the offline_access scope, and verifies webhook signatures with the registered HMAC secret. Employee data is pulled from BambooHR with explicit field enumeration (no field limit issues with Visma's open schema) and changes are detected via lastModifiedDateTime on both sides. When an employee is terminated in BambooHR, ml-connector reads the termination date and status change and updates the Visma employee record to reflect the termination, ensuring GL reports and headcount reconciliation stay in sync. Rate limits and availability constraints (Visma's 500-call test limit per hour, BambooHR's unpublished throttle on frequent requests) are handled with exponential backoff and retry. Every record carries a full audit trail with source ID, sync timestamp, and any validation errors encountered.

A real-world example

A Nordic mid-market services firm runs Visma for accounting and project finance, and BambooHR for HR across multiple locations. Before the integration, the finance team received a monthly headcount report from HR, manually imported new hires and terminations into Visma's employee records, and reconciled labor GL accounts against headcount to spot discrepancies. On-the-fly terminations or mid-month status changes often went missing, requiring follow-up manual corrections. With Visma and BambooHR connected, every hire, termination, and status change in BambooHR flows to Visma within hours, the GL accounts automatically reflect the current headcount and compensation structure, and the monthly reconciliation process is nearly automated.

What you can do

• •Sync new hires and terminations from BambooHR into Visma employee records with employment status and effective dates.
• •Align compensation, job title, and department changes so Visma GL accounts for labor costs reference the correct cost centers and dimensions.
• •Validate BambooHR employee changes against Visma's GL chart of accounts and dimensions before applying them.
• •Handle OAuth 2.0 for both systems with token refresh, per-customer BambooHR subdomain routing, and Visma tenant headers.
• •Poll for employee changes using lastModifiedDateTime on a schedule tied to your HR calendar, with retries and a full audit trail on every sync.

Questions

Which direction does employee data move between Visma and BambooHR?

The main flow is from BambooHR into Visma. Employee records, employment status changes, compensation, and job title updates move from BambooHR into Visma. Visma is the source for GL account and cost center validation so that labor costs land on valid dimensions. Employment terminations in BambooHR trigger the corresponding termination record in Visma.

How does the integration handle BambooHR's per-customer subdomain and OAuth requirement?

ml-connector stores the customer's BambooHR subdomain and uses it in every API call (base URL and token endpoint). It maintains a separate OAuth bearer token for BambooHR with the offline_access scope so refresh tokens are issued and expiry is handled automatically within the one-hour window.

Does the integration handle GL account and cost center validation?

Yes. BambooHR compensation and job data are matched against Visma's GL chart of accounts and dimensions before any write. If a cost center or GL account in BambooHR does not exist in Visma, the record is flagged in the audit trail and the sync stops for that record until the dimension is created or the mapping is corrected.